Directed and co-written by Douglas Buck, this remake of Sisters starts with developmental psychologist Dr. Philip Lacan (Stephen Rea) performing magic at a children’s party being thrown at his work, the Zurvan Institute. His ex-wife — and former patient — Angelique (Lou Doillon) — is his assistant, but the party gets weird when Grace Collier (Chloë Sevigny), a reporter, is found and kicked out.
Dr. Dylan Wallace (Dallas Roberts) ends up having a one-night stand with Angelique, learning that it’s her birthday, as well as the birthday of her roommate and twin sister, Annabel. He goes to get them a birthday cake, just in time to be stabbed with knitting needles by Annabel, which Grace sees on Phillip’s computer as she snoops on him.
Grace is against Phillip, as her mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital. She’s sure that he’s using psychotropic drugs on both Angelique and Annabel, as well as covering up their crimes. A former assistant, Dr. Mercedes Kent (Gabrielle Rose), reveals that Angelique and Annabel were conjoined twins who were taken by their mother from Canada to France, where they worked in a sideshow. Angelique was the quiet one; Annabel was murderous; they were separated, and it’s thought that Annabel died of lung failure and Angelique lives alone under Philip’s supervision.
As she sneaks into the institute, Grace is captured by Phillip, who drugs her, and the revelations of what really happened appear as if they were dreams. Philip started a sexual affair with Angelique when she still had a twin, so he said that Annabel was a parasite. He performed the separation so he could be with her, but after Annabel died, Angeliqiue took on her need to kill. Grace is so drugged out that she stabs the doctor, then Angelique kills Grace’s co-worker Larry (JR Bourne) before giving Grace a matching scar and making her her new sister.
Buck said, “In the original film, which I love, De Palma chose style over substance. I’m interested in exploring all the other stuff that’s there — the perversity, the tragedy, the sadness. All those character traits make it, to me, more interesting. I want to make the characters more alive.” I think that he did a great job here, as this can stand on its own.
Back when people thought the internet was a positive thing, this movie generated so much online buzz that New Line Cinema used web feedback to reshoot for 5 days, most of which was spent feeding Samuel Jackson lines with the f-word.
It was also the first movie where Hollywood learned that memes and online chatter do not equal box office, and then, like people getting that Men In Black light to the eyes, they forgot and did it again. And then again. And then some more.
After seeing a gang slaying, there’s no way Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) is making it to Los Angeles alive. I mean, the guy he’s narcin on, Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson), just set a whole bunch of pheromone-sprayed venomous snakes loose on a plane and then marked everyone with a Hawaii lei to be killed.
FBI agents Neville Flynn and John Sanders (Jackson and Mark Houghton) are going to try and protected everyone on the plane, from flight attendant Claire Miller (Julianna Margulies) and rapper Clarence “Three Gs” Dewey to Mercedes Harbont (Rachel Blanchard), her dog Mary-Kate, senior light attendant Grace (Lin Shaye) and, well, everybody on this plane once those snakes come on our and start biting faces.
David Dalessandro is a University of Pittsburgh associate vice chancellor of university development who found the time to write this script back in 1992 based on an article he read about Indonesian brown tree snakes climbing into planes during World War II.
Initially, this was going to be directed by Ronny Yu before David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2, Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco) took over.
Even though the movie features 450 snakes from 30 different species, most of the ones in principal moments are either animatronic or CGI. That’s because real snakes don’t move around that much and aren’t that fast.
The best part? If you watch this on basic cable, Samuel Jackson yells, “I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!” And here you thought it would be the on-the-nose use of Cobra Starship for this movie’s theme.
The Arrow 4K UHD releaseof this film has a new 4K restoration by Arrow Films; new audio commentary by critics Max Evry and Bryan Reesman; an archival cast and crew audio commentary, featuring director David R. Ellis, actor Samuel L. Jackson, producer Craig Berenson, associate producer Tawny Ellis, VFX supervisor Eric Henry and second unit director Freddie Hice; Snakes on a Page, a brand new mini-documentary exploring the movie tie-in novelization phenomenon, featuring publisher Mark Miller, historian David Spencer and Christa Faust, author of the Snakes on a Plane novelization; archival features; a music video; a gag reel and easter eggs; trailers and TV ads; an image gallery; a South Pacific Airlines safety instruction card; a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Daniel Burnett and Charlie Brigden.
