Rambling Film

Moving just isn't an option. Anne Sacchetti (Barbara Crampton) and her husband Paul (Andrew Sensenig) move to a small town in New England after their son is killed in a car crash. The house they move into has a creepy basement that always smells like smoke, yet they never see any. Soon, neighbors start acting weird, then the house itself stars acting weird. It turns out, years ago it was a funeral home where the owners were selling dead bodies to universities instead of burying them. After the town murdered them, their spirits haunt the house and demand a sacrifice.  For some reason, this film showed up on a lot of horror top 10 lists last year. It does have some impressive special effects, but that's about it. Actually, it seems all the film's resources went to that instead of hiring someone to write a decent script, and acquiring convincing actors.  There are so many illogical things in this movie. 1) If the house doesn't get a sacrifice, the spirits ta...

Not your average patrol night. A group of Turkish police offers respond to a call for back up in a nearby town. When they arrive at the abandoned building, they find a black mass and a portal to Hell.  For my horror themed Indie Gems this month, I started with a documentary that is an actual horror story, some camp, a home invasion flick, and figured I'd end the month with something truly gory. Like, uncomfortable gore. The last 20 minutes or so of this movie are hard to watch and I found myself actually looking away a few times. This one is a slow burn. Half the movie happens before they get to the building where shit hits the fan. In fact, it's so good at building dread that I almost chickened out during it because I started to wonder if this was going to end up being like Martyrs . (I still find Martyrs to be the harder watch) Admittedly, the story is pretty weak, but the cinematography is gorgeous. The movie is practically bathed in red and really ...

The final Halloween theme this month from Wandering Through the Shelves is about epidemics/outbreaks. Don't worry, I'm not going to do what I did last week and only pick Dawn of the Dead movies.  1) 28 Days Later Those damn animals activists. Trying to release infected chimps and inadvertently released the rage virus on civilization instead. This is definitely one of my all time favorite horror movies. The shot of Cillian Murphy walking in an abandoned London is hauntingly beautiful.  2) Cabin Fever Eli Roth knows horror, and Cabin Fever is the perfect combination of campiness and sickening gore. The campers in this film are exposed to a flesh eating virus that rapidly spreads between them. 3) Planet Terror A bio tech experiment goes horribly wrong and everyone exposed to the gas turns into a zombie. This film was one half of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse feature, and in my opinion it's the far superior half.

Beauty is everything. Jesse (Elle Fanning) is sixteen years old and has just moved to Los Angeles to become a model. She's befriended by a make up artist, Ruby (Jena Malone) immediately but finds that other models, particularly Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote) are jealous of her natural beauty. Then thing get weird. I have a strange relationship when it comes to director Nicholas Winding Refn. Drive is an excellent movie and because of that I was immediately sold on his last feature, Only God Forgives which ended up being a pretentious mess. So where does The Neon Demon fall? In between, definitely. Neck and neck with Bronson .  The film is gorgeous to look at, which Refn's films always are. He has a great use of color in his movies that always fits the narrative. He makes a few missteps with the length of some of his shots. Beautiful as they are, I found myself wanting to fast forward through a few. 15 minutes could've easily been shave...

The Walking Dead After the worst ratings grab cliffhanger in TV history, TWD comes back and...makes you keep waiting for it. They don't want any of you to turn the channel. Honestly, The Walking Dead doesn't trust their audience . There, I said it. I've been thinking it for a while, ever since show runner Scott Gimple went in cry baby mode last season saying critics "didn't get" what he was trying to do. They wanted so badly to have a "Red Wedding" episode with this premiere, but they don't trust us enough to feel the character's anguish, so they play with time to make sure their ratings stay high. Then they keep piling it on and on and on. They've completely missed what made Game of Thrones' The Rains of Castamere so well done. It was heartbreaking, surprising, and above all, still good TV. This wasn't. It's like they turned it into the Walking Torture Porn (which is hilariously something Andrew Lincoln said the show wo...

Shhhh... Maddie (Kate Siegel) is a deaf author who lives a solitary life. She's trying to finish her next book in her secluded mountain home. One night, a masked man (John Gallagher Jr.) shows up and starts terrorizing her in her home.  We get to know enough of Maddie and her headspace before the man shows up to inevitably ruin everything. The film doesn't hold back on the creep factor. He cuts the power, so Maddie is literally in the dark and can't hear a thing. The atmosphere is astounding in that regard. There's so much quiet dread.  I said this earlier when I reviewed the equally brilliant Don't Breathe , but I normally don't do home invasion movies. The buzz around this one was so strong that I started it without even seeing a trailer. Siegel (who co-wrote the film) is fantastic, and I've been a huge Gallagher fan since I watched him in the Newsroom. It's certainly a different type of role. Scary and uncomfortable, I can't rec...

