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Hereditary (2018)
How Annie got her groove back
In 1999, an over-praised movie called The Talented Mr Ripley introduced the "Too-looooong movie with 8 endings." And ever since, poseurs have been riffiing on it. No idea where to take your movie in the last 20 minutes? Just add 11 endings that extend the running time by 45 minutes. Audiences and viewers will be persuaded that you had lofty ambitions.
Prior to this Witch movie, a snoozer called The Witch (2015) slapped a cop-out convoluted ending on too.
A thousand years ago (1980) this movie was called Ordinary People and Mary Tyler Moore won the Oscar for playing the atrocious mom, without any witchcraft.
Poor Gabriel Byrne has to take garbage parts like this now.
Queen of Blood (1966)
How Barbarella got Her Groove Back
If you thought 'The Blob' was too fast-paced.... this facile dud makes sloooow work, of insuring that nothing clever happens before the one-hour mark, and that its sole conceit can steer completely clear of excitement. Boilerplate ideas in a low-budget romp. For a movie with sets, and false-colored landscapes, it's very single minded that no development can be accomplished visually. It's talky like The Blob too. It's a single memorable shot (a tray of eggs) in need of a build-up.
Script revisions? Who needs 'em.
A pretext to ogle the Playtex landscape of the 60s.
Saxon's eyebrows are looking great.
Night of the Living Debutante.
Fear and Loathing in Aspen (2021)
How Amaryllis got her Groove Back
Did you know that gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson once ran for Sheriff of Aspen? This very twisted project is an attempt to associate the Kennedy's with him, or not. The director is the third descendant of Robert F Kennedy (Bobby Kennedy III). The star is RF Kennedy Jr's wife (Cheryl Hines). The break-out actor (suppressing her actual last name 'Kennedy') is Amaryllis Fox, the daughter-in-law of Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is running for president; as a transparently calculated spoiler. RFK Jr will be the new Jill Stein in November. Kennedy (Amaryllis) plays the campaign manager Peggy Clifton. In real life Amaryllis IS the campaign manager of RFK Jr's. Phony campaign, cuz nepotism.
This was a demented attempt to sell you a 'strong woman' narrative that is as phony as it gets. Meta, wealthy wastrels trying to manipulate you, instead of getting real jobs.
Pretty sick. Tail Wags Dog.
A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Slow as molasses.
This movie is composed of all all set-ups ...alternating all the way. Composed and segment to bounce between 5 stories of equal mediocrity. It has no pacing. And in an all too familiar take on the horror movie, it has no script or story.
Even with loads of slow, down-time, they barely explain what's going on. Shatner does not help and is unrelated to the stories, spliced in. It's super bloody AND includes Santa at the North Pole, with elves. A mess.
Krampus doesn't even show up for 80 minutes or so. Bells and bobtails Ring. Making sprits bright, away in a manger. You could sleep through the first hour, or for the whole thing to have a nice Christmas
Super Awful.
Monster (2003)
Contemptible
The childhood of Aileen Wournos is tragic and terrible, But there is nothing sympathetic about adult Aileen Wournos. When Hollywood chose to make the standard, reflexive 'bleeding heart' Oscar-bait movie about her, they were seriously off-track. One can argue from Monster forward, Hollywood never got back on track. If you know about Wournos and her crime spree; she's no protagonist, She was a seriously messed-up, awful, deadly misanthrope.
Cristina Ricci is a fictionalized mix of various real people; and plays her as an improbable, one-dimensional cheerleader. Do not ask me, as the viewer to identify with a sociopath (Wournos), when I know all there is to know about the case. She is beneath contempt and now she's down amongst the moles, where she belongs.
1922 (2017)
Brother can you spare a nap
This is the slowest and most egregiously pointless "non-scary 'Netflix scary movie,'" of the bunch I've seen.
It is tedious, and slowly builds, and builds, and builds until... yeah, it has no script, so there is of course, no climax. They couldn't come up with anything. So a ghost-y character approaches the protag, who is about to pay for his misdeeds.... and whispers something in his ear!!!! Yeah, viewers don't get to hear.
Well.. ya have no script, no scare, and no resolution because you have, conclusively; no idea. Stephen King often whiffs on the climax.