The fourth of nine anime movies produced by the Japanese religious organization Happy Science, this is based on Ryuho Okawa’s third book, The Nine Dimensions: Unveiling the Laws of Eternity.
Happy Science is a Japanese religious organization founded in 1986 by Ryuho Okawa, who went from being a stock trader to the present incarnation of a supreme deity named El Cantare. He can also speak with the dead. They’ve produced 11 anime and 16 live-action movies.
What do they believe? On their site, they say, “Human beings are spiritual beings. We are souls residing in physical bodies. The center of it is our mind. We reincarnate many times between this world and the other world, gaining different life experiences and growing infinitely as individual souls.
God (Buddha) exists and has continued to lead (guide) Humanity – past, present and future. These are the spiritual Truths that Happy Science works to spread. Our mission and purpose are to explore what true happiness is based on these eternal Truths and make this world a more peaceful and prosperous place.
Our work takes us beyond traditional religious realms into politics, education, movies, music, and more. We strive to put the teachings of love, enlightenment, and creation of utopia into practice in every area of life.”
According to Wikipedia, “…the organization’s political wing, the Happiness Realization Party, promotes political views that include support for Japanese military expansion, support for the use of nuclear deterrence and denial of historical events such as the Nanjing Massacre in China and the comfort women issue in South Korea. Some other stances include support of infrastructure spending, natural disaster prevention, urban development and dam construction. They also advocate fiscal conservatism, strengthening the US-Japan alliance and a virtue-based leadership.”
Let’s talk about this movie.
Ryuta, Patrick, and Roberto have traveled from Japan to New York City, where they visit a museum exhibit on Thomas Edison. They see a spirit phone, which allows people to talk to the dead. You may think Edison never invented this, but in an interview with American Magazine, he claimed that “I have been at work for some time, building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.” This device would not use “…any occult, mystifying, mysterious, or weird means, employed by so–called “mediums”, but by scientific methods. I am engaged in the construction of one such apparatus now, and I hope to be able to finish it before very many months pass.”
The guys then meet a shaman, God Eagle, who has a message from Edison that gives Ryuta the knowledge needed to make his own spirit phone. After meeting Yuko, a religious girl, they can finally go to the next world, where Ryuta and Yuko discover they were married many years ago in Atlantis, and they battle enemies like Friedrich Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler, who has his own evil elephant. The good news? Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, and Mother Theresa all appear as angels sent to our reality to guide us. Yes, Helen Keller can see, speak and hear now; she’s also blonde with blue eyes, like all of the angels in this religion.
This is probably where I should get into the fact that cat aliens came to our planet first, but after they founded Atlantis and Mu — All bound for Mu Mu Land — because of Satan.
Lord El Cantare shows up — he was also La Mu, Thoth, Rient Arl Croud, Ophealis, Hermes and Buddha — along with Moses, Jesus and Confucius. You should also know that the ninth dimension of Heaven is filled with centaurs. Also: humans are reincarnations of immortal spirits, angels and demigods who have lost their memories after leaving the Spirit World.
And Florence Nightingale informs us, “A lot of people on Earth panic when they pass away and become a spirit. Some don’t believe in their death and cling to the place they’ve died, or their families, and cause a lot of trouble.”
This is a very capitalist religion, as Thomas Edison is not the man who destroyed Tesla, but instead someone who used his inventions to help mankind. He was also Johannes Gutenberg. Other angels include Panasonic founder Konosuke Matsushita and the boss of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, who are angels sent to give Japan a strong yen.
There’s also a movie theater in Heaven that shows your life to everyone you knew when you die. It also reveals your thoughts to everyone you know, and they vote on whether you go to Heaven or Hell. It’s a good thing angels will go to Hell to save you, because my relatives are going to watch me onanistically savoring the films of Madison, Belladonna and CJ Laing so many times that they’ll wonder what the plot of my life was.
Well, there are three Hells, and it looks like mine will be The Hell of the Bloody Pond, which looks like Amsterdam, and I’ll be trapped in a bloody pool, unable to fulfill my lust, as if I were Ms. Jones at the end of the first movie. If you got that, you’ll be there with me.
