GdT’s third remake in a row, but excuse me, it’s less a remake of the 1930’s version than a new over-faithful adaptation of the novel. I watched at Movieland, with the new Emma and Yorgos playing next door, on their second victory lap after their smart, modern, oscar-winning semi-Frankenstein. Big physical acting from both men in this, but the superior second half following Monster Elordi can’t make up for a draggy first hour spent with Doctor Oscar. Script mostly bad, but I appreciate some del Toro touches (cool set design, the monster brought to life with a battery vest like a steampunk Iron Man). Did not appreciate the CG wolf fight, can’t recall whether the novel had so many explosions in it.
Author: Brandon
Brandon's the guy who runs this site.
The Longest Nite (1998, Patrick Yau)
Tony Leung is a bad cop in Macau whose specialty is smashing people’s hands to pulp, and Sean “Mad Detective” Lau is a tough guy working for one of the two gangs under uberboss Mr. Lung. Better than the same year’s A Hero Never Dies, this is nonstop gangster double-crosses. It ends where all 90s action movies must end: in an exploding box warehouse that doubles as a Wellesian mirror trap, as the killers become each other. They both die unceremoniously, as Mr. Lung arranges to erase both gangs and take the territory for himself, only his undercover man Lam Suet surviving. The girl is PTU star Maggie Shiu, Mr. Lung is from God of Gamblers, and loose cannon Mark was in Peking Opera Blues.
Bad cops:
Bad ass:
Mark with crazy lighting:
Friendship (2024, Andrew DeYoung)
“That frog ripped me off. Little asshole, little fucker.” Awkward shithead Tim Robinson gets invited to local rocker weatherman Paul Rudd’s friend group, blows it by being too weird and desperate and needy, loses his wife Kate Mara in a sewer adventure, ends up delusional in a squad car.
Aggro Fr13ndsh1p:
Yard Work Is Hard Work (2008, Jodie Mack)
A half-hour cut-up musical about attempting to settle down during the subprime mortgage crisis, incredible.
Gowillog (2025, Billy Woods)
Billy Woods released the best album of the year, and on the eve of his followup Mercy he surprise-releases a remix album and accompanying video. I had a very good time watching it.
In a blog first, K took a gowillog pilgrimage to Mork’s and brought back this photo:
The Ice Tower (2025, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)
Think I prefer Luci-Hadz’s bizarre movies where I don’t ever know what’s happening to the ones where a runaway girl hides out on a movie set, ending up as stand-in then rival to the movie’s diva star, the titular Ice Queen. Feels like they’re telling a story but not getting anywhere with it, all long pauses and people staring silently, while that approach seems to work for me if I’m as lost as the characters. Either way, Hadz has conjured another couple hours of splendid images.
Marion Cotillard (only the second time I’ve seen her in the last decade) is our Queen, Clara Pacini the runaway, August Diehl (A Hidden Life) a sinister assistant. The Ice Queen movie doubles as Clara’s childhood storytime and present fantasy world. There’s a crystal / refraction / kaleidoscope theme, the movie’s distorted ending recalling the fever dreams of Mysteries of Lisbon.
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024, Bros. Quay)
Joseph comes to visit his dying father and gets trapped in a hazy somnambulist stuttering time-loop zone. I didn’t like the devil man who destroys bird nests. I guess it’s a Bruno Schulz adaptation, but the story is less important than the Quays using their little puppets to create images nobody has ever seen before.
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Ancha es Castilla, N’importe Quoi (2014, Sergio Caballero)
Extremely homemade puppetry, as in Sergio is refusing to use any construction materials that weren’t already in the house – if it didn’t say 2014 I’d swear this was a pandemic project. Divided into chapters/episodes, like the Quay (and as hard to follow), but more primitive and absurd.
Poltergeist (1982, Tobe Hooper)
The perfect 1980s movie. Mom smokes pot while dad reads a Reagan book. The family is snacking constantly! Family members are introduced while asleep, the dog making the rounds of the household eating snacks out of their hands and beds, and then no amount of haunting can make them lose their appetites. Horror movie I watched at a formative time and haven’t really revisited in forty years – fortunately it holds up.
First casualty is the family bird, who dies before we even meet her. The chairs-move-by-themselves bit escalates quickly to the tree/clown/closet/TV horror night, then the family calls in a university team (led by Beatrice Straight of Chiller) who faithfully documents the haunting but is in way over their heads. When the house gets too dangerous the other two kids are sent away and the great Zelda Rubinstein is summoned to provide self-contradictory advice, successfully rescuing Carol Anne from the TV dimension. Then they do not leave the house immediately: Coach Dad takes a late meeting at work (the real estate company that built the neighborhood on a graveyard) while the house attempts to eat the others. Then in part two they’re followed by an evil preacher and Coach gets possessed by a tequila worm, and part three was maybe set in a city parking garage? Maybe we’ll revisit these next shocktober.
The member of the research team who decided not to come back:
Mom is JoBeth Williams of The Big Chill:
Castle Freak (1995, Stuart Gordon)
How did Gordon get mixed up with Full Moon Entertainment? Guess I shouldn’t act like he was in a position to choose his own studio, between Fortress and Space Truckers – at least this one’s a Lovecraft story. Probably the only time the editor of Puppet Master 2 worked with the cinematographer of Dillinger Is Dead.
Jeffrey Combs inherited a spooky castle, always a bad sign, arrives to claim it with his wife who hates him (Barbara Crampton in a thankless role) and blind daughter, and without their son who he recently killed in a drunken car crash. And inside the castle lives the titular freak, who recently murdered its keeper/tormentor, and now chews off its thumb to escape the cuffs and go exploring (finger-trauma handcuff escapes are becoming a theme this month).
Combs brings home a local hotgirl – she wanders into the castle and gets freaked (it chews her boobs off). Combs is arrested because people are going missing, and you’d think it would help his case that the freak kills two more cops while their suspect is in custody, but Combs still has to conk a cop on the noggin and escape to save his imperiled family and battle the freak to their deaths on a rainy roof.