And Now For Something Completely Blood-Soaked: ‘Death Ranch’ Movie Review

April 20, 2021

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Death Ranch (CREDIT: Dark Temple Motion Pictures)

Starring: Deiondre Teagle, Faith Monique, Travis Cutner, Scot Scurlock, Brad Belemjian

Director: Charlie Steeds

Running Time: 78 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But Filled with Blood and Guts and All Sorts of Profanity

Release Date: April 20, 2021 (On Demand, DVD, and Blu-Ray)

Grindhouse, grindhouse, grindhouse!!! Do you want to see a bunch of racists get their guts ripped out? Well, if you’ve stumbled upon Death Ranch, then you’ve come to the right place. If you are who considers yourself a friend to all of humankind, then surely you believe that the Ku Klux Klan is one of the most distasteful organizations in modern society. Ergo, they’re an obvious choice for the villains in a tale of three Black siblings on the run through the woods of Tennessee in 1971. And in true grindhouse fashion, these Klansmen are just outrageously, disgustingly awful. If you can imagine the most depraved things possible, then chances are writer-director Charlie Steeds has thought to include it, from rape to cannibalism to an extreme close-up of body hair-ridden petroleum jelly. There’s a lot of real-life trauma baked in this den of horrors; it’s up to you the viewer to decide if this is the sort of thing you can stomach.

When I see a movie about Black people fighting back against their tormentors, I’m generally inclined to pontificate about where it fits within the tradition of African-American cinema and about how it resonates with real-world struggles. But there’s something telling me that that might not be the approach that this particular movie is asking for. Looking over the rest of Steeds’ filmography only confirms that suspicion. It’s filled with titles like Deadman Apocalypse, Vampire Virus, and The House of Violent Desire. And if Escape From Cannibal Farm is anything to go by, then people eating other people in rural settings is clearly a recurring theme for him.

I almost feel like I shouldn’t be reviewing a movie like this at all. Shouldn’t it be a secret that gets passed around in grimy basements and abandoned projection booths? It’s actually available on demand and on DVD and Blu-Ray for regular home viewing, but something tells me that the most appropriate way to watch Death Ranch is by setting up your own impromptu theater in an empty barn on a creepy country back road.

Death Ranch is Recommended If You Like: BlacKkKlansman but wish it had been a lot more like Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Pathetic White Men

Godzilla vs. Kong vs. My Internal Composure: A Movie Review

April 19, 2021

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Godzilla vs. Kong (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Godzilla, King Kong, Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Mechagodzilla

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 31, 2021

What if it were Godzilla vs. Kong vs. … jmunney? Does the latest no-holds cinematic brawl between these two iconic behemoths make me want to join the fight? Hey man, I’m a pacifist! But entering their domain in some capacity might be fun. They seem like good company.  Kong is certainly a clown. And sensitive, to boot! Godzilla’s harder to peg, but I’d be willing to put in the emotional groundwork to make the connection. What’s Mechagodzilla’s deal, though? He sure comes out of nowhere. Does he even have a soul?!

Grade: 5 Podcasts of 10 ASLs

The Comforting Confusion of ‘The Father’

April 15, 2021

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The Father (CREDIT: Sony Pictures Classics/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss

Director: Florian Zeller

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: February 26, 2021

Whenever I think about The Father, I can’t help but pronounce it the way that Mike Myers does when he encounters Marv Albert in the “Dieter’s Dream” SNL sketch (“Fah-thuh!”, although for some reason I add a “z” i.e., “Fah-zhuh”). Weirdly enough, that’s an apt comparison, as Florian Zeller’s film is pretty much equally surreal as the avant-garde German talk show host’s trip into the subconscious. Apparently, the way to make a movie about dementia exciting instead of a total bummer is to arrange it according to the whims of the dementia-addled mind. It’s rough to see Anthony (Hopkins) losing his sense of reality, but it’s fascinating to be bent back and forth by the facial mismatches and temporal-spatial distortions he’s experiencing. In the absence of a cure, maybe embracing the absurdity is the best way to handle something as disorienting as dementia. At the very least, it worked for this movie.

