Author: Puppy

NF streaming description incorrect.  It should read, IMPO: “After making out while drunk and depressed with some guy, he rapes her”.  Just to prepare those who are expecting a one-night-stand.

It should, IMPO, further read: “He gives her some horrific illness that slowly degenerates her body, life, morality, and sanity – in that order.  Near the end she goes psycho, destroys everyone she cares about, and then is VERY briefly an infected/zombie.  The End.”

I mean, that’s it…and there’s no point.  How is this so unlike ‘Jenifer’, then?  In ‘Jenifer’ there’s a choice.  And it’s fcken scary.  This is just: “you’re fcked, you’re gonna fck over everyone you know, then you’re gonna die.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”  And it’s not scary, just gross.

Basically this tries to appeal to the gross, nasty visuals crowd.  But if you want gross, nasty visuals there are SO many movies out there that are ALL gross, nasty visuals.  So this is pointless.

The acting is decent, so I can’t possibly give this an F.  But I’d really, really like to.

Grade: D-

6/23/18: I had a feeling this was better than I gave it credit for. And I was right, sort of. The female lead is convincing, and the grossness is … interesting. There’s precious little more, but it is interesting if you LIKE gross. Not “tolerate if there’s something more to it-gross”, but LIKE. The nasty-horrible-vicious-little side of me does sometimes. Oh, and there’s a very powerful anti-lesbian message here. Methinks the director doth get rejected too much. Grade: D

I really like the intro to this…nice flow of time to the pictures.

And the couple becomes likeable 10 mins in, when the husband shows a good sense of humor and some wit, and the wife shows (I think) faithfulness, cuteness, and obvious (I think) love.

Shortly after that the teapot arrives on scene.

I like the sorta-BDSM scene but that’s probably cuz the wife is hot.

I also like her well-worded vagina defense, which takes place during one of the last really interesting scenes (a mostly-vegan meal clash).

There ends the good portion of the review.  Because unlike how I expected this to go, it turns to (attempts at) humor and absurdity.  The humor is sometimes dark, but more often it’s medium: not light-hearted, but not good enough for dark either.  Luke-warm.

It’s just tedious after a while, the silly quality having destroyed any chance of emotional attachment or taking anything seriously…at least for me.

Eventually things end, probably as you expected them to after a certain point.

Great idea, decent start…WRONG direction.  This should have been a thriller, a creepy morality play.  Not a comedy.  Or it should have been a really funny comedy, which it wasn’t.

Grade: D

Quick review/advice: watch the first 35-40 and last 4-5 minutes.  Skip the other 80 or so.

My first impression was: French.  It’s artsy.  Competent but boring.

Then: Gets more clever, I can tell (I think) the messages it’s sending without being hit over the head with them, and I chuckle/smile a bit.  The way she finds a secret compartment is clever, especially after being led in a different direction.  Then it slowly meanders and starts to lose me until…

About 40 minutes in, I’d had enough.  And though I watched the rest of it, I really didn’t care.  It was drudgery and “Yeah, real clever.  Wonderful.  Oh, great…yeah.  How much time is left??”.

To explain, I would say that the clever bits either stopped being clever or COMPLETELY lost my interest because they were leading to dull/dumb things if they led anywhere at all.  The talking to the camera didn’t draw me in…thank God.  I didn’t wanna be in.  It was the same as the rest, no better or worse.  Equivalent, let’s say, for the sticklers, as opposed to equal.

Quite frankly I found Amelie herself more pretentious and weird than interesting.  Weird does NOT equal interesting.  The two are not intrinsically connected, although they certainly converge in many instances.  This, to me, is not one of them.  And despite all of her weirdness, I find her acts of inspiration rather stupid random chaos.

Her signature moves are smiling impishly, and letting others (including the narrator) talk for her.

I mean, I don’t buy it.  I don’t buy it at all.  Not one bit, not after :40:00.

I get the messages…like when she asks her father a deep question and he responds by saying something unrelated and dull, my interpretation is “they’re showing how different they are and how she longs for someone to understand her, etc…”.  I get that.  I just don’t think it’s really any more clever than the next DECENT movie giving messages in exactly the same way.  Without being brilliant.  Just like this.

Parts are just overblown and annoying, because they’re supposed to be brilliant but I know they’re not.  I particularly groaned (not just bored, annoyed) at the artsy-craftsy visuals.

Vastly overrated.  After 40, it’s barely watchable.  And it HURTS.

Grade: D-

“…he looked like a doctor.
He did, actually.
That’s true.
But he wasn’t, unfortunately.”

A lunatic who believes he is a doctor escapes from confinement and carries out his “work”.

