Expelled Grey Matter

There are often awkward moments in older films that I didn't mind as much in my 20s but now, with some experience, they affect me a bit more.  These are not merely "it was the times" situations, which I pretty much ignore.  It is not even when a movie has an unwanted connection to a major historic event like Taxi Driver does.  It is often when I realize that, even in a film just a few years short of turning 50, that not a whole lot has changed.  Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran with insomnia who decides to get a job driving a cab in New York because, as he puts it, he figures he may as well make some money if all he is going to do is drive around all night.  He doesn't have any friends, although he is generally friendly with his fellow cab drivers.  Unlike many of them he will go anywhere in the city during the night, including many areas people won't go during the day. On one of his rounds he manages to catch a glimpse of Betsy (Cybill S...

In the early 1990s a phrase arose: going postal.  It has kind of faded out of use because recent years mass shootings have involved a wide arrange of people that typically go in and attack schools.  Back in the 1990s, however, there were a number of times when people just snapped, with the most visible being disgruntled postal workers.  In fact, that is where most of the American population learned the word "disgruntled" from.  The phrase arose in a dark-humored manner and there is certainly plenty of dark humor in Falling Down .  What many of these situations had in common, though, was someone who came in, did their shift and did what they were told, suddenly snapped once everything started falling apart in their lives.  The targets were sometimes malls and restaurants, but often it was their former co-workers and managers.  In many cases it was older white males who felt betrayed because they felt they had followed the rules and, for whatever reason,...

In 2018, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a breath of fresh air.  While not as stale as it is now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was starting to show some problems here and there, and along came an animated movie with a character - Miles Morales - that most people with just a passing knowledge of Spider-Man wouldn't necessarily know, but who perfectly captured the idea of what it is to be Spider-Man.  It also introduced the idea of the different versions of Spider-Man from down the years being from a number of different universes, something that became important in the live-action films by Spider-Man: No Way Home . The important difference is that the "Spider-Verse" concept of a multiverse is quite different than the MCU one.  It's specifically centered around different iterations of Spidey himself rather than logically realistic realities.  That means the first sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse , often walks a line between silly and imaginative, whil...

Better Watch Out is one of those movies I don't even remember seeing ads for, but I guess they weren't exactly on point for what the movie is.  It was presented as being a horror comedy, like a darker humored Home Alone , with a babysitter and her charges defending themselves against a home invasion.  The movie itself is quite dark, and has a few funny spots in it, but despite the marketing it is obvious that writer and director Chris Peckover took the story at the heart of the film quite seriously. Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) is called in to babysit Luke (Levi Miller), a 12-year-old boy that has developed a crush on her.  He reveals his plans to his best friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould) to make his move and how he figures it will work.  Unfortunately, Ashley is about to move to Pittsburgh to attend college and is involved with a boy named Ricky (Aleks Mikic) who is her own age. Despite this Luke tries impressing her by drinking and attempting to seduce her while watching a...

John Hughes claims that he wrote Home Alone after making a list of things to take on a trip to Europe, only to be reminded that the kids should be included on the list.  From there he says he got the germ of the idea that became one of the biggest Christmas movies of all time, with Macauley Culkin playing Kevin McCallister, a young boy forgotten by his family while they head to Paris who must defend his home and himself from a pair of bumbling robbers.  Hilarity ensues, although in typical '80s fashion it is made clear that they will murder Kevin if they catch him.  It's a fun family movie, but things weren't as sugarcoated as television makes it appear.  Things also aren't so clear cut on Hughes's origin story.  A few months before Hughes says he got the idea a horror film screened at Cannes called 36-15 Code Père Noël , written and directed by René Manzor.  The movie bombed in France and wasn't released in the United States until 2019, but it was a hit in...

I was a bit excited in 2003 when I heard that House of 1000 Corpses was finally going to get a release.  Rob Zombie, both solo and with his band White Zombie, had made a career out of doing music that often sampled as well as aped the feel of the horror and exploitation films he grew up watching.  If anything his music got better once White Zombie broke up.  No shade on the rest of the band; they had improved exponentially throughout their whole existence.  It just happened Rob left after their first solidly consistent album.  There was also the aesthetic of his videos.  I figured if that carried over into the movie it would at least be interesting.  I had also followed the drama behind the movie, as it had been made and completed in 2000 for Universal, only to have them not release it because they were sure it would get an NC-17 rating.  Between 2000 and 2003 Zombie added some footage while cutting quite a bit, including subplots and, though a lo...