Grade: 4.0 out of Dec. 31 Missing Watches

‘In the Earth’ Follows Its Cinematic Brethren Into the Woods

April 14, 2021

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In the Earth (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, Reece Shearsmith, Hayley Squires

Director: Ben Wheatley

Running Time: 107 Minutes

Rating: R for A Few Scenes of Grievous Bodily Harm

Release Date: April 16, 2021 (Theaters)

In the Earth combines elements of some of my favorite dread-filled horror and sci-fi flicks, which is good enough to grab my attention, but you can see the seams in the synthesis. A scary trip to the woods quickly leads to reality-altering vibes in the vein of Annihilation and The Blair Witch Project, and then there’s also the society-breaking-down milieu typical of any zombie flick. And I even catch a whiff of pod people-energy, as I worry that certain characters’ misplaced priorities could lead to some body snatching. It’s a hodgepodge, occasionally a visual feast, and ultimately more of an experiment than a landmark achievement.

My only previous exposure to writer-director Ben Wheatley was his overcaffeinated shoot ’em up Free Fire. In the Earth is equally non-squeamish (it does feature a guy getting his toes cut off, after all), but it’s also more reflective and meditative. Conceived and produced during the pandemic, it obviously required a more scaled-down and intimate approach. It’s ostensibly about the cure for a global virus, but it hardly resembles our current reality, at least not in any way I or anyone I know has been experiencing it. In practice, it’s just a spooky sylvan journey, making it just the latest in a long and dense cinematic tradition. Something weird is happening, a couple of characters are sent off on their own to figure it out, and then they encounter some other weird happenings. It happens!

During In the Earth‘s early going, I said to myself, “Is this just Annihilation but with a micro-budget?” That trip to Area X is one of my favorite movies of the past five years, so I quickly steeled myself for inevitable disappointment. But it’s always nice to be reminded of something that I love, so it wasn’t all bad. Then about halfway through, there was a sharp turn to a completely different movie. Well, perhaps not “completely” different. More like “tangential” and “different enough.” One major crisis had been dealt with (or at least escaped from), and then some other characters got some more screen time, and I felt myself thinking: well, it’s better to steal from a whole bunch of movies than it is to be the cheap knockoff of just one movie.

In the Earth is Recommended If You Like: Annihilation, Blair Witch, The Walking Dead, and whatever ever else Ben Wheatley watched during the pandemic, all tossed carelessly into a blender

Grade: 3 out of 5 Backpacks

A Day in the Farm Life: ‘Gunda’ Documentary Review

April 13, 2021

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Gunda (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Pigs, Chickens, Cows, Bulls

Director: Viktor Kossakovsky

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: G

Release Date: April 16, 2021 (Select Theaters)

I first stumbled upon Russian documentarian Viktor Kossakovsky’s work a few years ago when I saw Aquarela, which was just an hour and a half of H2O doing what it does. Now his subject matter is fully alive (instead of life-sustaining), as he takes us to the farm in Gunda. Shot in stunning black-and-white cinematography, this is a meditative document of swine, poultry, and bovines going about their day. There’s no on-screen human presence in any capacity, but this isn’t strictly cinema verite. As straightforward as the presentation is, you can sense the pulse of mediation. Watching Gunda isn’t the same as visiting a farm. It may be simple and no-frills, but I don’t think anyone else quite has the capacity to make it the way that Kossakovsky did.

Fair warning: if you’re going to watch Gunda, you absolutely have to be comfortable with maximum levels of snorting. The biggest star of the show is a momma pig who spends a significant portion of the runtime suckling her piglets, and simply put, she makes the sounds that pigs make, and she’s not ashamed to do so. That’s the general vibe of this entire film. Farm animals typically aren’t ashamed to be themselves, but that seems especially true here. While watching, I felt like I was stumbling upon personal moments that I wouldn’t have otherwise have had access to. Or maybe I’m just noticing things that I’ve never noticed before because presenting it all in a feature format forces me to pay attention. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen cows and bulls whipping their tails against each other, for example, but that’s what they’re doing here.