When this movie ends, all you'll have figured out, is that the director wanted to work with a couple shirtless guys for most of the shooting schedule.
The Good Liar (2019)
I am 60, going on 17
Nothing wrong with either lead, or the topic. I wouldn't even have minded a twist, if it was good. The movie hinges on an "Oh, Come On" surprise where Mirren has tracked (and is tormenting) a con man in the current era, who raped her during WW2, after decades and decades. It's not believable for motivation. The warped idea that a girl pursuing the guy she likes (her sister's love-interest (!), who indeed got her all hot and bothered) would carry out vengeance like this after 70 years, is absurd. Somehow it manages to trivialize all the other WW2 atrocities.
A rare movie about adults is undermined by the deluded MeToo-tinged heroine.
Distasteful. Never has lending your interest to a movie, resulted in the forced identification with such a dubious viewpoint, and her own abject cruelty. Is this the movies' viewpoint? Are we supposed to identify with Mirren's trifling priorities? My group of theater goers was not pleased.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Batman Recoils
Fanboy Returns.
Ooh, a Batman for the 'dark,' corrupt Russian era. Ten years later it's a bit silly. And the result of Nolan presenting the villain who just wants to see things burn (Nolan's Joker), has now been achieved in the real world (Trump). Thanks, Chris...
They borrowed a large chunk of The Thomas Crowne Affair for this. And the sequences just feel like time being run out. These are superheroes who stop and chat with each other (B-man C-woman Bane) a lot.
This is still 1950's fantasy stuff. I don't owe Batman movies anything. I don' t owe Chris Nolan anything. Every Superhero movie is the same, and if it gives male viewers a hard-on, it's a ten. This is still anyone's lame little boy fantasy. Self-important masterpiece claims don't mean anything.
Anne-Hathaway as Catwoman is iffy. The Batman voice is still absurd. Bale sounds like Trump. Oops.
It has not aged well. Once your movie goes over 100 punches, it is not important.
The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
The Exor-sisters
I wasn't disgusted they would attempt a canon sequel, of Friedkin's original, with two of the original stars; but I also know that horror movies are in a bad place for the last 25 years; especially supernatural-themed ones. I am advancing the idea that supernatural horror has expired.
I gave this a chance but it's dreck. No one has fresh ideas and I turn off horror movies after 2 jump scares now. The 'Haunting of Molly something' movie (~15 yrs back) started with the startling noise of a flock of birds, then the startling noise of a cat launching a garbage can lid. ...aaaaand I'm done! Jump scares are empty calories. They are the last refuge of writers with no ideas. The o.g. Exorcist had a few jump scares, but it also dealt with truly disturbing ideas.
The misguided young adult population of 2023, assures me that no single idea that can offend anyone, can be allowed into the movie. Ooh hooray. A risk-averse horror movie!
Absurd. Who is the audience for that?
The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
Gorgeous Camera, but beware
Oh god this movie... is so aggravating. It resides in David Lynch territory, but with no humor. The writers want you to observe & inhabit the lives of some real cretins.
The script creates a funk. I do not care about this boring British couple (Everett & Richardson), their relationship dilemma, their idle chatter, their phone-calls home, to England.
The floating camera (shot in Venice Italy) creates a real mood. I'd rate this as one of the most striking movies I've ever seen. A shot of a phone on the floor bathed in color. Gondola shadows on the side of a palazzo at night. Just gorgeous.
Unfortunately, to see all of this, you have to spend time again and again, with a second grotesque, ingratiating couple (Walken & Mirren, who are very damaged goods) and wait out these inscrutable developments. It'll make you wretch.
Angelo Badalamenti's lush score is absolutely beautiful. We're not worthy.
Black Narcissus (1947)
Self-cancelling Vectors
This movie doesn't reward patient viewers who watch it linearly. Find a way to consume it, in fragments. And don't even worry if you've watched every scene. I'd say, skip every single scene with Sabu; a side story that adds zero to the experience.
That method yields... a remarkable movie/experience, that will stick in your head, for the rest of your life. This movie is not easy to sell you.
Is it pro-religion? No. Not really.
Is it a criticism of religion? ...Not really, maybe in some places.
Is it a Love story? Nope.
Is it a Lust story? That's closer, but no.