My four year old's new favorite phrase is "outta this world" and that's exactly what this week's Halloween theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is: science fiction horror. While I at least make an attempt to be creative each week, this time I'm going for the typical route. Remind me to watch Videodrome, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and to finish Eraserhead. 1) Alien I'd wager this will end up on everyone's list. This is the ultimate sci fi horror film. It features one of the best female characters in cinema in the form of Ellen Ripley, and it has some very memorable and creepy moments. 2) Alien 3 This is a shock, right? You thought I'd for for Aliens . Nope. Alien 3, baby. I like this one, I know most seem to hate it. It probably helps that I've only seen the directors cut of it on blu ray. I never saw this in theaters because I was too busy being five.  3) Alien vs Predator I'm a sucker for these versus movies. ...

But I'm a star. When Hope (Melissa Rauch) was 17, she suffered a career ending injury on the Olympic stage when she broke her ankle on the beam. She managed to pull herself through the bars routine and win the bronze medal. Since then, she still lives in her small town in Ohio where she's completely worshiped as a hero. But now she's lazy, rude, and refuses to get a job. When she finds out her former coach committed suicide and pledged to leave a hefty inheritance to her if she coaches her new prodigy, Maggie (Haley Lu Richardson) Hope decides to slack her way through that as well. But when a former rival, Lance (Sebastian Stan) berates her for her poor job, she starts actually trying to get Maggie to the Olympics.  I know this film kind of bombed at the box office, but I like vulgar comedies so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, it suffers from a protagonist so unlikable that she isn't funny. It was the same issue I had with Eastbound and Down...

....Like a CPA? Christian Wolff is an accountant who happens to be a on the autism spectrum. Normally, I'd never use someone's illness to describe them, but it's central to the plot. He's not just a regular CPA, though. He's so good that he spends most of his time uncooking books for the world's biggest crime organizations. He takes a "normal" job and meets Dana (Anna Kendrick) but he finds both himself and Dana in danger when it turns out this job is anything but normal. The Feds are on to him (played by JK Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and a mysterious hitman (Jon Bernthal) is as well.  There's a lot of really interesting things that happen in this movie, unfortunately there's also about 30 minutes or so that don't need to be there, and that stops it from becoming truly great. It's not as if we're given extra development within those 30 minutes either. What we need to know about each character is sufficient enough...

Westworld Another fascinating episode here. I was surprised to see Steven Ogg again. He also has a bit part on The Walking Dead right now, but it was worth it to watch Dolores kill him. I liked that we learned a bit more about Bernard this week. We saw that his son died and I loved the line "this pain is all I have left of him." We also saw through Bernard that Dr. Ford might be the shadiest person in this show. (The Man in Black was absent from this episode) He talked about an old partner, Arnold. The name some of the hosts are talking about and he says he died. I'm guessing Ford killed him. (And maybe turned him into a host? Perhaps that piano player is him?) Dolores wants to be free, but Teddy hasn't caught up to her new way of thinking yet. Elsie and Stubbs also went after a stray host (and we hilariously learn the legalities of which hosts are allowed to touch weapons) when they find him, he bashes his own head in right in front of them. Wow. Agents of ...

Happy Birthday! - your present is life long therapy. It's Jack's (Christian Distefano) birthday and this kid for some inexplicable reason loves clowns. I didn't know such children existed but here we are, and the clown that is supposed to come to Jack's party is double booked. His mother, Meg (Laura Allen) calls her realtor husband, Kent (Andy Powers) who's closing an open house to tell him a bad news. Lucky for him, the house he's in happens to have a bunch of costumes lying around, and one of them is a clown. He puts it on for Jack, but after the party he finds that he can't take the costume off, and it's starting to possess him. You have to except that the premise for this movie is kind of stupid (I kicked my husband out of the room after about five minutes for making fun of me) But that's what makes horror movies fun! And fun this is. Kent while possessed by a demon clown literally goes around looking for children to eat. He even ends ...

This week's Halloween theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is creature features. The only catch is they can't be aliens, vampires, zombies or werewolves. This was kind of tough, I love B movie horror but creature features aren't something I've dabbled in too much. These films are pretty bad, but at least they're amusing at times.  1) Piranha 3D No, I didn't actually see this in 3D, I believe I Netflixed it. Thousands of piranhas swarm a lake that happens to be a big spring break destination. These little bastards defy gravity at times. I never did see the original 70's movie, but this remake is actually pretty hysterical. 2) Cujo I can't do doggie death. Old Yeller, Homeward Bound, and Benji scarred me as a child and I've never recovered. I just can't handle it....except Cujo. Cujo is the only time I watched a dog die on screen and didn't cry because this entire movie is so over the top and weird. It also helped that the ef...

What I knew going in: I had seen the film, The Girl, and that this film is pretty split between whether people like it or hate it.  Marnie (Tippi Hedren) is a thief who changes her identity frequently. She gets good jobs, robs the safes, then leaves and moves on to the next thing. She soon comes to work for a man named Mark (Sean Connery) who catches her after she steals from him. He forces her to marry him, then when she doesn't respond in the way he likes, he starts to look into her past, trying to figure out what causes the psychological episodes she has.  This was a peculiar movie. I found it very interesting and paced well, but I had trouble with Mark. He rapes Marnie, yet he's also supposed to be her savior, getting to the bottom of her troubles. I felt like the film was trying to say we were supposed to excuse that. I really enjoyed the story, but I couldn't get around the fact that Mark is a rapist.  Performance wise, Hedren is good until the final ...