In this religion, you can make the sign of the cross twice, then draw a pentagram to destroy a demon. Spoiler: You get the Heaven or Hell you wanted most, so if you were a salaryman, you’ll be working in an office for demons for all eternity.
But the best news of all? Every religion and myth is true! Whether you believe in God, Jesus, Odin, Osiris, Hermes or Buddha, they are all El Cantare. Don’t be cynical. Cynical people go to Hell.
Man, I loved this. What an all-over-the-place bit of magic. Some people may get bored — or frightened — by it. Not me. Sign me up.
Wolfgang Petersen made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm, so he was the best person to probably direct the sequel to The Poseidon Adventure. It was filmed on large-scale sets and soundstages and had practical effects and stunts to go with the digitally-enhanced water effects.
Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell) is a NYC firefighter on vacation with his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and her boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel). They’re on board the Poseidon with gambler Dylan Jones (Josh Lucas), Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss), waiter Marco Valentine (Freddy Rodriguez), singer Gloria (people in the place, it’s Fergie), Captain Michael Bradford (Andre Braugher), Lucky larry (Kevin Dillon) and a girl who snuck on, Elena Morales (Mía Maestro).
What follows is wholesale movie star destruction and no one is safe. Seriously, an air conditioning unit falls smack dab on Turtle’s head. Fergie drowns. A rogue wave kills almost everyone else before that. This movie doesn’t give two shits if you’re famous. In fact, it demands that. People you don’t expect to get nuked? Watch out.
Roger Ebert said, “Wolfgang Petersen’s heart isn’t in it. He is too wise a director to think this is first-rate material and too good a director to turn it into enjoyable trash.”
The 70s were the best time for disaster movies. This is good enough, but as you would figure, the original is better.
Extras on this Arrow Video release include interviews with director of photography John Seale, production designer William Sandell, visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis and make-up effects on-set supervisor Michael Deak; a retrospective on the film by Heath Holland; featurettes on at the film’s production, featuring interviews with cast and crew, the set design and production assistant Malona Voigt. There’s a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page. You can order it from MVD.
Aug 4-10 Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!
Ever since the 2023 Australia incident, where Tenacious D went on hiatus — and seemingly Jack Black buried his friend Kyle Gass — thinking of the D makes me sad. It was hard to watch this movie, made in a time when things were better.
The plot of this film — well, the origin of the band — isn’t far from the truth. Jack Black and Kyle Gass met in Los Angeles as part of a theater company, and Gass felt threatened by Black, as he was the only musician before. Yet the chance to go to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — and to climb the volcano, Arthur’s Seat — bonded them. Gass would teach Black to play guitar in return for food, just like this movie. After a three-episode HBO series and a successful album, they went from being a comedy band to being a real band that does comedy. Initially, this was going to be about Tenacious D playing coffee shops and Black becoming fascinated by Atlantis. Black and Gass both fall in love with a girl called Simmeon, who has written books about the fictional island. They later meet Ronnie James Dio, and are sent on a road trip to Miami.” That movie never made it.
This one didn’t do well in theaters. Cult movies rarely do. Black said, “A lot of enthusiastic stoners were like, ‘Yeah, du-u-u-de! Just saw it.” I was like, “Where were you when the movie came out?” “Sorry, dude, I was hi-i-i-gh!””
Meat Loaf is Black’s dad. Dave Grohl is Satan. Dio is Dio. All is right in this. I mean, any movie that ends with the heroes smoking out of a bong made from Satan’s horn is one I’m going to love.
Their next album, Rize of the Phoenix, starts with the words, “When The Pick Of Destiny was released, it was a bomb. And all the critics said that the D was done. The sun had set, and the chapter had closed. But one thing no one thought about was that the D would rise again.” That album is about Gass losing his mind as Black becomes a Hollywood star.
Aug 4-10 Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!
Written in 1977 by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darklyis based on Dick’s life. Between mid-1970 (when his fourth wife, Nancy, left him) and mid-1972, Dick opened his house up to teenage drug users as his amphetamine addiction went out of control. How else do you write 68 pages of books a day? To escape, while in Canada, he went to X-Kalay, a Synanon recovery program. That’s why the book — and the movie — ends with a dedication to the people — including Dick himself — who died or had their lives ruined by drugs, saying that they were “some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did” and informing the audience that “drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car.” It took him two weeks to write and three years to rewrite, a time that his fifth wife, Tes, said that she would find him crying, as the book was so hard to write. As a result, Dick wrote a contract giving Tessa half of all the rights to the novel, as she “participated to a great extent in writing the outline and novel A Scanner Darkly with me, and I owe her one half of all income derived from it.”