Does it have a protagonist? Hmmm, that's a tough one... There is, but her story is nutritionally slim.
So, is there anything memorable about it. Yes, definitely !!!
Is it a thriller? No, for over an hour.... the 25 percent of the movie that has a thriller feel, is vivid, breath-taking and memorable. Masterful even. Do not miss it.
So it's a good movie to watch? No... but it's a good movie to have seen.
If you were to meet someone who said this was misogynist, you can see how they'd say that. Someone else could say: It's pro-women. And I get that too. (It's a movie from 1947 with 8 major speaking roles for women.)
The problem with Black Narcissus is the writing, like Cabaret... or, The Comfort of Strangers (1990). It almost takes you somewhere, and frustrates the crap out of you for not being able to. It just strands you a few miles from where you started. It makes a lot of points, but no one connects, and it doesn't flow..
New Scotland Yard Files: The Camden Ripper (2020)
Creep Show
Just a stone's throw north of Buckingham Palace, where the queen hangs out... down-on-their-luck sex workers get destroyed bodily. The killer is caught pretty quickly.... then odious paper-pushers allow the murderer out for day privileges over and over. Eventually a handful of women, are murdered.
This case is a look into the dead soul of the the UK, and all of its bureaucratic impotence. The crime is insane, but the departmental follow-through and mannered blame-passing is contemptible beyond belief.
Who's to blame? All of the feeble govt employees (cops, detectives, Heads of Psych wards) taking nice paychecks can tell you why it's not them; while keeping a straight-face. This case is notorious for the Cop who laughs, as he admits he declined to arrest the perp, when his son told him he's sitting near them in a library.
The camerawork on this is like a fever dream. Tolstoy's Raskolnikov wouldn't be able to keep up.
Crooked House (2017)
No forward momentum
This was one of my faves when I read it, long ago, but it is a later Agatha Christie and the book received mediocre reviews in its time. I can now understand why. It has zero forward momentum. It's just a bunch of scenes where you're stuck with an aggravating family; and each character receives one identifying characteristic. They're all excruciating, mopey jerks, and the mystery is not strong. The perp was what I found interesting, but that solution has to be given away with the most tired device ever; a journal in which the character exposes their baddy adventures. Pretty tired. Because Christie couldn't work out how to do the big reveal with a competent detective. The structure is very weak.
Glenn Close's matriarch seems like a boring character initially, but she's the only one that takes any glee in life. Is Max Irons talented? Who knows? He doesn't fall on his face, but I hate nepotism.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Really Dire
How on earth did National Lampoon even choose to make a family movie? The very early warning you are watching rubbish are the 'funny' sound effects, under the opening animation. Once that's over, you'll notice 'funny music plays when something funny happens. John Hughes is just not the same tone as John Landis.
When people tell you about a movie they've seen 12 times, remember that they first watched it at least 12 years ago, when they were less mature, less discriminating, and perhaps before you even knew them. It would be best to excuse yourself and beat a fast retreat.
I've had hosts rave about The Goonies, then make me watch it, and I just cringed, and clenched through the entire thing, in torment. You had to see some movies as a child, to be able to enjoy them as an adult.
About 16 years ago, friends had me watch NLXV with them. I found it tiresome, unshaped, one-dimensional. Chase can not be given a shlocky, sentimental role like this.
It was one of those nights where you think, 'Boy, we really don't get each other.' This movie is so terrible.
The Pope's Exorcist (2023)
Exorcist: Hoarders
Notable for being the typical, tired horror movie made for 25 years now, bereft of scares. It's cluttered with the b-Grade ideas of a hundred other generic fx-horror movies. The script promotes new lore (and characters knowledge of it) at the exact moment the movie has reached a familiar fever-pitch, and can't get anywhere with the hoary bits it gave you. The screen is filled with superficiality.
To tell you the truth, I watched this and another tired horror movie (The Nun) around the same time, and they are indistinguishable. They're tired in the same way. Same finale in a crypt.
This movie is also junky due to an extremely unscary 'scary child' role, really terrible dubbing, and overacting of the possessed child; who talks, and talks, and talks, and talks, and talks...
I assume The Exorcist Goes to Alaska will be next, or maybe Jupiter.
Had no idea Franco Nero was still alive.
Quite Bad.
