Expelled Grey Matter

I did not care for Hatchet as it seemed to be too much like other horror films of the 2000s.  The characters were not likeable, the music was horrible and the only good thing was the practical gore effects.  Otherwise, despite writer and director Adam Green being a big fan and casting a number of horror movie veterans - including Kane Hodder as Victor Crowley - there wasn't much there to get excited about.  I knew that at some point I would watch the rest, but I wasn't too thrilled about that, especially after Victor Crowley turned out to be too much like Hatchet . When I watched Hatchet II , however, it felt like what Green was trying to do clicked.  Derivative as it was the movie worked.  So, despite how I came into the series, I have been hoping to close the door on it and see how it originally concluded before the unfortunate coda. Marybeth (Danielle Harris) is once again the only survivor of Victor Crowley after Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd) attempted to bring those respon

I remember a few years ago with one of the iterations of the iPod Apple advertised it showing scenes from a movie shot completely on a phone.  I never watched it, but the shots from it looked not too removed from what a professional director or cinematographer should achieve.  Most likely the person filming was a professional of some sort and could make a convincing short film using any type of film medium. For the longest time the only medium was film.  There was 8mm, with or without sound, often used for home movies but also as a tool for people like Steven Spielberg to make some of their first films as a kid.  16mm was a blessing to many low-budget directors, allowing them to make something that could get shown in a drive-in or a grindhouse theater without breaking the budget and, for those who had studio backing or rich parents, there was always 35mm and 70mm.  Even 16mm, though, cost money to both obtain and develop, which meant there was an investment in time and raising the fund

It was bound to happen at some point.  Call it superhero fatigue or just growing indifference to the product that Disney and other major film studios have been putting out for over a decade, but The Marvels was the first out-and-out failure that Marvel Cinematic Universe has had since The Incredible Hulk .  There have been superhero movies that have done worse, but they were never officially part of the MCU, or were swept in later.   Despite a number of people blaming Kathleen Kennedy and female-fronted superhero movies the problem is that in the last few years good MCU films have become few and far between.  The last great one was The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 , and Disney almost messed that situation up by firing James Gunn due to some unfortunate tweets he had made long before he was working with the MCU.  It's a combination of many things combined that have nothing to do with comic book heroes.   The television shows, though some have been decent to good, dilute the movie

The one thing that can be said about Troll is that it was ambitious.  John Carl Buechler was a special effects artist who also spent some time writing, directing and acting in the same sort of low budget films he did creatures for.  Prior to Troll he had directed The Dungeonmaster , and had done the creature effects for the Gremlins  knockoff Ghoulies.  Not content to just do another in a long line of movies about little creatures run amok he decided to write and direct a major fantasy movie starring Noah Hathaway of The Never Ending Story  as well as having June Lockhart and Sonny Bono in small roles.   The problem is, ambition is often limited by budget, and Troll was made for Empire Pictures, Charles Band's predecessor to Full Moon Productions.  As good as Buechler was at creating animatronic monsters on a budget he was limited to doing the best that he could.  Despite its limitations Troll still manages to be an entertaining film. Harry Potter Sr. (Michael Moriarty), his wife A

Gremlins unleashed a slew of little vicious creature movies in the 1980s.  Critters is the most memorable, followed by low-budget fair such as Troll and Ghoulies that, while not great films, at least provided some decent effects and were passable enough to watch on cable during Halloween.  They all made a bit of a profit even if it came from video sales and cable repeats, but they became part of the background of an '80s childhood. Into this line of films came Spookies , with a title that was an obvious attempt to keep riding out the trend.  Originally called Twisted Souls, the movie was written by Thomas Doran and Frank M. Farel and directed by Doran and his film school friend Brendan Faulkner.  It does include a slimy reptilian monster similar to the creatures in Ghoulies or Troll, but that's as far as the comparison went.  Instead, this turns into a bad zombie flick toward the end instead of the House ripoff it seems at the beginning.  Billy (Alec Nemser) runs away from hom

Classic movies are classics for reason, just as in literature.  Also, just as in literature, being a classic doesn't always mean that the movie will appeal to everyone.  Citizen Kane is one that comes to mind.  It is a classic not so much for its story - which is quite good to begin with - but because of many of the cinematic innovations Orson Welles used for the first time, or borrowed from filmmakers outside of the United States, to bring his movie to fruition.  To put it in perspective, Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are also classics for many the same reasons, and watching either of them for reasons beyond the technical brings the entire idea of what classics mean into question.  There are those times when the reason a movie is considered a classic is just because it holds up so well and the majority of people, despite the age of the film, antiquated story telling or technical limitations of the time, still continue to watch and like it.  Casablanca is one of those. 

