Kate Stone (Taylor Schilling, Orange Is the New Black) is career-focused. That’s it. Nothing else. But she’s become an outcast and lost from what’s left of her family. When she’s asked to babysit her niece Maddie, her life quite literally must change. Family isn’t the expected family comedy/drama and that’s probably why we enjoyed it so much.

Laura Steinel is a writer, actress and director who brought this film together. It’s the only coming of age Juggalo film that I can think of. However, it treats that subject with way more respect than you’d think.

This film is helped by a great supporting cast, including Brian Tyree Henry as a sensei, Bryn Vale as young Maddie, Matt Walsh (one of those character actors who brings up every comedy he’s in) as a co-worker, Kate McKinnon as a neighbor, Natasha Lyonne under heavy makeup as an Insane Clown Posse fan and Peter Horton as Kate’s father.

We usually end up watching a lot of these family growth films and this one felt real. That’s more than I can say for most of them. Also, as someone who perhaps has been sprayed with Faygo before, I kind of loved the scene where ICP stopped their show and tenderly searched for a missing girl.

Ever since 2008’s Rambo, there have been plans of a fifth film in this franchise. At one point, John Rambo was going to lead a team of commandos against a genetically altered creature in a movie that would have been called Rambo V: The Savage Hunt.

By November 2009, it was reported that the plot would be about Rambo crossing the Mexican border to rescue a girl who had been kidnapped. However, Stallone claimed that he was done with the character, stating, “I don’t think there’ll be any more. I’m about 99% sure, I was going to do it… but I feel that with Rocky Balboa, that character came complete circle. He went home. But for Rambo to go on another adventure might be, I think, misinterpreted as a mercenary gesture and not necessary. I don’t want that to happen.”

At Cannes the very next year, Millennium Films was already advertising Rambo V and planned to make the film with or without Stallone. Luckily, that didn’t happen.

Say what you will about Sylvester Stallone and his films, but he’s one of the few actors who has played multiple characters across multiple films. Don’t believe me? We went so far as to make a list all about this fact.

Now, Rambo has finally returned, with Adrian Grunberg (Get the Gringo) directing. Of course, this film has already been met with critical derision in regards to its script, stereotypes and violence. Yet Stallone’s career is one paved with negative ink. His audience — take it from someone who has watched nearly fifty of his films in thirty days — always comes back.

Eleven years after the last time we saw John Rambo, he’s moved on to live in his father’s ranch in Bowie, Arizona (actually Bulgaria). Along with Maria Beltran and her granddaughter Gabrielle, he has a horse farm and has seemed to settle into his old age. Yet his past life constantly threatens to re-emerge — he’s taking numerous pills, he has flashbacks and he’s built an elaborate series of tunnels under his home.

Gabrielle wants to see the father who abandoned her and goes to Mexico to attempt to connect. It goes horribly, leading to her visiting her friend Jezel and going barhopping. Truly, only Paul Kersey has a worse life than John Rambo, as within minutes she’s been roofied and enslaved by a Mexican cartel.

Our hero allows his need to protect her to take over his common sense and he’s quickly beaten into a near-coma by the gang, including Hugo and Victor Martinez. They take his driver’s license and a photo of Gabrielle, promising that now they’ll make her life a living hell — slicing both her face and Rambo’s with a bloody V.

Rambo is rescued by Carmen, a freelance journalist who lost her sister to the cartel. After healing, he rescues Gabrielle just in time for her to die as they cross the border back into the United States.

What follows is Rambo becoming Jason Vorhees, leading the gang into an elaborate trap ala Home Alone, but with more grand guignol than slapstick. If the ending melee in 2008’s Rambo upset you with its intensity and wanton bloodshed, well…better stay home.

Critics have loudly complained about the levels of blood and guts that the film displays, comparing it to a slasher film. If you’ve read any of the articles about the films that I truly adore, you know that this didn’t upset me in the least.

Of course, the xenophobic nature of Rambo as white savior in Mexico can be somewhat troubling. But honestly, I wasn’t heading into a Stallone blockbuster expecting it to be woke. There are an equal amount of positive Latino characters in this film, but the sheer rage of Rambo losing the last bit of beauty in his world is what this movie is really all about.