He’s pretty creepy and/or campy when he’s not giggling stupidly.

Somewhat better than your typical cr@p horror flick.  And there are a few clever, funny moments amidst all the stupid ones.

Inspirational Quote: “Terminal.”

Grade: D

7/14/18: The Great Grade Update. Grade: D+

Not to be confused with ‘World War Z’.  There are a lot of streaming movies that need a tag to that effect regarding some other (major) movie.

People become infected by a space germ and start eating other people.

There’s attention paid to trying to develop characters that you care about, but it’s not done very well so you really don’t care all that much.  At least, I don’t.  Seems shallow emotionally, superficial; just as bad as if they hadn’t bothered and just gone with all gore.

It’s completely serious, not camp.  And it’s just good enough that you can’t really laugh at it, you just have to tolerate it or – maybe, if you see something I don’t – enjoy it mildly as an infected/zombie flick.

The actors seem to do their best, but that doesn’t stop the acting from descending often into B-Grade.

Ok…there’s one moment of REALLY bad gore FX about halfway through, but where it loses my consideration for anything above a D- comes when an infected tears a woman’s arm off and then beats another woman to death with a REALLY bad prop.  Maybe that’s not how I wanna go.

About an hour in: bad infected behavior continuity.  Lazy, lazy!

The ending drama might do something for you if you’re in the right mood.  And you won’t be missing anything if you skip to it to find out.

Grade: D-

Stylish crime drama/action/dark comedy.   Stylish like Tarantino, so you don’t really need to know what the actual plot is.

You know, one of those types.  Lots of clever references and a few interesting visuals.

It’s a little TOO clever for me most times, though…references that make sense but don’t seem amusing, just self-indulgent. 

Or boring, if you prefer. 

Not as bad as ‘DIEner”s subtitle, but you get the idea.  And if you don’t, check it out.

Ending’s pretty cool, though.

Grade: C-

Yeah, I saw this when it came out.  Ahhh…long gone days.

Really dark comedy/horror, of course.

Doesn’t disappoint after a brief interlude of not seeing it.  At LEAST ten years…it’s scarier than any movie it references and it feels real.

Good until the very ending, when it gets a bit weak.

Cutest character: David Arquette…awwww.

Great Moment In Nipple Shot History: Rose McGowan

Inspirational Quote: “You fcken hit me with the PHONE, d1ck!”

Grade: B

Extremely cheezy “terror” opening: “The Past”

Robert Englund with a horrid combover: “Present Day”

Then the “romantic tension” is announced via a rock song w/ the dialogue.

Features some really obvious extras movement.  That’s extras to the movie, moving in very obvious badly choreographed patterns.

And at one point you might get thirsty for some COKE.

First Wish: Screaming, shifting/growing little creature form, some COKE, and the female lead’s anguished face montage.

Oh, there’s an amazing no-crash insane driving sequence.  Apparently only swerving was in the budget.

Especially after a bit of Robert Englund and a VERY little Tony Todd.

There’s a killing spree near the end that wants to be ‘Hellraiser III’ but is more ‘Monty Python’s Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days’.

If you wanna see the heroine vs. the djinn in a (boring) Wits N’ Wishes battle, that starts around the hour mark.

Inspirational Quote: “Yessss…the sh1t just…hit the fan, didn’t it?”

Grade: F

So there come times when I ask myself why I watch these wretched movies that I watch, knowing I must hate them because they stink and really, who wants to read about D- after D- after F…and do *I* really want to WRITE about them so badly?

But then there’s the occasional ‘Lo’ or ‘The Devil’s Rock’ or ‘Wake Wood’…a little gem of a movie that I otherwise would have missed.

This, believe it or not, falls into that saving-grace category.

It’s about a family that practices cannibalism on a semi-regular basis.  And, since it’s made well, it’s therefore quite disturbing…and interesting.

Low-key and yet creepy at the beginning and slowly but steadily building up in both what the family does/is revealed as having done and in the suspicions of others.

The mood is appropriate, and the acting by a no-name cast is quite good.

There are a few hokey “action” parts near the end, but they don’t last long and eventually the action isn’t so hokey.

It’s bloody disgusting, but it’s not hokey.

EXTREMELY gory/disturbing near the end.

Pretty powerful, actually.

Just one question: shaking hands…so ‘Book of Eli’ was right??

Grade: B

Slightly interesting opening featuring the Spanish/American Inquisition.

It quickly devolves into a religious/western/zombie/post-apoc mishmash.

Then Snipes explains his motivation.

Then it’s a lot of boredom and pondering and dullness.

Exceptions: A couple of the action scenes have some interest value, and tell me that little boy/girl doesn’t look like Newt!

Grade: D-