Richard Linklater wanted to make Ubik, but couldn’t figure out how to film it, a problem that most people who made Philip K. Dick movies solved by just doing their own thing and just using the title (see Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, Next — which is based on “The Golden Man” — as well as Minority Report, Total Recall and nearly every movie made from his books). His daughters, Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett, started looking closely at the scripts and learned that while they didn’t want a cartoon made of their father’s most personal work, Linklater got it.
The process of making this movie involved the actors being involved in the writing process, then making the movie, then 18 months of animating everything, which was way more than the studio thought it would take. The rotoscope process gives this a look beyond anything I’ve seen outside of Waking Life. This is the next level of what Linklater did in that film.
20% of the country is addicted to Substance D. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover cop living in a house of addicts reporting back to the government agents that police the war on drugs, who all wear scramblesuits so that they have no idea who they are, undercover and masked even to one another, maybe to themselves. He’s in love with Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), from whom he buys the drugs, and wants to get closer to the supplier. But she is also Hank, his boss, and this has all been a trap to make James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) get overly paranoid. Or maybe she’s Audrey. Also: Who are the people that Bob has a suburban life with? Is he addicted to Substance D? Whichever, whatever, because Substance D was created by New-Path, a drug abuse clinic, to make money for themselves by creating and curing the supply and demand. Is Bob in the clinic to get help or is he there undercover to stop them?
None of it matters, but it all does in the end. Nothing is everything. Or, as Dick said, “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be “My phone is spying on me.””
A prequel to 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this movie reminds me that when a franchise has run out of ideas, they always go backward. Back to the well or, in this instance, back in time for a prequel.
Back in 1939, a woman gave birth in a slaughterhouse and died, at which point the manager threw her infant into a dumpster, where it was rescued by Luda Mae Hewitt, who raised the baby as her son Thomas.
Fast forward to 1969,, and Thomas works in the same slaughterhouseunderr the exact manage. When the plants are shut down by the health department, he refuses to leave. So when the manager pushes him, he gets killed by a chainsaw and his adopted brother Charlie (R. Lee Ermey) kills the arresting officer that comes to their home — Sheriff Hoyt — and takes on his identity.
Thomas eventually becomes Leatherface — are you surprised? — but not before wiping out an entirely different set of teens years before the original movie, including Jordana Brewster from The Fast and the Furious series.
This comes from the days when Platinum Dunes were the Blumhouse of the 2000s, reinventing horror film series like The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher,Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street to varying degrees of box office success. Director Jonathan Liebesman was also behind their reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
At this point, even a fan of the character like me — I dressed as Leatherface for more Halloweens than I can count on a severed hand — checked out.
The Arrow Video release of this film has a 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of both the Theatrical Version and the Uncut Version. Extras include a new audio commentary on the Uncut Version with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon and an audio commentary on the Uncut Version with director Jonathan Liebesman and producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller; interviews with Lew Temple; special effects makeup artist Jake Garber and special effects makeup technician Kevin Wasner and director of photography Lukas Ettlin; a making-of doc; deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary from director Jonathan Liebesman and producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller and a trailer, all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea with a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold.
San Diego cop Michael (Jaleel White, yes, Urkel) goes off to announce his engagement to Ashley (Jennia Fredrique) to her family. It does not go well. Father Jake (Clifton Powell) was a Black Panther who went to jail for killing a job; brother June Bug (DeRay Davis) is a gangster who also hates the police; Uncle Ray Ray (Mark Chalant Pfiefer) is a garbageman who also despises law enforcement officials; Mookie (Daphne Bloomer) is only concerned about potato salad. At least Ashley’s mom (Ella Joyce) is somewhat understanding that her daughter is in love.
Coke Daniels also made My Baby’s Daddy. He directed and wrote this, somehow managing to get Tiny Lister and Eddie Griffin to play cameos. If you’re elated by humor where old people smoke marijuana and are horny, well, good news. This movie is for you.