Sylvester Stallone is like a smart rock band from your teen years. He knows what works and what doesn’t. He’s coming to town every few months and he’s only going to play the hits. All killer, no filler, as they say. He isn’t going to make you listen to his artsy new single or play all night — the film clocks in at a spartan (John Spartan!) 89 minutes (although there is also a 101 minute foreign version).

Let’s face it — you’re coming to the theater to watch Rambo cut a man’s heart out and show it to him before he dies. This film is ready to deliver. If you’re expecting anything else — subtle nuance, political commentary or shades of grey — you’re in the wrong theater.

Writer/producer/director/lead actor Steve Barkett only would create one other movie — 1990’s Empire of the Dark, in which a private detective battles a Satanic cult, monsters and ninjas — but he lent his auteur spirit to this post-apocalyptic bit of strangeness.

Barkett was such an artist that while he originally filmed this in 1978, he wasn’t happy and re-shot most of the footage with different actors.

Just like Def Con 4 — or more to the point Planet of the Apes, as the film was shot in many of the same locations — Newman (Barkett) watches the world end from space and comes back to try and survive in the end times. Of course, he does that by undergoing a montage where he tidies up a mansion, so you’ll have that. Incidentally, that mansion belonged to Ted V. Mikels. It was literally the castle that he referred to when he kept a harem of women he called his “Castle Girls.”

Newman looks like every stepfather in the late 70’s and early 80’s, the kind of guy that takes you fishing even though you don’t really want to go and says stuff like, “I really care about your mother” and “You don’t have to call me dad, unless you want to” while at nights you ball your fists up and sob hot, wet tears while he and your beloved mother act out the next ten pages in Dr. Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex.

Yeah, Newman is no Snake Plissken. Or Max Rocktansky. Or even Paco Queruak. He is our bastard step-fathers of old.

Stop motion animator Jim Danforth plays a fellow astronaut and Forrest J. Ackerman — wearing the prop rings from Universal’s The Mummy and Dracula — shows up as a museum curator dying from radiation (he even plays Newman a tape with Dick Miller’s voice on it). And Sarah is played by Lynn Margulies. You may recognize her for her romantic involvement with comedian Andy Kaufman. However, the real star of the show is Sid Haig, who plays Cutter, the leader of a gang of cannibalistic mutants who kill all the men and children, only keeping the wives. All of the meanness and brutality of this whole sordid mess can directly be traced back to Cutter. For some reason, our hero is so stupid that he allows Cutter to escape — so Cutter can come back and kill everyone to get back at Newman.

Oh, and there’s also a laser gun that gets made in this movie and we’re just supposed to say, “Yeah, lasers exist.”

If you read our Section 3 video nasties article, you already know that this film was seized and confiscated, but not prosecuted for obscenity. And did former fill-in Duke boy Chip Mayer remake all this — with Richard Moll in the Sid Haig role — as Survivor in 1987? Yeah, pretty much. And if this all wasn’t weird enough: Aftermath was co-written by Stanley Livingston — Chip Douglas from My Three Sons — who also played Jeff in Paul Bartel’s astounding Private Parts, Russ in Smokey and the Hotwire Gang, and, somehow, ended up as a sidekick to Dolph Lundgren in Masters of the Universe, so as to diddle with the “cosmic key.”

All summer long, I’ve had people breathlessly tell me, “You need to see this movie.”

I’ve been down this road before. It was called Hereditary, Ari Aster’s last film.

I debated never watching this film, but then I reasoned that as much as I detested It Follows, I loved Under the Silver Lake.

Maybe Aster would hit paydirt in this one. After all, I love folk horror films like The Wicker Man and Blood On Satan’s Claw. How bad could it be?

Woah boy.

Dani Ardor is dealing with a lot. Her sister has killed her parents and then herself. This has also pushed her already failing relationship with her boyfriend Christian. Somehow, they stay together the whole way to summer, when she learns that his Swedish friend Pelle is going home to his commune family for a once in every ninety years ritual and is taking Christian and his friends Mark and Josh.

Christian had no intention of telling her about the trip. In fact, his friends want them to break up. But then she’s there in Halsingland along with them as they trip out and settle in. Hours later, two of the elders leap off a rock to their deaths, but when the male doesn’t die, the others smash his head with a rock.

The elder Siv explains that this is how life goes here in Harga, with every member dying in the same way at the age of 72. This would also be the point where anyone sane would get out.

