Tag: Weird

Movie Review: THE ENDLESS – an ambitious story hamstrung by budget and self-indulgence

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews5 Comments

Right off the bat, I’ll start by saying that not only am I a fan of the writing/directing team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, I also predict they’re going to be big in the near future, whether that’s by continuing to make a name for themselves in the world of weird horror, or by succumbing to big money studio deals – and regardless of what I think of their newest movie The Endless.  I urge you to seek out their previous two features, Resolution and Spring, and feel free to check out my spoiler free reviews before or after if you do.  You’ll definitely want to see Resolution before The Endless, however.

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Movie Review: BOTTOM OF THE WORLD is David Lynch-lite all the way, but still worth your time.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews9 Comments

bottom-of-the-world

Here’s the IMDB.com synopsis for Bottom of the World: “A mysterious disappearance of a young woman leads her boyfriend on a journey for truth and perhaps his own unknown reality in this dark, hypnotic mystery that transcends the limitations of traditional narrative.”  Although it’s poorly written, it does its job well enough, and that’s to sell the movie.  I didn’t watch it because of this – the movie arrived with nary a word about it, so I have the benefit of reading the blurb with hindsight.  I’m not here to pick the writing apart, just using it to bolster my take on it.

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Movie Review: THE OBJECTIVE – A disappointing ending, but the bulk of this X-Files-meets-Zero-Dark-Thirty is pretty good.

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objective_xlg

2008’s The Objective is by now an “old” movie, at least in terms of reviews, and I normally wouldn’t bother, but it’s notable because I think it’s relatively obscure, AND it was directed by Daniel Myrick, who co-directed my number one horror movie, The Blair Witch Project.  I literally had never heard of this movie at its time of release, and might have gone a long way without hearing of it if I hadn’t just finished the revised Danse Macabre, by Stephen King, in which he mentions it in his new foreword to that book.  King isn’t the greatest of critics, but my first reading of Danse Macabre in the late 80s provided a giant reading list, which I plowed through, and since he was complimentary about The Blair Witch Project, maybe The Objective wouldn’t be so bad.  Turns out, it isn’t.

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Movie Review: THE VISIT

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The visit

Night Shyamalan’s career is a real horror show itself (not “real horrorshow”).  For someone who built up a crazy amount of goodwill as a moviemaker with 1999’s The Sixth Sense, he appears to have instantly bought into the hype machine at the time, and then proceeded to self-destruct in an explosion of unfounded hubris.  I didn’t care much for the crushingly self-important Unbreakable, but it wasn’t a bad movie.  Signs was an improvement, despite one of the most badly-written endings I can recall seeing, but as the years passed, when producers kept throwing money at him, the movies just got worse.  

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Movie Review: BASKIN

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Baskin-Poster

Rarely do I ever get so annoyed and angry about one facet of a movie that it threatens to retroactively derail my enjoyment of the rest of it.  Hell, I loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens, despite the screenplay being nothing but a Greatest Hits reel of A New Hope.  When it comes to Baskin, I wasn’t pushed over that precipice, but I admit I came fairly close.

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