Overall, there’s a bit of unexplainable magic at play in Gunda that makes it all so very compelling. I could do my best to break down how Kossakovsky managed to pull off such stunning cinematography, or take inventory in quotidian terms of everything that the animals get up to over the course of 93 minutes. But I don’t know why a pig walking around in the grass managed to transport me as much as it did. And yet somehow it did, and I’ve gotta respect her for that.

Gunda is Recommended If You Like: A day at the farm minus all the smells

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Snouts

‘Held’ Locks Up a Married Couple on the Edge for a Little Bit of Torture

April 7, 2021

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Held (CREDIT: Magnet Releasing)

Starring: Jill Awbrey, Bart Johnson

Directors: Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But This is R Territory for Bloody Bodies and Bloody Profanity

Release Date: April 9, 2021 (Theaters and On Demand)

The two main characters of Held are held captive, and I daresay this movie would like our attention to be held as well. So was my attention indeed held for an hour and a half? I’m going to have to be honest with everyone here… it was! It helps that everything starts out simply enough: husband and wife Henry and Emma (Bart Johnson and Jill Awbrey, the latter of whom also wrote the script) haven’t been feeling too romantic lately, so they decide to spend a few days away at a rental house. Now, this premise doesn’t necessarily have me jumping out of my seat, as it’s a little more angsty than I’m typically in the mood for. But I’m happy to be on board, if for no other reason than Awbrey’s striking resemblance to Liz Cackowski. That latter name may not mean a lot to too many people, but if you’re like me and you love shows such as Community and Speechless, you’ll find yourself going, “Hey, that lead character looks a lot like someone who’s guest-starred on some of my favorite sitcoms!”

Co-directors Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff wisely upend any sense of stability almost immediately, as we soon discover that some all-seeing mastermind with a voice modulator has hacked into the house’s smart devices and is keeping Emma and Henry all locked up until they complete a gauntlet of psychological manipulation. The unseen villain is so outrageously evil that it’s a little hard to believe that this couple could in any way be deserving of this torture. But that’s part of the fun of a nasty little genre piece like this one. The commitment to the bit (the bit here being “false imprisonment”) is so thorough that I just cannot help but be impressed by all the metaphorical mustache-twirling.

Eventually there is an explanation for why Emma and Henry are being targeted, and I won’t reveal that here, because the social contract of reviews of mysterious movies assures us that twists are to remain unspoken. But suffice it to say that the revelation gives way to some satisfyingly sizzling takes about what’s going in our world today and how married men and women have related to each other over the years. As a tease, let me just say that there’s nothing quite like a genre pic leaning hard into awful stereotypes. Weirdly enough, Held is kind of like the gender politics version of what Antebellum was trying to be, and that’s something to be excited about.

Held is Recommended If You Like: Funny Games, The Dharma Initiative tapes on Lost, Mad Men

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Commands

Who Can Resist Taking a ‘Bad Trip’ with Eric Andre? Not I, Said This Reviewer

March 26, 2021

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Bad Trip (CREDIT: Dimitry Elyashkevich/Netflix)

Starring: Eric Andre, Lil Rel Howery, Tiffany Haddish, Michaela Conlin

Director: Kitao Sakurai

Running Time: 84 Minutes

Rating: R for Thoroughly Shameless Crudity, Nudity, and Psychoactive Drug Indulgence

Release Date: March 26, 2021 (Netflix)

I sure wish I had been able to experience Bad Trip in a packed theater, but at least my hearty laughs in my solo viewing experience were enough to fill my living room. This delightfully demented piece of guerilla filmmaking is basically a feature-length version of the man-on-the-street bits from Eric Andre’s anarchic eponymous Adult Swim talk show. Starring alongside Andre are a couple of famous funny people as well as dozens of unsuspecting members of the public. There’s a bit of a story (with the screenplay credited to Andre, Dan Curry, and director Kitao Sakurai), in which Florida Man Chris (Andre) has a chance meeting with his old school crush Maria (Michaela Conlin), who invites him to come check out her art gallery in New York City. He then invites his best pal Bud (Lil Rel Howery) on a road trip to the Big Apple, and they abscond in a car that belongs to Bud’s incarcerated sister Trina (Tiffany Haddish), who busts out and tracks down the boys with deadly intentions. The narrative actually hangs together a lot more nicely than I would expect in a prank film, but ultimately it’s just an excuse for a bunch of outrageous shenanigans.