Two other guests, Simon and Connie, try to leave but miscommunication separates them. And to top things off, Christian decides to steal Josh’s thesis on the Harga. That’s when we learn that the commune’ runic religion is based on an oracle who is conceived every few years via incest.

Oh, where do we go from here? Mark pees on a tree and gets skinned alive. Josh tries to take photos and gets hit with a mallet. Dani takes more drugs and dances around a maypole whole her boyfriend eats pubic hair before impregnating another girl while the rest of the females all watch and push his butt in deeper. Yes, it may have taken Quentin Tarantino a few films before we all realized he has a foot fetish, but Ari Aster took all of one film and a bit of this one to show us that his go-to horror is obese and aged nudity.

After finding Christian and Maja having sex, Dani has started screaming and all of the women turn it into a song. I laughed the kind of mad guffaw that Max Cady only reserved for classics like Problem Child. Somehow, this film, much like the last one that Aster essayed, has descended from horror into comedy through no fault of its own.

If I told you that the cult members all disembowel a bear and shove Christian into it — get it, his name is Christian and he’s being sacrificed? — would you believe me? Well, you better, because that’s exactly the kind of ridiculous ending this movie has. Can you believe that some people were upset by this and how intense it supposedly got? Then why was I holding my sides and struggling to breathe as I chuckled with the kind of volume that I had once only thought possible in my wildest dreams?

This film is a joke, told with false significance and no small fury, all screaming and yelling and singing and wishing and praying and hoping that someone finds it significant and important and worthy of notice. In short, it is everything that is 2019 — a country that asks for prayers on social media one day and shoots one another in the face the next. A sad moron screaming, “Notice me.”

Somehow, thirty minutes of footage was cut from this movie before release. I have no idea how this is possible, as it felt so ponderous that I fear that it’s being over is just a surprise ending and the truth is I will soon wake up and still have forty minutes left to watch. It’s the kind of movie that The Lord of the Rings films would tell to wrap it up.

There are no surprises. I mean, the opening mural literally tells you everything that will happen in the film. And another piece of art shows a woman falling in love with a man, placing flowers under his pillow and then hiding her pubic hair in his food. This is exactly what Maja does with Christian.

There is all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in this film. Every single story beat is so hammered home — yes, that’s a horrible pun but this movie in no way makes me want to try — that you become wistful for the simple days of Toni Collette flying around without her head.

The funniest thing about this movie is that it sees the Nicholas Cage The Wicker Man as more of an inspiration than the original. That might be all you need to know about this utter turd in the punchbowl.

My brother went to the Toronto Fan Expo a few weeks ago and I was kind of shocked to learn that John Travolta would be there. Since he appeared in Saturday Night Fever, Travolta has been a fixture on the A list. What would he be doing deigning himself to appear at a comiccon, signing autographs and meeting the little people?

This movie was why.

Moose (Travolta) is said to be autistic in the things I’ve read about the film, but he’s played here as an incredibly slow man who only finds joy in autograph hunting. This may hit too close to home for some of my friends who are taking the long trek to conventions like the one in Toronto and who often are aware of the celebrity happenings in my city to a degree that I am certain that may cross the line from fandom to outright need for legal action.

Now Moose has the opportunity to meet his favorite actor, Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa, Idle Hands). At the last minute, as Moose waits in line, Dunbar’s ex-wife appears and he loses his chance to get an autograph. Worse, his hero treats him like a complete jerk.

Moose’s friend, paparazzi photographer Leah, tries to make up for this by getting him invited to a celebrity party and then showing him an app that publishes the addresses of stars. Instead of just mailing a letter, Moose brings it in person and again, Dunbar reacts violently. Not getting the hint, our protagonist scales the fence around the actor’s house and walks right in. On the way in Moose accidentally kills the housekeeper, but again, Dunbar threatens and abuses Moose.

Finally, our man has had enough. He returns that night dressed as Jason Vorhees and ties Dunbar up and stabs him with a prop knife that does no damage before faking his own death. Dunbar then turns the tables and asks to be his friend, so Moose unties him. The actor goes wild, shooting off Moose’s hand and stabbing him in the eye before letting him leave. He wanders the streets of Hollywood where tourists think he’s in costume before Leah saves him. Then, Dunbar is arrested for killing his housekeeper.