Do the creep... Rachel is an alcoholic. She spends her days riding the train back and forth to Manhattan. She watches the same house every time she passes and looks at a woman, Megan (Haley Bennett) She envisions her as "Jess" with the perfect life and perfect husband. Rachel used to live two doors down from her, when she was married to Tom. (Justin Theroux) Now he's married to Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) with an infant daughter. She drunk dials them often. One day, She sees Megan with another man, then she goes missing. Soon Rachel is questioned on the disappearance. This was one of my favorite books I read last year. I love mysteries and this was a good one. Then the trailer came out a few months ago and it got the Lifetime treatment. It was so disappointing. I'm happy to say that the movie isn't nearly as bad as the trailer suggested, but it did have some problems. The direction is weak. I felt like they made Megan more salacious. Yes, she was having...

Westworld While we saw episode one through Delores' eyes, this one we mostly got to see through Mauve's, and two new guests at the park, William and Logan. Ben Barnes plays Logan, he was Prince Caspian in the Narnia movies so seeing him in a threesome was kind of hysterical for me. We got to know more about how the hosts dream. Or rather, how they're given nightmares just in case their memories don't get reset for the day. More and more I feel worse for the hosts and lost all faith in man kind. Especially the way Elsie was so nonchalantly talking about "these poor fucks." The Man in Black continues to be a giant asshole, but man that shoot out scene looked great. That poor sap whispering to himself behind the table...that was a great shot. But that kid...she could've told him where the damn maze was about 2 minutes earlier, right? SNL Apparently Lin-Manuel Miranda has a huge following, but after that episode of SNL I can't say I'm joi...

Stop the shame. This documentary takes the look at the lives of two teenage girls after they've suffered sexual assaults. Audrie,  so ashamed by being taken advantage of and having photos of the assault shared all over her school commits suicide 10 days later. Daisy, goes to the police and reports the crime, however her rapists walk and the town sheriff seems more concerned about preserving their "innocence" then giving the poor 14 year old girl justice. Sadly, these are only two of the thousands of cases like this. And watching what happens to them makes you understand why so many don't report assaults. Because no one stands up for them. An earlier doc, The Hunting Ground explored the same issue with college campuses. While Audrie and Daisy take on high school, they don't feel repetitive at all. I'm glad more and more documentaries like this exist. I wish they had been around when I was in high school myself. This was hard to watch. It's hard see...

We're on to another month of Halloween with Wandering Through the Shelves ! This week's theme is witches/warlocks. I went with witches because it's easier, and I tried not to use Harry Potter films even though it was so tempting.  1) The Witch Thomasin is a young woman whose family accuses her of being a witch. This film is a bit slow, but it's so wonderfully creepy and ends on a perfect note.  2) Suspiria This fancy ballet school may or may not be run by witches. It's gory and has one of the best sound tracks in any horror film. Thinking about it makes me want to rewatch it immediately.  3) Sleep Hollow A witch summons the Headless Horseman. This movie felt really salacious to me when it first came out. I think I was 12 when I saw it, and it was just strangely sexy. Maybe because Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci are so good looking. There was nothing overly scandalous about it.

Westworld HBO has so much riding on this show I can't help but root for it. I want it so badly to succeed. I hope it does. I found the pilot to be fascinating. It's about an artificial reality where people can pay to go into this Western, so to speak. They interact with the "people" in that reality. They can love them, hurt them, kill them. The guests can do anything they want, but the residents can't do anything back. Evan Rachel Wood is amazing, and she was great in the pilot. Ed Harris' character was on screen for about 1/4 of a second before I started wishing death on him. The always reliable Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden and Thandie Newton also star. I'm not crazy about rape being part of the narrative, but I'm not surprised either. The morale is the most interesting part. Could you go into a virtual theme park and kill someone that looks just as human as you do? Agents of SHIELD Daisy is still annoying, her prodding...

Rise up Nat Turner (Nate Parker) is a slave owned by Samuel Turner. (Armie Hammer) Sam's mother taught Nat to read from the bible as a child and he's become a preacher to the other slaves. Word gets out about this, and Samuel is asked to loan Nat out to "encourage" other slaves. He's strapped for cash and has developed a drinking problem, so he agrees.  As Nat continues to witness the disgusting things done to himself and other slaves, he eventually leads an uprising.  Since it's premiere at Sundance, The Birth of a Nation has had a lot to live up to. Premiering during the #OscarsSoWhite movement, many saw this as the answer to it. It got strong reviews right out of the gate and was deemed an Oscar contender. Then of course, you know everything that happened after wards. The reviews out of TIFF didn't mirror Sundance, and director/star/producer/writer Nate Parker's former rape trial came to light. The response out of TIFF made me think I'd...