Brazil has a long, rich cinematic history.  Unfortunately, like most Americans, I know nothing about it.  It's a huge, diverse country, and no more a monolithic culture than the United States.  I am sure that Brazil has had its Buñuel, Godard or Fellini, but unfortunately when it comes to movies outside of the U.S. it is usually Europe and Asia that gets the notice. The one Brazilian director I am familiar with is José Mojica Marins, and it may be surprising that I have seen other movies of his outside of the Coffin Joe films that made him famous.  Somehow, although  Brazil was under a brutal military dictatorship during the height of his career, Marins thrived despite running into problems in some Brazilian states for perceived blasphemy.  The blasphemy was part of the character of Zé do Caixão, an evil undertaker in a black hat with long fingernails who was constantly on the prowl for a woman to bear him a son.  Although there are only three movies i...

The problem with being a horror and exploitation fan is that most bad movies, regardless of budget, lack any sort of entertainment value.  They may have a concept - take werewolves on motorcycles, which is an actual film - and, no matter what the quality of the rest of the movie, if the concept was used effectively it would at least memorable.  Instead, there is usual something good at the beginning, maybe something good at the end, and a middle that one needs to slog through, usually of unnecessary personal drama or long shots of people going places.  It is a crapshoot on whether the audience will ever get to see a werewolf on a motorcycle. Then, occasionally, something delivers.  It's never intentional, and it certainly isn't with Hack-o-Lantern , which began life as a Halloween ripoff called Halloween Night.  Producer Raj Mehrotra, an Indian immigrant to the U.S. who decided to go into making movies, hired Dave Eisenstark and Carla Robinson to throw together...

As quickly as Stephen King is known to turn out novels it wasn't quick enough for Hollywood in the early 1980s.  Just about every movie made from one of his books was a hit, which meant studios were bidding on about anything they could get from him.  Luckily for them King was also prolific at writing short stories and had already published one collection, Night Shift , in 1978.   When it comes to short stories King adheres to Edgar Allen Poe's idea that they are stories that should be able to hold the attention of the reader and be completed in one sitting.  For instance, during free time in the middle of the day or before going to sleep at night.  In King's case, much like Poe's, they were also a means to keep food on the table, as there were lean years before Brian De Palma's adaptation of Carrie became a hit.  In many of King's nonfiction essays he talks about people asking where he gets his ideas and, while he's typically as vague as the question ...

The concept of a Rob Zombie film, especially after seeing his early videos and the whole aesthetic of White Zombie and his solo career, is often a bit more than what one usually gets.  I do think he gets way too much criticism, and much of it springs from valid distaste of his version of Halloween and its follow-up, Halloween II .  As much as he may love John Carpenter's movie, the original's success had as much to do with relatable characters and the killer remaining in the background as it did with the kills.  True to form for Zombie barely anyone in his versions was a decent person and, honestly, Carpenter provided us with all the backstory Michael ever needed.  Even the original sequels tried to do too much explaining. All the unnecessary backstory was strange given his first movie, House of 1000 Corpses , was as random as the lyrics to his songs.  It was obviously an homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , but it had so many random elements featuring his ...

Sometimes I don't know if a movie gets good word of mouth and reviews simply because audiences are so starved for new content that they'll glom on to anything.  Such is how I feel about Haunt , directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the cowriters of A Quiet Place , which was basically how distributors pushed this movie.  It also has Eli Roth producing, and it seems as if there is a lot of effort to throw names around and mention better movies.  That is never a good sign.  Harper (Katie Stevens) has an abusive boyfriend named Sam (Samuel Hunt) who she finally breaks up with.  It's Halloween and, at the urging of her roommate Bailey (Lauryn Alisa McClain) and friends Mallory (Schuyler Helford) and Angela (Shazi Raja), she decides to go out on the town.  At a local bar they meet Evan (Andrew Lewis Caldwell) and his friend Nathan (Will Brittain), and Harper takes a liking to Nathan.  The group decides to leave the bar and check out an "extreme" haunted ho...

Christopher Nolan has the honor of being the only person so far to successfully complete a Batman series.  Though there has been some pressure on Nolan to do a fourth movie in the series, and Christian Bale seems game, there really are no plans a decade further on.  Since The Dark Night Rises the role has been recast - twice - and the whole thing reimagined once again.  Despite this Nolan's trilogy has remained fresh in most people's minds.  The Dark Knight is still considered one of the best superhero films ever made while The Dark Night Rises still seems to be picked apart by amateur critics who, by many reviews I have seen, watched the movie with one eye on their iPhone. Eight years have passed since the Joker's reign of terror, and Harvey Dent has now become Gotham's greatest hero, with a public holiday and everything.  Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is struggling with telling the truth about Dent, while Bruce Wayne (Bale) has become a recluse, leaving L...