Expelled Grey Matter

The original Insidious was a surprisingly fresh entry into the modern horror canon.  Written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan, it told of a family dealing with the their young son's soul being kidnapped by a demon.  The second chapter dealt with what had happened to the father, setting the background for why the demon would have been after his son in the first place.  A common character in both movies, due to her involvement with both father and son, was psychic Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye).  Whannell himself takes over directing the third part, as James Wan was off directing Furious 7 .  I must say he does quite a good job, even if this second sequel is much more traditionally paced than the first. Young Quinn Brenner (Stefanie Scott) visits Elise to see if she can help her contact her mother, who had passed on from cancer years before.  Elise is reluctant to help, but attempts to contact Lilith Brenner (Ele Keats).  She does not meet w...

In many ways I am getting frustrated with horror fans, and movie fans in general.  I know I shouldn't, because really it's nothing new.  It's the reason why you will always see more Transformer movies and Marvel sequels than you will see big budget horror.  I learned quickly when I started doing an internet radio station a sad, sad fact: as much as people talk about wanting variety, they do not.  People want variety only to the point that they hear, or see, what they want.  It's the reason that we still have a two-party system in the United States, why you hear the same songs over and over again on the radio and why it seems, especially in horror, that you are seeing the same movie again and again.  People demand something different and, when it's given to them, they find some excuse to be unhappy about it. I will not say that Crimson Peak has the most original plot, nor is it particularly frightening after the first few times the ghosts appear. ...

One thing you have to hand to Rob Zombie is that he has a knack for finding actors and actresses that Hollywood has left behind.  He must have some great connections, and this is probably due in large part to The Devil's Rejects .  The sequel to The House of 1000 Corpses proved that Rob Zombie could make a real movie, and even have original content even if it was heavily reverential to its influences. I have not seen either of Zombie's Halloween films, not for lack of interest but due to the usual: I don't buy DVDs that often because I tend to watch them once before they take up space, no matter how much I love the movie.  I also don't order DVDs from Netflix because they tend to get lost in the shuffle as well.  That same situation kept me from seeing The Lords of Salem , since it was barely in the theaters when it came out and, for some reason, most of Zombie's movies are not available in streaming format. It is a shame, because I am sure more people would w...

Since David Bowie's passing there has been a rush to go over his body of work, both in music and other art forms.  Predictably, most viewers immediately turned to his most accessible film, Labyrinth , in which he plays a Goblin King who steals a baby and forces the baby's half sister to go through several trials to retrieve it. The advantage of Labyrinth is that it also has music by David Bowie and a plot that most people can follow.  It's also suitable for all ages, which is a hard sell when it comes to his best film, The Man Who Fell to Earth . The Hunger , an adaptation of a Whitley Strieber novel about vampires directed by Tony Scott (future director of Top Gun and True Romance ), features Bowie prominently in the advertising, although he is only in the film for a short while.  It is also in some ways an even more challenging viewing than The Man Who Fell to Earth . Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) is a five thousand year old vampire who has had many lovers i...

Recently I reviewed Spy , lamenting that it didn't really know which direction it should go in.  My theory was that if it took itself just a bit more seriously and didn't go for the obvious jokes that it would be a much better movie.  Turns out that movie was already made and, sadly, it wasn't much better.  Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (Taron Egerton) loses his father at an early age.  Turns out his father was a member of a secret British organization that was pledged to protect the United Kingdom. Codenamed Lancelot, he protected the rest of his group from being killed by a terrorist they had captured.  Harry Hart (Colin Firth), codenamed Galahad, leaves young Eggsy with his father's medal and a number to call if he ever gets in trouble. 20 years later Eggsy is in trouble, both with the law and with a local mobster that also happens to be his stepfather.  The Kingsman organization is also in trouble, with the recent Lancelot (Jack Davenport) murdered while inv...

Following the success of The Street Fighter , a sequel was quickly rushed out to capitalize on it.  Shigehiro Ozawa is back as director, Sonny Chiba as well as Terry Tsurugi and much violence ensues - just not as much, nor as interesting as the first movie. This time around Terry is back to his old habits as a man for hire to take care of special situations, with a new companion in Pin Boke (Yoko Ichiji), a street girl that he has taken in.  He again falls afoul of the mafia, this time by siding with his long time friend Kendo Masaoka (Masafumi Suzuki), who has discovered that a head of rival martial arts school is using a phony charity to raise money not for a new martial arts school, but for the Yakuza. Tsurugi also finds an unlikely ally in Masaoka's son Kaoru, a police officer who has been trying to prove that the martial arts school charity is a money laundering scheme.  When letters with Kendo's name forged on them arise, proving that other heads of martial ar...

If you have seen the movie True Romance , there is a scene where Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette go to a marathon of Street Fighter films.  Despite being directed by Tony Scott, True Romance was in every other way Quentin Tarantino's second film, as he wrote it and it largely appeared on the screen as he intended.  Unless I am forgetting some references from Reservoir Dogs , it is also the first of his movies to introduce his love of Asian cinema, particularly the more exploitative and violent side. The Street Fighter came out a year after Enter the Dragon , and that movie had made martial arts films popular on the same level with grindhouse audiences as Blaxploitation and artsy porn flicks.  It was aimed at the same audience as the late Bruce Lee, but with quite a different sensibility.  Instead of focusing on culture and philosophy, The Street Fighter focused solely on violence and revenge, so much so that it earned an X rating upon initial release in th...