This is not a Hammer film, but it sure feels like it, despite being a low-budget Spanish production directed by Eugenio Martín, mostly known for westerns and torrid romance dramas.  It's a by-the-numbers horror film, but the main hook is that it has Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing together, both in substantial protagonist roles, with Telly Savalas popping in toward the end to liven up what is already a good monster film on a train.  Professor Alexander Saxton (Lee) discovers a mummified primitive human in Manchuria and prepares it to be shipped home.  The first leg of the trip is from Shanghai to Moscow.  While waiting Saxton runs into Doctor Wells (Cushing), a colleague and sometime rival who is traveling with his assistant Natasha (Helga Liné).  When a thief dies trying to steal what is in the crate police become suspicious, and even more so when a baggage handler (Victor Israel) dies on board the train after Wells asks him to have a look. Inspector Mirov (Julio Peña) takes cha

I don't think I actively avoided Train to Busan once I started hearing about it a few years ago.  It has just reached a point where new zombie films don't excite me.  Between The Walking Dead and all the bad Romero knock-offs the idea of zombies doesn't thrill me like it used to when this genre of movies was still a niche horror genre that produced some excitement from the fact that fans were being recognized by a movie like Shaun of the Dead .  It has reached the same saturation point as vampires did long before the Twilight series further tainted their legacy.  All I knew was that it was a South Korean movie about zombies on a train.  I didn't know if they were going to be the fast, CGI-enhanced creatures of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead or the lumbering creatures from George A. Romero's films.  What interested me was when I started hearing that Train to Busan was an actual good movie rather than another sad, bloodless cash-in like World War Z .   Seok-woo (

I read The Body when I was not too much older than the characters depicted in the story and Stand by Me .  Different Seasons was a different kind of Stephen King experience for me.  I had started with Pet Sematary and had read several other books, but at this point the ones I liked best were his short story collections, Skeleton Crew and Night Shift .  I expected Different Seasons to be much the same. At the age of 13 I wanted to read what I liked to read.  I loved King, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Andre Norton.  The only material I liked that was considered "classic" literature at the time was Edgar Allen Poe, since I had not yet discovered H. P. Lovecraft or had taken time to read H. G. Wells.  Although I was in advanced English classes I had no interest in reading what the teachers wanted me to read.  I realize now why many of those works were important but, as a young kid, they didn't connect with me.  Tom Sawyer took place before the Civil War and, though it was a

After making The Evil Dead Sam Raimi began to get some attention as an up-and-coming director.  For his next project he became interested in a script he read by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, which was a slapstick comedy about bumbling hitmen and a nebbish hero.  Initially Embassy Pictures had some faith in Raimi, thinking that the movie, called The XYZ Murders , and later Relentless , might have potential to for mainstream appeal and help pull the ailing movie studio out of its tailspin.   Crimewave, as Embassy retitled it when they released it to little promotion in Kansas and Alaska before dumping it on HBO in hopes that it would be a hit with the cable audience, didn't achieve what they hoped.  After Raimi quickly went overbudget while filming in Detroit the studio execs stepped in, started looking over his shoulder and questioning everything he did.  After the movie was completed they shelved it and then, after some time, released their own edit of the film, which failed to fi

I can't say any member of the 1980s "Brat Pack" had a lasting career.  Emilio Estevez had the most success after The Breakfast Club , with Molly Ringwald being fondly remembered for the few movies she was in around the same time.  Judd Nelson was the one that I'm sure a lot of people thought would go further.  Traditionally good looking and able to play the bad boy with a heart of gold he instead became evolved into a b-movie actor.  One of those happened to be William Lustig's 1989 serial killer film Relentless.  Sam Dietz (Leo Rossi) is a former New York police officer who has relocated to Los Angeles with his wife Carol (Meg Foster) and son Corey (Brendan Ryan).  On his first day being promoted to detective he is teamed with veteran detective Malloy (Robert Loggia) who has become disenchanted with his job to the point of not caring if a case is solved or not.  Dietz, however, is of the opinion that he is the only one concerned with doing real police work. The c

Superman became the first superhero film to get a serious adaptation to the big screen.  Christopher Reeve fits the part of both Kal-El and Clark Kent and Gene Hackman turned out to be a good Lex Luthor.  It was also enhanced by a score from John Williams, who was on a role after scoring Jaws , Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It did have its issues.  The movie was overlong and director Richard Donner had a hard time reconciling a long, serious beginning with a campier middle and end.  Still, Warner Bros., and in particular producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, initially had enough faith in the film to finance two movies to be made back to back.  The introductory portion of Superman introduced three criminals that were sentenced to banishment in the Phantom Dimension: General Zod (Terence Stamp) and his accomplices Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O'Halloran).  They are not mentioned again throughout the first movie, but we are reminded of their crimes as the

I have seen critics bring up many concerns about Taken.   The problem is trying to get a good grip on what is good and what is wrong with this movie means dealing with virtue signalers and their list of approved buzzwords and absolute fanboys who think this is the greatest action film ever.  I had heard about it and was surprised to find out how long ago it came out, although I have never actively avoided seeing it.  It was something that I would have ignored at the time because, while I love action films, few modern ones are worth seeing.   I was also surprised to find out it was French and written by Luc Besson.  Besson's career hasn't been stellar for a long time as he directed a number of flops and, although I was an early fan with films such as La Femme Nikita and Leon , he pretty much lost me with The Fifth Element .  He also turned out to be more than a little bit of a creep, which is why I'm sure his name is back there in the writing credits while Pierre Morel took