Practical jokes can be hilarious, but ethically speaking, if you’re going to be a professional hooligan, you ought to be careful about who you select as the butts of your jokes. I approve of Andre’s mischief because he is consistently the target of his own pranks. He renders himself into every possible version of a fool, while the unsuspecting public provides another layer of humor by serving as witnesses struggling to make sense of the chaos unfolding around them. In Bad Trip, that chaos includes fake blood splatter, fake projectile vomit splatter, and fake semen splatter. (Shame is a foreign concept to Eric Andre.) The crowd might get hit by some shrapnel, but Andre’s the only one who’s truly suffering for his art.

Bad Trip unsurprisingly holds up when considered on a scene-by-scene basis. But it’s tough to sustain a narrative when utilizing a sketch-comedy sensibility. But shocker of shockers, it turns out that the script delivers some satisfying emotional payoffs to all of its characters. It helps that everyone involved takes a decidedly askew approach to the tropes of buddy flicks. For example, there’s a runner about the notorious 2004 Wayans Brothers cross-dressing comedy White Chicks that improbably gets its own little mini-arc and cathartic conclusion. We all need a space for our ids to run free every once in a while, and I’m so glad that Eric Andre and his cohorts have put theirs on display for all the world to see.

Bad Trip is Recommended If You Like: The Eric Andre Show, Jackass, Borat

Grade: 4 out of 5 Stolen Cars

Supposed ‘Nobody’ Bob Odenkirk Seeks Revenge, and I’m Never Quite Sure Why

March 23, 2021

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Nobody (CREDIT: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Christopher Lloyd, RZA, Aleksei Serebryakov, Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath

Director: Ilya Naishuller

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: R for All The Expected Blood and Profanity

Release Date: March 26, 2021

When I saw the trailer for Nobody and was teased by its promise of Bob Odenkirk pushed to the edge to protect his family, I couldn’t resist. This is a guy who’s famous for his nonpareil knack for frustrated bursts of a certain profanity, after all. How has he not been getting cast in some of the secret-badass roles that Liam Neeson’s been hogging the past decade? But then when the movie actually gets going, it makes a very odd decision. During an opening home invasion scene, Odenkirk just … lets the burglars get away with it. It’s strongly implied that that’s actually the safest decision for everyone, but this doesn’t appear to be the mild-mannered-man-goes-rogue story we’ve been promised. Nor does it seem like we have the appropriate setup for a tale of vengeance. What’s the deal?!

Despite what the title and the thoroughly suburban setting assures us, Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) is far from a nobody. He doesn’t have to summon his penchant for violence out of nothing; in fact, he has a history of violence just bubbling under the surface. The film is vague about that backstory, but it’s clear that regardless of how he learned, he knows how to bash heads. But what really flipped my head is the explanation of Hutch’s entire motivation for his spree of mayhem. As it turns out, the thieves took his young daughter’s kitty-cat bracelet Sammy (Paisley Cadorath), and that’s apparently enough to convince him to take on an entire crime organization., even though Sammy doesn’t seem especially bothered by the loss! In fact, none of the shenanigans that Hutch gets up seem to be on behalf of his family. It’s more like it’s just done out of his desire to star in his own outrageous action movie.

And that really sums up the entire m.o. of Nobody. If I were a betting man, I would bet that screenwriter Derek Kolstad and director Ilya Naishuller noticed that Bob Odenkirk had never been showcased in this genre and they decided that they needed to rectify that immediately. Then they mixed in a Russian drug lord, plenty of guns, and a car chase set to Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker,” and they decided that they were good to go. What’s missing from all this? Any sense of logic at all! Now, you may ask, do you need to have logic when Odenkirk’s brother is played by RZA and his dad is a shotgun-toting Christopher Lloyd? Honestly, I think it would’ve helped. But, eh, nobody needs logic, and certainly neither does Nobody.