Why did they spell the title wrong? It never pays off. I need to know, as someone who truly loves potato salad.
There’s also a scene where the dad repeatedly calls Michael a pig and tells him that he will murder him if he marries his daughter. It is a comedy, but it is not played for laughs.
Premiering on CBS on September 21, 1998, The King of Queens was one of those shows that always seemed to be on. I had never watched it, and all I knew about Kevin James was that he was Mick Foley’s high school wrestling teammate. But when I showed the box set on our weekly “What Came In the Mail” segment on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature, people were excited and told me that I needed to watch it soon.
It’s a simple set-up. Doug (Kevin James) and Carrie Heffernan (Leah Remini) are pretty much The Honeymooners, a middle-class couple living in Queens, except that her father Arthur (Jerry Stiller) has lost his latest, much younger wife and burned his house down, so now he has to live with them. That’s all there is to it, as it’s about them, their weird friend, and Doug’s schemes to get ahead.
There’s Doug’s straight man, Deacon Palmer (Victor Williams), nerdy mommy’s boy Spencer “Spence” Olchin (Patton Oswalt), cousin Daniel Heffernan (Gary Valentine), dog walker Holly Shumpert (Nicole Sullivan) and even Lou Ferrigno, playing himself. Plus, as you know, I love crossovers; there are four with Everyone Loves Raymond.
The leads are fun, everyone knows their role, and this feels like the kind of show you can just put on and veg out to. I love sitcoms and feel like they’re kind of lost art, so it was fun getting into this for a few episodes. I didn’t like the last season, where Doug and Carrie split, but I could see myself watching more of it.
What fascinates me is that when James started his second show, Kevin Can Wait, his wife, Donna Gable, was portrayed by Erinn Hayes. Yet in the second season, she died off camera and was replaced by Vanessa Cellucci (played by Leah Remini), Kevin’s former rival from the police who becomes his partner in life and at a security company, Monkey Fist Security. Donna’s death is off-handedly mentioned by someone saying, “Ye, it’s been over a year since she died.”
This is where it gets meta.
On the AMC TV show Kevin Can F**k Himself, Allison McRoberts (Annie Murphy) has a man-child of a husband, Kevin (Eric Petersen), who sees life as a sitcom while hers is a drama. Kevin becomes so horrible to her that she begins to plan his death. When people find out, she fakes her passing, and he soon gets another girlfriend who looks and acts exactly like Allison.
She’s played by Erinn Hayes.
I’ve always wondered how we got the beautiful, capable wife and immature husband dynamic ingrained in us and how many relationships it has harmed. It makes me think about how I behave. Then again, as I write this, I am in a basement surrounded by movies and action figures. Hmm.
Mill Creek has released every episode in one gigantic box set. It has extras such as James doing commentary on the pilot with show creator Michael Weithorn; a laughs montage; behind the scenes; a writers featurette; a salute to the fans and the 200th episode celebration. You can get it from Deep Discount.
I just want holiday movies to be an escape because I’ll be frank, I’m head in the sand about the next few years and I’m trying to use the power of film to hide in my own world until I feel like this one is safe again. Then again, it never was safe and you should avoid any echo chamber, but yeah. I don’t need to put on a Christmas movie and remember how Jenny McCarthy normalized stopping vaccines and look where we are, as polio shots are being on the list of things stopped and people are going to remember what the measles were like again.
But anyways.
She’s Mary Class in this, daughter of Santa, who is played by George Wendt. Why did Santa and Mrs. Claus (Lynne Griffin!) wait so long to have kids? And why did she go into marketing? Why would this bring the real world in to have Santa have a heart attack and why is this a Hallmark movie where Mary has a lost love named Luke (Ivan Sergei) at home in the North Pole?
Somehow, this has Michael Moriarty in it and I wonder, did I cast this movie?
The sequel has Dean McDermott as Luke and Paul Sorvino as Santa. Lynn Griffith was back and that’s really all I care about.
Director Ron Underwood made Tremors. Yes, he also made City Slickers and Hearts and Souls, but The Adventures of Pluto Nash is the reason why he made ABC Family Christmas movies, including Holiday In Handcuffs, Deck the Halls and this movie and its sequel.
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