by ·Comments Off on Dawn of the Dead (1978, George Romero)

Of Romero’s Dead movies I’ve only seen Land in theaters, so after watching Night in the best edition I’ve ever seen, I figure why not follow up with the others. This opens with real chaos in a TV studio, then the weatherman takes his girl Fran and two cops Ken Foree and Roger in the weather chopper and get the hell out of there. Despite the zombie apocalypse Romero wants to be utopian: when another cop at the station is being racist and violent, other cops kill him before he can shoot more civilians.

After setting up in the mall storeroom they go on risky missions to enforce their position. Blocking the main entrances with trucks, Roger has an unpleasant close-up encounter with a Z and goes kill-happy then gets bitten twice. The TV couple toughens up and learns to shoot, and while he’s teaching Fran to fly the chopper Tom Savini spots them and gathers his biker raider crew to take the mall. Flyboy is enraged that they’re stealing what he stole and starts shooting. Ken takes out Savini and they’re winning against the bikers, but the Zs have overrun the mall again and they swarm Flyboy in an elevator.

News team in red:

Cops in blue:

Besides all the action we get some good comic moments – I liked Flyboy checking the price of a jacket then putting it back on the rack – and the music is often pointedly ridiculous. Lonely despair is also addressed – the chopper lessons were an attempt to break free from their shut-in depression, and Ken considers suicide before joining Fran in the chopper at the last second. All lead actors were solid. I’ve recently seen Ken in Lords of Salem… Flyboy went on to Basket Case 2, Roger did Knightriders and the Dawn remake, and Fran did Creepshow and Madman.

by ·Comments Off on Quatermass 2 (1957, Val Guest)

Either the pre-credits scene was filmed by the Manos second unit or this is gonna be a baaaad movie. Chris has been hit in the face by a molten meteorite and isn’t feeling too well… meanwhile, Dr. Q is mad that the money men won’t fund his moon base, so he goes driving and just finds a moon base out in the desert (this influenced everything from Contact to Moonbase 8). After watching this guy grouse through the first Quatermass movie, I’m perversely following his adventures in order to get to the higher-rated third one. Val Guest, who is still not Val Lewton, somehow made four other films in the under-two years between Quatermasses, including They Can’t Hang Me (which is not The Man They Could Not Hang).

Sub-assistant Marsh (Stepford Wives director Bryan Forbes) gets face-impregnated by a meteor-egg, and everyone scoops up the deadly meteorites with their bare hands to investigate. Inspector John Longden (an early Hitchcock regular) pawns them off on a senator, then they bounce to a reporter (Sid James of The Lavender Hill Mob) – most of the movie is watching an impassioned person trying to convince a skeptical Brit about a crazy alien conspiracy. Finally they start blowing up domes and a giant blobby beast (it means to win Wimbledon) lumbers after them, until they blow it up, too.

by ·Comments Off on Seed of Chucky (2004, Don Mancini)

Follows through nicely on its opening Psycho reference, not just a fakeout joke. Appalling CG is something I’m getting used to this month after Final Destination 4. But oh no, the first scene was a first-person murder fantasy by an ugly doll, and this is a meta making-of a Chucky movie. Jennifer Tilly as herself: “I’m an oscar nominee for god’s sake and now I’m fucking a puppet.”

Young Seed is trans, feat. a nice Glen or Glenda reference, and voiced by Pippin himself. Cool-looking movie with good dollwork, but Bride hit the horror-comedy sweet spot and this one is just cheesy. John Waters plays the paparazzo stalking Tilly, whom the adult dolls are trying to knock up, while their messed-up doll-baby protects/threatens them. Feels like a lot of British people were in this. Seed finally boxing-helenas Chucky’s limbs before beheading him, but let’s see, Chuck will be back – Curse comes next, then Cult, then I am not watching the TV series.

by ·Comments Off on Final Destination 4 (2009, David R. Ellis)

Funny how this keeps happening but only to groups of 18 year olds. Opening setpiece here is a racetrack pileup that explodes into the stands. Our precog final-boy is darkhaired Nick (Bobby Campo, also star of a starvation deathmatch thing) with redhead gf Lori (Shantel VanSanten, went on to star in an Oregonian ghost movie), and their buddies: darkhair Janet (Haley Webb, who went on to Blonde) and cocky Hunt (Nick Zano also of a Joy Ride sequel). As per the formula, the kids also rope in a few randos from the first scene: ally security guard Mykelti Williamson (Don King in Ali), uninterested tampon mom Krista Allen (of Henry Rollins monster movie Feast), hapless mechanic Andrew Fiscella (of some Abel Ferrara movies), and antagonist nazi Justin Welborn (The Signal).

come on now:

That’s a lotta people, so let’s start killing ’em off. Nick dreams the deaths in advance, first as the lower-mid-tier CG opening scene and subsequently via appallingly-CG symbolic visions (“it seemed real,” he says after one of those). Mom catches a lawnmower-propelled rock to the face and the mechanic is jet propelled through a chainlink fence. They rescue Janet from being carwashed to death and George from suiciding, while Hunt gets his guts sucked out by a pool. After looking up the plots of the previous films they celebrate having broken the chain, but with a half hour of movie still remaining, uh oh. I don’t get how some cowboy surviving the crash then re-dying in hospital means they’re all in danger again, but now Nick has to save his friends from an exploding movie theater while fighting off a sentient nailgun… then they’re all simply smashed to death by a runaway truck. Good pacing, one long death premonition. Between parts 2 and 4, Ellis made Snakes on a Plane. The DP also did Trick ‘r Treat and the last three Resident Evil sequels, clearly a cool guy.

the moment I realized this must’ve been released in 3D:

by ·Comments Off on Indiana Jones 5: The Dial of Destiny (2023, James Mangold)

Maybe everyone’s doing the best they can with an ill-begotten concept, but this looks especially poor and cartoonish after seeing Mission Impossible 7 this month. There’s more nazi and jesus stuff since everyone loves part 3, but as with part 4 the CG isn’t up to the task, so the movie swerves into ugliness. Ending is okay and Mads makes a fine villain, so at least it’s not a new low for the series.