Nobody is Recommended If You Like: Senseless violence delivered with conviction

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Kitty Cat Bracelets

The Charmingly Low-Budget ‘Doors’ Invites You Into an Interconnected Series of Psychotically Surreal Sci-Fi Vignettes

March 17, 2021

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Doors (CREDIT: Epic Pictures)

Starring: Josh Peck, Lina Esco, Wilson Bethel, Kyp Malone, Dugan O’Neal, Kathy Khanh, Julianne Collins, Aric Generette Floyd, Rory Anne Dahl, Kristina Lear, Bira Vanara, Bailee Cowperthwaite, Darius Levanté, David Hemphill

Directed by: Saman Kesh, Jeff Desom, Dugan O’Neal

Created by: Chris White

Running Time: 81 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (There’s some intense sci-fi that most 10-year-olds could probably handle)

Release Date: March 19, 2021 (Theaters)/March 23, 2021 (On Demand)/April 6, 2021 (DVD/Blu-ray)

There’s something kind of thrilling about watching a movie that’s an interconnected series of vignettes and not even realizing that fact until the very end. Or at least, I was thrilled while I had this experience during my viewing of Doors, as I was on the edge of my seat wondering how these disparate sets of characters would eventually come together into a single narrative. In my defense, the sci-fi subject matter lends itself to this possibility, as a bunch of probably-extraterrestrial so-called “doors” pop up all over the world and offer the promise of entry into different dimensions. Thus, the film’s scattered approach – in which sequences don’t end so much as stop – feels like a feature rather than a bug. Its underdog vibes are all over the place, but they’re buoyed to victory by an eagerness to explore. And that, my friends, is always going to grab my attention.

Fair warning: Doors features several generic B-roll shots accompanied by woo-woo voiceover, which would usually be a big ol’ Red Alert, warning us that we’re entering into SyFy original Z-grade territory. And while Doors‘ budget probably isn’t much higher than the latest Sharknado or MegaRocktoGatorKookaburra, that lack of cash actually results in an alluring surreal charm. Each segment has this same sense of resourcefulness. The visual effects rarely go beyond simple camera tricks, or undulating liquid-ish metal, or multiple Josh Pecks wearing different outfits. But the acting makes up for the lack of fireworks with bald emotionality. To paraphrase Troy Barnes, pretty much everyone’s whole brain is crying at some point. The last segment is just a videoconferencing call between two guys that manages to pull off some Lynchian end-of-the-world panache by sheer virtue of overwrought screams of agony.

So in conclusion, if you like a good Narnia-esque jumping-through-worlds setup and a generous dollop of student film energy, then you ought to give Doors a try. This is committed sci-fi that doesn’t mind getting silly in the name of knocking the screws in your cerebrum just a little bit loose.

Doors is Recommended If You Like: V/H/S, Evil flowers, The formal inventiveness of Unfriended

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Knockers

‘Happily’ Ponders Whether or Not Transcendentally Happy Marriages Are Allowed to Exist

March 16, 2021

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Happily (CREDIT: Saban Films)

Starring: Joel McHale, Kerry Bishé, Stephen Root, Natalie Zea, Paul Scheer, Natalie Morales, Jon Daly, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Shannon Woodward, Charlyne Yi, Breckin Meyer, Al Madrigal

Director: BenDavid Grabinski

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for A Very Horny Couple and Other Couples Who Wish They Were That Horny

Release Date: March 19, 2021 (Theaters and On Demand)

Do you know a married couple who are so in love that you absolutely hate them for it? That’s the hook of Happily, and it’s a good one. Tom and Janet (Joel Mchael and Kerry Bishé) said “I do” 14 years ago, but even after all that time, every time they look at each other it’s like they’re discovering the entire concept of love for the very first time. They can barely go five minutes without going all the way in the nearest bedroom. Their conflicts (insofar as they have any conflicts at all) consist of little more than one of them asking for an omelette, but then doing it on their own, and immediately apologizing for being ever-so-slightly thoughtless. But then one day a fellow played by Stephen Root in a business suit shows up at their doorstep, and he might as well have a flashing sign shouting “DANGER!” above his head.

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