Ordeal by Innocence (2018)
Sort of Exhausting
The lives of a seriously crappy family of adoptees, teeming with existential blah, are disrupted when an oddball visitor arrives to confirm his participation in a key moment some years back. And the family susses out the truth over 3 slooow episodes. Bill Nighy as the patriarch is impenetrable in every scene. I f-fwd'ed through the lagging middle section of episodes 2 & 3. There are too many miserable characters. Anthony Boyle is miscast as Jack. He's a lightweight playing a heavy.
It's a bit overwrought. Both recent versions are depressing. But, at least in the tv version, Jack's missing alibi (a science nerd, double role), lends some comic relief, and the actor seems to be having a fun time.
Toast of Tinseltown (2022)
Diminishing Returns
Like most fans, I was pleased to hear a new batch of episodes was coming, but my worry was; Could it make the jump to the States? Can Americans do British humor?
Answer: No. No, very much. I made it through 3.5 episodes, maybe.
All the Americans are adrift in this. The two comedy styles are oil and water. What the hell is Fred Armisen doing? He appears to think British humor is about being flat, understated, and creepy. It's not. Brit humor is 1) deft verbally, and 2) absurd. Armisen sleepwalks through his scenes as an unbalanced, vague threat. It is stone-cold unfunny. It is nothing.
Toast's agent (Jane Plough) gets swapped for a blousy, loud-mouthed taxi driver played by the same actress. It's only funny in the abstract. She's competent, and she got to stretch; but the Plough/Toast dynamic is missing, and the scripts leave her with no comedy to deliver. The Jane Plough character (London) is the equal of Matt Berry, and really lifts the UK show. Her mildly-filtered contempt for Toast is one of life's joys. We love Jane 'Pluff' across the pond.
Even Clem Fandango can't lift this.
How Did This Get Made? (2010)
Harrumph
A "Bad Movie" review podcast. The earliest episodes were hilarious. (Timothy Greene, When Justin met Kelly...) but the show is so shrill now. Frequent guest Jessica St. Clair's has an atrocious voice, and tries to talk over the other 3 hosts, who are all talking over each other. Shouty Erin Gibson (guest) is obnoxious and juvenile.
June is an unrelenting, joyless drag. She thinks her role is to bring things to a halt, and approve or disapprove of the actions taken by characters in the movies. There she goes... off on a self-righteous tear, to slowly tease out the plot, or to teach us all morals. Humor: zero. No one cares, June.
She's a shallow, antiquated reverse-sexist. She's very content with pre-feminist constraints for men. If I hear one more time that she doesn't approve of men drinking tea... men's asses... men doing the splits... men not escalating a fight (to protect her).... Tired garbage. I still listen, but I turn it off when June begins describing everything as 'upsetting' and 'disturbing.' Lighten up June.
Paul Scheer is a little strained and desperate, and you think he's not the funny one; and then he gets 2 or 3 perfect hilarious jokes with amazing delivery, per episode. I want more of, that Paul. One thinks wife June has made him question every instinct he has ever felt.
They should dump the Second Opinions segment; which hasn't been funny in, like, two years, and the live-sung intros are always a needy, untalented person with a brittle voice, fishing for compliments.
Why have they still not mocked 'Home Fries?'
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
The Phantom Mildew
The narrative over the 11 (?) films is disjointed and beige, like writers from Reader's Digest provided the scripts, The series cannot be bothered to line up any two generic bits of lore. Unnecessary events from the earlier movies get name-checked, always in the least engaging way possible. They can't even pass the time in interesting ways.
Every time the Producers bet that the audience will be satisfied with blasé, vapid distractions, they are correct. Most of the scripts are talky to a stupid degree, and the conversations could be taking place in a Burger King. Nothing ever advances competently, The teaspoon-deep characters never develop.
Whatever boring footage can be recorded by a passive director sitting nearby, aloof and unengaged, is what you get.
The series never delivered on the potential of the first movie. Star Wars is junk food. Undeserving of your Attention. Space Gibberish.
The F.B.I. Files (1998)
Old Media
Decent content, trapped in a pre-web format, for passive viewers.
