About the Author: Paul Andolina is braver than me. That’s right — he saw Cats and he did it for you, the B&S About Movies reader. You should thank him by visiting his sites Wrestling with Film and Is the Dad Alive?

I really thought I was going to make it through the year without having to see the newest film version of Cats. Well, I didn’t make it 7 days into the year and have already watched it. I originally declined to see it with my brother and father who saw it over the Christmas break but my fiancee really wanted to watch it so off we went on January 6 to see what I surely thought was going to be the thing that plummeted me into actual madness.

As a child I had a horrible nightmare about a seemingly normal black cat who blocked me from getting into my house by pacing around our flower garden. I just knew that cat was up to no good;  it stopped me and we had a conversation. The years have made sure that I have all but forgotten what was actually said but what I do vividly remember is that after our talk it lunged for my neck aiming to kill me. So anthropomorphic cats have been somewhat of a bugaboo.

My first thoughts when the film started were, this is fucked up, which I found myself repeating in my head for a good 20 some minutes into the film. I gave up all hope of it not being super weird seeing these horrifying caricatures of cats slink around a mostly CGI city full of cat puns and giant ass buildings. Coming to terms with this was hard but I eventually settled into letting myself at least experience what was going on without being too critical. The movie is difficult in these regards, it seems like I shouldn’t even be able to see this film legally, like it should be hidden in a backroom of a video parlor where they sell tobacco pipes and that potpourri stuff that they toted as a legal high but was more of an overpowered hallucinogen than anything remotely resembling marijuana.

I am not a total stranger to the musical as I had seen the 1998 adaptation many years ago when I first began to be interested in musicals because of a high school friend’s deep affection for them. However, I didn’t really remember much about the musical. It wasn’t my favorite so it was quickly forgotten. The music in the movie is interesting, most of the lyrical content of the musical itself seems like nonsense but I did piece together what was going on plot-wise fairly easy. I should note that when I say the music was interesting I really mean that it sounded like some kind of techno jazz hellscape that I may drift into while having an exceptionally bad case of the man flu.

Despite all the horrid feelings and thoughts that dashed through my mind throughout the film, I actually enjoyed it. The music is catchy, the cast did about as well as I’d expect someone to do under what I believe the circumstances of filming were, random pieces of wardrobe over top green screen suits and sparse sound stages, and it was a theater experience I likely won’t forget anytime soon. I will probably never get over how the cats looked so very odd. All the other animals in the film were anthropomorphized as well, the cockroaches and mice being a whole different level of what the hell. You hear a dog but never see it but apparently, they are the only animal in this world that doesn’t sing or march around with a human face pasted onto their mug. 

The celebrities on parade in cat form were numerous, of particular interest to me was Macavity, the evil sorcerer cat, who whispered his own name any time he did a spot of magic, was played by the great Idris Elba. One of his associates is played by Taylor Swift and for some odd reason is the only cat that I didn’t think looked freaky, almost as if she was made just for this role. Ian McKellen as Gus the theater cat was an odd casting choice but he did well, although seeing him lap water out of an oversize bowl is not something I’d ever thought I’d witness, and I certainly hope I don’t have to see it again. The bit where Jennyanydots played by Rebel Wilson unzips her fursuit to reveal a completely different outfit worn over top her fur was disturbing too. 

This movie is sure to be talked about for many, many years to come for the sheer what-the-fuck-titude of it all but if you love Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and you’ve listened to it a thousand times before and will never get sick of it I hope you take the time to see this film and perhaps your thoughts will be different than mine. It was fun but certainly one I will not seek out again.

This movie was originally filmed five years ago as The Pick-Axe Murders Part III: The Final Chapter, but it’s finally been released. It starts with two teenagers aardvarking inside a mine, before the girl starts speaking Latin and bathes herself in the dude’s blood. So there’s that.

Adrienne (Tiffany Shepis, Victor Crowley) has just been released from the asylum and is still unable to deal with the murders that Alex Black committed. Neither is Sheriff Mathews (A. Michael Baldwin, Phantasm), who is looking for the teens we saw in the beginning. Throw in another entire group of teenagers just begging to get killed and you have a slasher!

Shawn Hernandez, who used to be in TNA, is in this as a criminal, as does Sal Governale from the Howard Stern Show. There’s also plenty of nudity and gore. Trust me, every single person in this movie is horned up.

