A collection of mini movie reviews.
This is only one privileged straight white male’s opinion, however. And if I bothered to watch more indie & foreign-language films like I keep saying I’m going to, I’m sure I would feel differently. But I didn’t, not only because I’m a lazy Gemini, but I usually have to watch this stuff by myself if I do, and I’m a hot mess if you leave me alone for more than five minutes. Ask my wife. On second thought, don’t.
But then why not stream? Hasn’t COVID changed the viewing model for smaller films for the better? Haven’t I hashed this out a-million-and-one-ways before in one of the many many MANY media-based tirades available right here on this website? Well I could, but I choose to spend my free time watching crap at home, too. Life is cruel.
Blood Type
Writer/ Director/ Producer/ Actor/ Caterer (har-dee-har-har) Kevin Wayne’s un-optioned TV pilot about the post-apocalyptic struggle between vampires & the last remaining humans and yadda-yadda-yadda, with the hook being Wayne’s 50-year-old transposed with the mind of a 10-year-old boy. Were it picked up to series, it looked poised to give all the most boring, whiny bits of “The Walking Dead” a run for the their money. Patrick Swayze’s younger brother Don shows up for a fun cameo in the cliffhanger as a Governor/ Negan template, which could have been a highlight but goes nowhere by nature of the format. On a side note, I think it’s fantastic that material like this – un-aired, un-optioned TV pilots – are available to view, regardless of hard filmmaking quality. The freemium services would do themselves a disfavor by not making them more accessible, possibly through a dedicated search tag.
1.5 out of 5
The Bye Bye Man
Joke all you want, but this is a watchable, nasty-minded thriller, ultimately undone by its lack of real answers and batshit casting that doesn’t deliver. It has a great one-take prologue that plays like a PG-13 version of the first ten minutes of the French “Martyrs”, genre veteran Doug Bradley turns up as the eponymous spectre (joined by a big demon puppers that wasn’t given enough attention in the film’s original advertising), and there’s some clever tricks behind the camera to show our group of college-aged idiots devolving into babbling sadists. But then Carrie-Anne Moss shows up doing her badass Carrie-Anne Moss thing, but only for ten minutes. Then Faye Dunaway appears as the mysterious old lady who should know more than she’s letting on, but doesn’t actually know anything or offer any answers of the Man’s actual origins, as opposed to the origins of his current reign of despotism. In the last shot, Moss turns up again to act as catalyst for a follow-up that probably won’t happen. What’s here could have been worse.
3.5 out of 5
Dagon
16-year-old me on Nexopia called this “one of the worst movies” he’d ever seen, probably because he couldn’t stomach the most sympathetic character getting his face skin slowly ripped off at the end of the second act. This Lovecraft adaptation isn’t even that violent up until then either, so the last half-hour is still out of left-field watching it again 19-years-later regardless of whether they were book details or not. Maybe it was cult director Stuart Gordon thinking the film needed some juj: if that’s the case then I can see where the money went because the other 95% of the effects look like under-lit extras with burlap sacks on their heads. There’s some quality cheesmo acting, intriguing Cthulhuisms even if the story didn’t have to do with it directly, and it was edited & paced propulsively by virtue of the narrative’s chase-like structure.
3 out of 5
The Nature of the Beast
Serviceable take on the “Hitcher” formula, with Eric Roberts as the apathetic psychopath and Lance Henriksen as his unwilling apprentice. One is stalking the desert as “the Hatchet Man”; the other is a zhlub on the run with mob money – and Eric is going to show Lance the rules of chaos whether he wants him to or not. Will Eric awaken Lance’s killer instinct? Which man really is the hatchet killer? Are they two parts of the same person? Which personality will survive the final bloody confrontation? I don’t know what happened in the last five minutes, either. Eric does his devil-on-your-shoulder drawl that he’s know for and is fine, and Lance full-on picks his nose at one point in-character so nice to know he didn’t just show up for the money.
2.5 out of 5
The Tall T
Fun fact, Kids: the “T” in “The Tall T” stands for “Tenvoorde”, which is the name of the ranch our hapless hero is on his way to in the first act, but it could stand for the film’s geographical setting as a whole, which sits around a hollowed-out mountain that served as a mine. At first I assumed it meant “tall tale” – sort of a Western “How I Met Your Mother”, which it still kind-of is. Not only was the free-to-view print nice & clean and not some 3rd generation VHS dub (possibly because Criterion just released a Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher box set), but the movie itself is welcomingly short & pleasantly subversive: look out for the various details surrounding the striped candy & a dead child, and the inspired casting of both character-greasebag Henry Silva as a lackey & Maureen O’Sullivan – Jane from the Weismuller “Tarzan” films – as a “plain” woman. Not sure how I feel about Scott “taking what a man wants” from Sullivan, though.
4 out of 5
Movie poster citations in order: Blood Type; The Bye Bye Man; Dagon; The Nature of the Beast; and The Tall T. All films were viewed on the Plex service. This is an unsponsored post. No guarantee that what’s reviewed here will still be available if & when you go looking for them. but if you do, I hope they are. Thanks for reading!
theory of a daskeman 