CG Young Indy (who speaks with Aged Indy’s voice) and Toby Jones stop nazis from getting Archimedes’s time-travel dial, then in I think the 1970s Indy teams up with Toby’s daughter Wombat (Fleabag) to stop them again. Precocious kid joins them at some point, since everyone loves part 2. Indy gets to meet Archimedes, and gets to live happily with Marion in the end since everyone loves part 1. Mangold obviously chosen for this movie due to his time travel experience on Kate & Leopold.

by ·Comments Off on A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn (2002, Claudia Heuermann)

Heuermann’s second of three(?) Zorn movies contains some gems. Zorn credits Carl Stalling’s cartoon scores with teaching him new forms. He explains the rules of Cobra to its participants, which would’ve been useful for me to see a year ago. We sit in on a remaster of the Morricone album, and catch JZ’s enlightening interactions with the musicians during a rehearsal.

But the movie is also tediously about making the movie, about Claudia’s struggles to book an interview with Zorn, and questioning what the movie will be and how to piece it together, including footage of audience screenings of scenes we watched earlier. It returns to re-enactments of the director first hearing the Naked City record and getting into this kind of music, but these meta-elements feel like filler, because all we learn about Claudia is she likes Zorn’s music and is making a doc about him… two things that were pretty easily assumed going in.

by ·Comments Off on Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning 1 (2023, Christopher McQuarrie)

We prepped by rewatching part one, where Kittridge was a standout, just the gov’t boss who has to say all the plotty dialogue, but he turns it into a twitchy physical performance, so we were psyched for his big return. I think I got the plot here, but not the allegiances – Cruise and Kittridge are both trying to destroy the world-domination superconnected AI, but Kittridge’s guys (Shea Wigham from a lotta shows and a guy named Tarzan from Top Gun 2) keep shooting at Cruise. Thief Hayley Atwell is a welcome addition, comes fully onboard just as Rebecca Ferguson checks out. Rhames and Pegg are trying to be the tech help when tech can no longer be trusted. Weapons broker Vanessa Kirby (soon to be Joaquin’s Josephine) is excellent as herself and her mask-self. Human baddie Gabriel (Esai Morales of The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit) is both an AI stooge and a boogeyman from Cruise’s pre-agent past, who falls out with his muscle Pom “Mantis” Klementieff at the last minute. After a thousand sleight-of-hand tricks, Cruise has the key and knows it unlocks a beta version of the AI in a sunken submarine… somewhere in the world.

by ·Comments Off on Mission: Impossible 2 (2000, John Woo)

John Woo’s follow-up to Blackjack, a Dolph Lundgren movie I’d never heard of before this moment. But he was obviously chosen based on his Face/Off experience in mask-based deception, and his ability to make dudes look extremely cool riding motorcycles, wearing leather jackets and sunglasses, kicking ass surrounded by explosions, jumping through the air whilst firing two guns.

Thandiwe Newton bounces between hero and villain (Dougray Scott of Ever After). Anthony Hopkins too embarrassed to be credited as the mission leader even though his other credit that year was the Jim Carrey Grinch movie. Aussies: Ving is joined by John Polson in the chopper and the baddie is assisted by finger-trauma Richard Roxburgh. Evil henchman William Mapother had been in Magnolia, but I think not in the Cruise scenes, and the scientist who sets off the whole plot by creating a supervirus runs the costume shop in Eyes Wide Shut. Bad guys just want to spread the virus across Sydney after securing stock options in Brendan Gleeson’s chem company that will manufacture the cure, and stock options are a boring reason to get the whole IMF on your ass, killing you and your friends, but at least they do it in style.

by ·Comments Off on John Wick Chapter 4 (2023, Chad Stahelski)

JW kills some guys in desert, incl The Elder. Whitebeard Harbinger Clancy “Mr. Krabs” Brown tells McShane the hotel has been condemned, then the Marquis kills Cedric Daniels, blows the place up, and sends blind swordsman Caine after JW. Every scene dramatically drawn out – you get the sense that everyone is playing their assigned role according to fate, except for this fuckin’ Marquis guy, who is annoying and evil.

The Osaka hotel goes down next, Hiroyuki Sanada in charge and his daughter Rina Sawayama in the Cedric concierge role, while a dog-loving bounty hunter called Nobody sits back, waiting for the bounty to get high enough to go after JW. Deals are made: Marquis fucks up Nobody’s hand (why would you do this to a hired assassin) and gets him after Wick, and JW agrees to take on a big metal-teethed dude named Killa to get back into his Russian family’s graces so he can duel the baddie. RIP the big baddie and also Wick – happily, this movie was much better than part 3.

As the Marquis, Bill is the campy Skarsgård, who gets murdered in Barbarian before the even campier Justin Long appears. Blind Donnie Yen was in the Ip Man series and some stuff I’ve seen but don’t remember (Iron Monkey is due a rewatch). As “Nobody” (a Ghost Dog reference), Shamier Anderson, who has been in unrelated movies named Bruised and Bruiser. The guy with the metal teeth, that’s Scott Adkins, the dude you all love so much? Y’all really want me to sit through a Jean-Claude Van Damme sequel to see more of this guy?