Pickaxe is available on demand and on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company.

Well, let’s put it this way. I won’t have to go much further to find the worst movie I’ve seen this year.

Somehow, David Farrands went from writing Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and documentaries on things like Amityville and Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th and directing Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy to basically creating — to quote my friend Don Guarisco — “appalling fan-fiction movies inspired by real murders.” This follows up his 2019 film The Haunting of Sharon Tate, which had Hilary Duff as Sharon.

Here, Nicole Brown is played by Mena Suvari. Yes, Mena Suvari, who was once in films like American Pie, American Beauty and, umm, The Rage: Carrie 2. Even that last film is better than this. Imagine that sentence. Read it over again. Let that wash over you.

Taryn Manning, yes the same one who was in the band Boomkat and 8 Mile, she’s Faye Resnick who spends most of the movie doing blow and trying to make out with Nicole, as if no one is still alive and can sue everyone involved with this movie.

Agnes Bruckner, who was Anna Nicole in the movie called Anna Nicole, is Kris Kardashian. There’s also a guy — Trent Walker if you care — who plays Bruce Jenner and he looks nothing like him. His absence in one scene is referred to as “such a drag.” That’s the level of this film.

At one point, Nick Stahl was John Connor and the Yellow Bastard in Sin City, but here he’s Glen Rogers, the Casanova Killer and the Cross Country Killer who was rumored to have killed Nicole in the 2012 documentary My Brother the Serial Killer. Rogers’ brother Clay claimed that the suspect had met Nicole and was ready to take her down, claiming he was hired by O.J. Simpson to break into her home and steal everything he could, before telling her that, “You may have to kill the (word for a female dog so I can get this past Amazon filters when I post the review).”

Drew Roy, who was Jessie on Hannah Montana, is Ron Goldman. Bianca Brigitte VanDamme (yes, it’s his daughter) is Detective Leigh. Larry Zerner — yes, Shelly from Friday the 13th: Part III is here. And Gene Freeman, who was in Crossbreed, is O.J., who is mainly a ghost hovering over the film.

Speaking of ghosts, there’s an entire section of the film where Nicole is raised from her bed and begins getting tossed all over it like she’s Barbara Hershey in The Entity. I’m not making any of this up. This fact alone made me love what I had been hating up until this point.

I mean, how did this actually get made? How did Mena Suvari even get the gumption to ask for an executive producer credit on this mess? Why did I watch it? Why am I spending so much time writing about it now instead of going to bed?

So many questions!

O.J. note 1: The night of the Bronco chase, I was at a bar called Robert’s Roadside Inn and I’ve never heard such a rowdy bar get so quiet so fast. Seriously, some generations get the Kennedy Assassination and mine got O.J. and Al Cowlings in a slow-motion chase.

O.J. note 2: My theory is that Nicole and Ron were killed by a Predator, which are real creatures and our government created the movies as disinformation so that we wouldn’t know the terrors that exist in space. As out TV signals move slower into deep space, the Predators were looking for the ultimate human to hunt. And if you watched mid-70’s football, the perfect human male was probably O.J. Simpson. By the time they got to his house, he was long moved out and Nicole and Ron played the price. My theory, by the way, is not as insane as this movie.

O.J. note 3:

I’m really emotional about the town that I come from, Pittsburgh. When people talk down on it or proclaim how they can’t wait to get out of here, I get upset. There’s nothing like this city to me and nowhere I go in the rest of this world can really measure up.

A Rick Sebak documentary can bring me to tears. And watching the trailer for this movie, I realized that I’d probably be moved for its entire running time.

I mean, how can you not love Pittsburgh, a city that has given you the 1970’s Steelers, probably the roughest gang of brutes that ever took the gridiron; Bruno Sammartino, perhaps the greatest pro wrestler of all time; and also Fred Rodgers, a man who gently helped several generations grow up?

Tom Junod started writing for Esquire in 1997, with some of his notable works including The Abortionist, The Rapist Says He’s Sorry and The Falling Man, which was turned in to a documentary. His Esquire profile of Mister Rogers, “Can You Say … Hero?”, was the basis for this movie, written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster (who also teamed to write Maleficent: Mistress of Evil).

It’s directed by Marielle Heller, who created the films The Diary of a Teenage Girl and the Lee Israel biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me? 

Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is the award-winning Esquire journalist in this story who stands in for Junod. Recently in The Atlantic, Junod wrote about the differences between reality and the film. He never got in a fistfight with his father at his sister’s wedding. You should read that article, marvel at how well-written it is, then come back to read my poor by comparison thoughts on this film. You can also see more of what is true and false in this Slate article.

Tom Hanks plays Rogers and if there’s anyone else that should imbue this role, I don’t know who it could be. I traveled over an hour to see Mr. Rogers at the age of seven, so excited to be near him. He was just a constant moment of my childhood and there comes a time when we grow past our childhood, in the same way that Lloyd has forgotten his stuffed childhood friend Old Rabbit.

To be honest, I needed to hear from Fred Rogers and consider what his message can still mean today, in a world where anger is the only thing sustaining me most days. I forget all the wonderful things that exist in the world, whether they’re as simpler as an Italian direct to video horror movie or the love you get from your wife. This movie succeeds because it imparts that message without feeling preachy. These things just are. You are special, as Mister Rogers told me nearly forty years ago and like that stuffed rabbit that the writer has forgotten, I’ve forgotten too.

This movie will mean something somewhere else, but it reminds me again of why I love Pittsburgh. Why this city makes me so emotional that my eyes grow wet. Because it’s a place that built things at one point. Maybe it was the steel in skyscrapers. Perhaps it was the birthplace of someone like Warhol. Or maybe it was the home to someone like Mister Rogers, who took his Neighborhood of Make-Believe and sent it into our homes and tried to get us ready for the world that would come once he was gone.

It’s a dark and frightening place, if I can be perfectly honest with you. There are days where I can’t control the shaking in my body because I get so nervous and worried and unable to decide what to do that I have no recourse other than to just shake.

Maybe I should meditate further on this quote from Rogers: “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has — or ever will have — something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”

I don’t have any of the answers. But I’m trying. And that’s the best we can do. You should see this movie, obviously.

Conrad Vernon started his career as a storyboard artist on Cool World but may be best known as creating and voicing the Gingerbread Man from the Shrek movies. He also co-directed Sausage Party before starting work on this reboot of Addams, who you may remember from the Charles Addams newspaper strips (which started all the way back in 1938), the 1964-1966 TV series or the three films made in the 1990’s, The Addams Family, Addams Family Values and the direct-to-video Addams Family Reunion.

There’s a cute origin story at the beginning of this film, as Gomez (Oscar Issac from the new Star Wars films) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) escape the old country thanks to help from Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll). As they travel to New Jersey, they soon meet Lurch (Vernon).  In truth, they move to Westfield, as that’s where creator Charles Addams grew up.

As we move forward a few years, we meet their children, Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard, who must have the Richard Moll in the 80’s deal to be in nearly every movie that comes out). Pugsley is about to enact the ritual of the Mazurka, which is a sword dancing exhibition that proves that he is man enough to defend his family. It’s kind of like the Addams version of a bar mitzvah.

Meanwhile, reality TV host Margaux Needler (Allison Janney) is creating a town called Assimilation down the hill from the Addams mansion and wants to rid her perfect town of the family.

The message here is that everyone should be unique, which is nice for kids to hear, and that even strange people like the Addams can be a family that loves one another.

There’s plenty of fun voice talent in this, like Snoop Dogg as Cousin Itt, Bette Midler as Grandmama and Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara as Morticia’s parents.

I really enjoyed how the look of this film appears more like the actual comic strip than the TV show, although the end, where the cast appears in the original credits, is a delight.

Hustlers is based on the New York magazine’s 2015 article “The Hustlers at Scores: The Ex-Strippers Who Stole From (Mostly) Rich Men and Gave to, Well, Themselves” by Jessica Pressler. It confirms to me what I’ve always known about men’s clubs. The men think they run the world, but they have little to no power at all, despite the small bits of cash and ego they try to sap from the women who are way above them.

Lorene Scafaria, who wrote Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and wrote and directed Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, wrote and directed this film. It’s told through flashbacks as reporter Elizabeth (Julia Stiles) is working on a story about the girls and how they robbed men to pay for their lives.

Destiny (Constance Wu, Crazy Rich Asians) is dancing at Moves — you know, Scores — to support her grandmother but is barely getting by until she learns the ins and outs of dancing from Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). Seriously, this entire movie should belong to J. Lo. The scene where she mesmerizes Destiny before letting her hide under her fur coat on the roof? That’s why she’s still the biggest star around at fifty.

After the financial crisis of 2007–2008 — and one last night with Usher throwing enough money at the girls to solve all of my money woes for life — things get rough. No one has money and the Russian girls that work the club now are more about selling sexual favors than using their bodies to make money the old fashioned way without really having sex.

That’s when Ramona and Destiny reconnect and start using a mix of Special K and MDMA to knock dudes out and take all of their cash via credit card at the club. Life’s good again, but it can’t last.

The other girls in the film are played by Keke Plamer (who hosts Strahan, Sara and Keke with Sara Haines and Michael Strahan), Lili Reinhart (Betty from Riverdale), transgender actress Trace Lysette (who before she became one of the first trans people to appear as a non-transgender person on prime time television in a speaking role performed as a showgirl in bars around Dayton and Columbus, Ohio), Madeline Brewer (Orange Is the New Black, The Handmaid’s Tale) and Lizzo and Cardi B in what are pretty much cameo roles. Plus, Mercedes Ruhl is the mother of all the ladies.

In truth, Cardi B has admitted to illegally drugging and robbing men in the early stages of her career, so she pretty much knows exactly what this movie is all about. Lopez personally brought the actress on board, saying “I know she knew this world better than any of us. I told her she had to do it. And I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

Stand up comedian Big Jay Oakerson plays the club’s DJ and one of the customers who gets taken is played by Devin Ratray, who was Buzz in the Home Alone films and the bully in Little Monsters.

This wasn’t bad, to be honest. It could have used more of the dog, Mister Bruce, who is a scene stealer. And there’s one scene I’d like to call out: after the Russian girls start, guys start ignoring Ramona, even paying her to leave one evening. Is this movie science fiction? Jennifer Lopez is setting the screen on fire and this dude is like, “We’re all good, thanks.” Certainly, this man is an android from the Weyland-Yutani company and not a stockbroker from the boiler room.

I’ve been reading a lot about the deaths of beloved stars. Like Elvis, who struggling through his final concerts while raving in a mania about killing the karate instructor who he thought stole Priscilla from him to the point he had to be drugged into incoherence before dying from quite possibly overstraining himself on the toilet because all the prescription drugs had torn up his insides so badly. People who had everything but it felt  like nothing, who lived supposedly charmed lives but had given so much of themselves away that there was nothing to do but, well, die.

What can I say? 2019 has kinda been like that.

So here’s another tale of stardom not being as wonderful as it seems, based on the Peter Quilter play End of the Rainbow. This time, we’re following the end of Judy Garland’s career as she relocates to England for a series of sold-out shows at the Talk of the Town in London, only for things to fall apart all over again.

Quilter went on record about the loose adaption of his play by saying that screenwriter Tom Edge wanted the story to be much more true and precise and have less fantasy sequences than his play.

Critics have been all of the map on Renee Zellweger’s performance as the lead. Me, I still can’t come to grips with her new head, but then again, I’m not a woman trying to maintain my relevance in Hollywood. Far be it from me to demand that celebrities not get work done. She acquaints herself well with the musical numbers here to the point that there are moments to cheer about. And it never gets to Lifetime movie mania, so that’s good. Or bad, because you know, I like to wallow in the mud when it comes to biographies.

There’s a scene in the beginning that feels lifting from Crazy RIch Asians as Judy and her two kids can’t afford to stay in a room any longer. But instead of being a lesson in how hotel owners underestimate people, it’s just to illustrate how far Ms. Garland has fallen.

Finn Wittrock, who has been in so many of the American Horror Story shows, plays Garland’s fifth and last husband, Mickey Deans.

Sir Michael Gambon is also here as Bernard Delfont, or by his full title, The Right Honorable Baron Delfont, who was born in Russia as Boruch Winogradsky. He ran the Talk of the Town, bringing in big stars like Sinatra, Shirley Bassey and Eartha Kitt. As EMI’s chief executive from 1979-1980, he also funding for Monty Python’s Life of Brian at the last moment, worried over the religious satire in the film.

Of all the movie, I really enjoyed the flashbacks to Garland’s early life in Hollywood, such as her interactions with Louis B. Mayer, as he explains to her that the gift she has makes her better than other girls, but that it comes with a cost. Or a flashback to a date with Mickey Rooney where a studio executive interrupts so that she can take her amphetamines so she’s not too hungry.

There’s also a nice moment where the two fans who see her every night are surprised that she wants to follow them out for an evening, ending with an all-night singing session at one of their apartments. It’s a pretty emotional moment realizing that Garland has lost so much that these two fans represent nearly all she has left.

Liza Minnelli said on her official Facebook page that she had “never met nor spoken to Renée Zellweger” and made it clear that she didn’t approve of the project. She’s played by Gemma-Leah Devereux from The Tudors in the movie.

Speaking of celebrity, Jessie Buckley, who plays Garland’s assistant in England, broke into showbiz on a reality show called I’d Do Anything. One week, she sang Garland’s “The Man That Got Away.” She’s good in the film, but it seems to set up that there’s going to be a moment of catharsis or learning between their two characters.

That never happens, just a sort of feel good moment where Garland stumbles at singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and the audience helps her finish it, before she asks them to not forget her. This is followed by the gut punch of learning she died six months later.

I guess this is the opposite of a feel good movie. A feel bad one? A good cry? A reminder than maybe it’s a good thing you never became a famous star? You can decide that for yourself.

From the studio that brought you The Jurassic Games, here comes Tower of Silence, which has been described (by its PR department) as “a fantastical, dazzling love letter to The Princess Bride and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.”

When the great sorceress Kaeis captured by a mysterious enemy, her young followers devise a plan to rescue her. So you know, if you enjoy fantasy films about quests and whatnot, this is probably way more for you than me. I mean, it has necromancers and an undead army in it.

This is director Erik Flynn Patton’s first film and he’s in his early twenties, so let’s hope he can deliver on the promise that he shows in this. It’s not a bad first effort and if you enjoy magical mythologies and whatnot, it’s probably more for you than me.

Tower of Silence is available on demand and on DVD from High Octane Pictures. You can also watch it on Tubi.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR company.

When their father (Michael Madsen!) is murdered, three brothers head to an Oregon mountain river to spread his ashes. After they arrive, one of their children goes missing. What makes things worse is that one of the brothers was abducted thirty years ago on the very same river, but he has blocked the incident out of his mind. Only by unlocking the mysteries inside his subconscious can they find the missing child.

Originally known as Children of Moloch, this movie is packed with backwoods menace. It also has Rick Salomon in it. This is the same guy who was in the Paris Hilton leaked adult footage, plus he was married to Shannen Doherty, Pamela Anderson and Elizabeth E.G. Daily. Yes, he sure has lived. His daughter Hunter Daily (yes, E.G.’s daughter) is also in this. Christian Madsen, Michael’s son, shows up too. And look out for Michael Biehn!

While IMDB lists the director as Frank Peluso, all of the marketing material for the film lists Nick Cassavetes as the director. You may know him from films like The Notebook and Alpha Dog, but this is B&S About Movies. We know him as Packard Walsh from The Wraith.

This is written pretty well and feels like Midsommar mixed with a backwoods people messing up normal folks picture. I really liked the occult story about adding an egg to cake mix, even if it’s not really true. The dialogue is really good, though and the movie does a great job of keeping up the tension.

Red Handed is now available on demand and on DVD from High Octane Pictures.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR team. That has no bearing on our review.

Omri Dorani may have only directed one movie before this, but the assured style within this film makes me excited for whatever is next. This Is Our Home is the kind of stylish horror that with a bigger budget would be on the tip of everyone’s tongues.

Filmed over eleven days at producer and lead actress Simone Policano’s house in Woodstock, New York — and mere days after producer & lead actor Jeff Ayars had an emergency appendectomy — this movie tells the tale of a struggling couple who, during a weekend getaway, meet a mysterious child who claims to be their son.

Even though this movie is only 73 minutes, it takes its time with each scene, sometimes relying only on sound and utter blackness to get across its terror. Is the child real? How does he know every secret the couple has? Is he just a manifestation of their worst impulses?

Watch this and see. I was astounded by the high quality of this film. Its long takes and pauses may make too arty for some, but count me as one of its fans.

This Is Our Home is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR department. That has no impact on our review.