I've realllllllly come to dislike introductions, which back in the TV milieu were meant to hook you. But in the web era, the title you clicked on already confirms your buy-in, and that you know what the content is. So here comes old-school Jim belaboring the point, reiterating the subject matter, teasing the content, diminishing your faith in the FBI, at the start of each episode I dislike intros on podcasts, documentaries, everything now, and aggressively skip them. They are now artifacts from another galaxy. Just cut to the chase.
Another hurdle when you watch these online is the recaps that would have followed the now missing commercial breaks. 3 steps forward. 1 step back.
Dirty Business (2008)
Oh Canada
A garden redesign show from Canadia. Very nice results, but also: the show with the highest number of iffy results. The glass dividers are overused. The maze/pergola project was really unfortunate. Too much design per square foot in a tiny yard. If they forget to go vertical, a yard still just looks like a yard.
The cost for doing these projects is remarkably low. I'd bet that a decent yard design can save a marriage, and free you from your cabin-fever.
The 4-man design team is sort of charmless, but I enjoy seeing their work. James is picked to do the narration. He's a helpful reminder to me that a lower percentage of exuberant, forced charm could be useful. When I think I'm charming, I'm probably this trying. His line readings are stiff. His jokes are ...not good.
This show allows the client only one comment about the finished garden, and then they're gone, and the gents review things. I'm fine with that.
Garden Rescue (2016)
Great. Countless Ideas
Dreadful, stingy, plain-Jane, and poorly-proportioned yards in England get makeovers, in a competition format. The barren, uninviting quality of all these yards must be due to the English climate. No one in the states would leave their yards this featureless.
These forlorn, unused spaces, get transformed into amazing features.
I'm always rooting for the Rich Brothers, but their stuff is very serious; appropriate for me, but not most workaday folks. Charlie is larger than life, but her best ideas are more exploratory and random, which I also like. Arit does nice work too. I think she and Charlie did that cool tumble down yard with a kid's garden at the bottom tier.
I sketch out my own ideas, as I watch. And I found this, at the exact right time in my life, as I was designing a landscape for a client. Had no idea I enjoyed designing pergolas and yard-panning as much as I do.
Great Balls of Fire! (1989)
Troubling
I would advise the cast of this movie to gear up for their moment with their feet in the fire. The topic (Jerry Lee Lewis) cannot be chronicled without the odious theme of grooming, now squarely an offense. Lewis married his thirteen year old cousin. "It was different time in in 1989," you like to say? No, this thread was gross to audiences even then. The grossness of Jerry Lee Lewis is timeless. 89 was soooo late to do this.
GBF could make a double feature with Gigi, award winner for Best Picture in 1958; (9 Oscars!!) whose regrettable story concerns a French 'player,' grooming his niece to be his concubine. Gigi goes one worse and offers a popular song called "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" sung by a creepy old man. This was considered family entertainment.
Country House Rescue (2009)
Astonishing Manor and Grounds
This show tracks an older couple as they attempt to save a remarkable, centuries-old manor home. The home is rambling, with many areas in a bad state, and the grounds are breath-taking.
The couple attempting to rescue it are classic, daft Brits. You have to thank them, but you also conclude they're nuts. I assume the UK lets these homes go to seed, because they have too many to save? Making it all worse, is the behavior of the couple as they interact with their non-crazy children is also "only in the old world." You can't fathom The couple's emotionally anachronistic values are truly strange. The husband when asked if a meager amount being discussed was his income last year; admits. "I've never made a profit." Even capitalism is a foreign idea.
Homes Under the Hammer (2003)
Just excruciating, except when it's good
This show is maximally irritating... with phony exuberance, low-grade puns, thematic music cues, and the most intrusive padding/recaps available in any tv show. Watching it old school (passively) waiting it out, must've caused viewers to lose the will to live.
The Brits love to poke fun at the US's mechanical pleasantness, but these hosts are out of their minds, giving 90 percent too much energy and phoniness. I've never met an American as delirious as Lucy Alexander. The housing stock in the UK is terrible and tiny, and can't stand up to the weather or the damp.
Thankfully, watching it on YouTube, you can cut to the chase and leap over all the lousy puns, and the endlessly stupid, thematic music cues.
But I very often like the buyers who present themselves to remodel the homes. 90 percent of them seem very nice. And you get a glimpse of shy pride after the repairs, that's charming.