Interestingly enough, Devon Sawa has gone on from playing an obsessed fan in Eminem’s “Stan” video to dealing with an obsessed fan, while Travolta had his pussy finger broken in Saturday Night Fever and now has his entire hand blown clean off. He also gets to utter timeless lines such as, “I can’t talk too long. I gotta poo.” and “Watch out. Here’s Moosey!” Seriously — he really should have followed Kirk Lazarus’ advice in Tropic Thunder before he took this role.

I lay the blame for this amazing turd of a film squarely at the feet of one Fred Durst. Not secure with merely transforming the peace and love of Woodstock into the 1999 debacle that was a nightmarish world of broken bones, open flames and sexual assault. But hey — according to a Variety article, he has no regrets. “It’s easy to point the finger and blame [us], but they hired us for what we do — and all we did is what we do,” said Dusrt. “I would turn the finger and point it back to the people that hired us.” What else would you expect from the man who did it all for the nookie, the what, the nookie? Certainly not a good film. It’s as if his epic work for Match.com commercials was an ill preparation for the subtle nuance of the story of a mentally troubled man navigating the difference between Hollywood fact and fiction. This film has all of the subtle tones and hints of genius that one would expect from the auteur who gifted us with “Break Stuff.”

Actually, Durst doesn’t deserve all the blame, despite including a scene where Sawa’s character literally talks at length to his son about how much he loves Limp Bizkit.

Travolta should know better.

Every single decision he makes as an actor in this film is wrong.

This is beyond a bad performance in a bad movie.

This is the type of film that I will return to time and again, pointing it out to say, “Truly this is as bad as it gets and all films from here on out will be measured against this movie.” I really don’t want to ruin how bad it is for you any longer, but the scene where he says, “Poppycock!” repeatedly while looking into a mirror as he wears as a English policeman costime must be experienced.

I mean, it gets so bad that the same opening credits that start the film are repeated at the end. The same exact credits. Who does this? How does this happen? Did not one single person responsible for this film stop and say, “This whole thing just feels off?”

Nope. That’s why Travolta was in Toronto.

In a year full of some films that I can point to as amongst the worst I’ve ever seen, isn’t it somewhat comforting to know that something came out that sucks worse than Serenity?

Anti-intellectual paramilitary forces rule the post-World War 3 landscape, which is directed by Frank Harris, who was behind Killpoint and The Patriot (not the Mel Gibson movie) and Lockdown (not the Sylvester Stallone movie).

Into this world arrives an alien named Sabine, played by Elizabeth Kaitan. Oh Elizabeth, you’ve been in so many movies that I’ve savored. You watched Lance Henriksen battle bikers in Savage Dawn. You dated Ricky Caldwell in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. You were Candy in four Vice Academy movies and showed up in Beretta’s Island, an attempt to transform Arnold Schwarzenegger’s friend, the recently deceased Franco Columbu, into an action star. I mean, Ken Kercheval even showed up. But the rest of the world — well, the part that watches slashers — knows you as Robin in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. You know her — the one who calls Tina Marilyn Munster before heading upstairs to get killed.

Sabine upsets the balance of power and the forces that have worked so hard to consolidate said power now need to keep her controlled. Such is the world of Aftershock.

The rebels want to protect Sabine and get her back to the portal that will bring her home. And the baddies, well, they want to dissect her.

This is the kind of movie where the supporting cast is the entire reason to watch the film. I mean, there’s a black rebel played by Chuck Jeffreys that 100% is doing an Eddie Murphy impression for the entire movie. Then there’s Deanna Oliver, who was the voice of The Brave Little Toaster, one of the most frightening and strange movies I’ve ever encountered despite its outer trappings as a kid-friendly movie. Russ Tamblyn and Chris Mitchum are here! And Matthias Hues, Talek from Dark Angel (what’s up with this post-Mandela Effect world where I only knew this movie as I Come In Peace?), is a gang member along with everyone’s go-to mutant, Michael Berryman.

The main reason I liked this movie — let’s be honest and say the only reason — is that John Saxon and Richard Lynch play the leaders of the bad guys. To be fair, Lynch is barely in the movie in his role as Commander Eastern. He shows up in one major scene, where he orders around Saxon, holds a small dog and has a missing eye. Trust me, this scene alone boosted this movie up at least 40%.

This was written by Michael Standing, who memorably blew a van to smithereens in The Italian Job. He also plays Gruber in the film. It’s not the best end of the world movie, but with a cast like this, there was no way that I could miss it.

You can watch this for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi.