I feel like I’ve reached that moment when I have no idea who the kids are listening to which is fine because I’m 51 and pop music is no longer for me. Yet even I know who Lizzo, Lil Nas X and Kendrick Lamar are. I don’t like any of their music, but I can respect the fact that at least the first two have made it pretty far in pop culture despite her being plus sized and him being an out country artist who flirts with Satanic imagery. As for Lamar, it seems like more of the same. But hey — this is a movie blog not me commenting on music.
This seemingly is the perfect movie for grandparents or older aunts to watch so that they have something to talk about with their grandchildren, nieces and nephews whenever things get quiet. “I heard that Lizzo plays the flute” and “Kendrick Lamar is from Compton, just like NWA” would be good starts to the next music talk you have and then they’ll tell you they’ve moved on to something else but in the circle of life, soon they will become old and struggle to know who the next big thing is and require a documentary like this.
On August 13, 1988, a pregnant Shannan Watts disappeared along with her two daughters, four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste. Her husband Christopher Watts went on television to plead for their safe return knowing that he had already murdered his wife and dumped her in a shallow grave and jammed his children into an oil tank in the hopes that he could start a new life with his girlfriend.
Written by Vince Sherry, this brings in friends, family, reporters and experts to discuss the case. At this point, if you’re watching this, you’ve probably already seen this story on several shows and watched American Murder: The Family Next Door on Netflix. I know I’ve seen this before and I just listen to these shows while I work on the site because my wife runs the TV and I just try and think about a world not filled with family annihilators. But that said, if you can’t get enough true crime, here is this show for you to watch and learn how a family fell apart, how Shanann kept using social media to present a perfect family and how her husband found a really attractive new girl and took her sand surfing.
Ishani (Megha Sandhu), Taijah (Alicia Richardson) and Mei-Ling (Erika Prevost) used to be a girl group until a talent show goes wrong. They stop being friends and life just starts to feel darker. Santa (Steven Vlahos) sends them back in time — that’s all the holiday this movie has, because it’s really about the girls getting to experience the 00s again even if they look as old as they are now, so the Hot Tub Time Machine influence is apparent beyond just the name of this. Why else would Taijah’s cousin Caleb (Gabriel Davenport), someone unconnected to their era, go back, just like that movie having the younger friend being involved? Ah, it’s Christmas. I will cut a Tubi Original a break.
While she’s back in time, the thirtysomething teenager — I know that’s what I always say about teen comedies but this is really true — Mei-Ling hooks up with the most popular boy in school so that she can get past the trauma of not being popular. So she uses a young hot boy to get what she wants. Hmm. Should I keep being nice to this movie now?
Everyone in the past says. “Prime directive?” and uses what they know of the future which is their past to start changing the present to change this past which is now their present and the paradoxes! The parallel realities they are creative! The buttery on a wheel! Or whatever! Look, I’m no scientist.
Also, shout out to jamesmcnabb on Letterboxd who rightly points out that this band has no drummer, no guitarist, three vocalists and one that plays bass and the other keyboards, but just knows how to start the presets like that old Casio bossa nova demo. Are they reinventing the way we see rock? Or whatever music this is? Is the future not just female, as Ishani graffitis on a brick wall, but also just bass and keyboards and three women singing?
What has this movie taught us about the spirit of Christmas?
At least they didn’t steal rock music from black people, which is another time travel thing that I’ve never got over. Like I want to make a movie with Body Count where they go back in time and knock out McFly and then Ice T gets with her mom and says stuff like, “Damn, dick” while Ernie C shreds and the Hill Valley High School dweebs just stare and T snarls, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it. Yo Beatmaster V, take these mother fucking bitches back to South Central.” I mean, I would watch that movie.
Madison Jacobs (Kathryn Davis) is a department store executive at the Chester + Wade department store. As she prepares an out of the box menswear fashion show for sponsor Paul Grant (oh man, that’s Scott Thompson, who is doing a show at a winery near me and I kind of want to go but also wish he was playing bigger stages so maybe it makes me sad). Instead of worrying why everyone just goes to Amazon instead of her store — has to hire the perfect Santa, a young one with a sense of style. She hired her best friend Ethan Davis (Franco Lo Presti) to be the dream Santa, who gets a walking through the store intro scene where it is made known that every single person wants to have Santa slide down their chimney and eat all their cookies.
The secret is that Ethan hasn’t told Madison that he’s playing his fake cousin Rafe Hollifield and is trying to win her over after a lifetime of just being friends. And yes, this is the same department store from Christmas On the Slopes.
Directed by Amy Force, who also directed Country Hearts Christmas, We’re Scrooged, Christmas Lucky Charm, Christmas In Rockwell, Christmas On 5th Avenue, Christmas In the Rockies and Dashing Home for Christmas, and written by Paula Tiberius, who wrote Christmas In Big Sky Country, Christmas On the Slops, Country Roads Christmas and Snowbound for Christmas.
Can Santa be hot? Watch this and learn for yourself.
My wife has started doing craft shows selling dog bandanas. Check her work on Instagram. Over the last few months, we’ve been doing a lot of Christmas craft fairs. Other than the demons, I can say from a first-person perspective that Christmas Craft Fair Massacre is the most realistic and truthful movie about craft fairs ever committed to film. Or digital video.
Max Raven and Bando Glutz, well, in the words of Judith Priest, I can neither confirm nor deny that they are also Bret McCormick.
Houston’s Central High School was built on a Native American burial ground — I live next to the second largest one in the eastern part of the country — which means it has lured devil worshippers there, like Principal Mortimer Shade (Tytus Berry), to find the one pure soul — Julie Purebred (Rebecca Bills) — with the help of the mask-wearing Ned (Max Raven). He’s also struggling against the lady who runs the mall, Megara Pendragon (Victoria Chaney), who wants her soul as well.
So yes, this movie may feel like it’s been shot on phones and has long talking sequences that were edited together to make it seem like everyone was in the same room. Who cares? It also has a priest, a shaman, someone who may be the director as well and a nice lady all work together to drop a telekinetic nuke on the craft fair, saving the world and our souls.
I have sat in these fairs and stared at the clock for what seems like days upon days and only ten minutes has moved and maybe I don’t want to be there, but I really love my wife and will do anything for her. But if I could drop a mind bomb on the Monongahela Y before sitting there again for eight hours while someone next to me super hard sells fiberfill pillows and I’ve heard their lines hundreds of times, man, I would drop a bomb that would give Oppenheimer a boner from beyond the grave.
Every review that doesn’t understand this movie was written a person without any holiday spirit.
Directed and written by Alejandro Rojas and Juan Sebastián Vásquez, this is the story of Diego (Alberto Ammann) and Elena (Bruna Cusí) as they attempt to enter the United States. Their trip stops in New York City, where they had hoped to see Diego’s brother before moving to Miami. But as they are lost inside customs, they may never go anywhere.
The frightening thing about Upon Entry is how realistic it is while how much it also feels like something out of Kafka. They get no answers, no food, no water and instead question after question about everything in their lives, which slowly become more intrusive and therefore painful to attempt to answer.
We learn nothing of the situation and these characters other than from the answers that Diego and Elena give to the man and woman (Ben Temple and Laura Gómez) interrogating them. As we wish to learn who they are and why they are being kept, we become complicit in the way they are mistreated.
There are moments throughout this film that disarmed me and then would worry me, as I was caught up in the same questioning techniques, feeling trapped in the same small room as this film’s heroes. Is this what it’s like to come to the land of opportunity? And yet some will see them and their foreign origins as reasons to see them as less than human beings. This movie frightens me the more I consider it.
Directed and written by Bingjia Yang, this is the story of blind swordsman and bounty hunter Cheng the Ghostkiller (Xie Miao). With each kill, he gets closer to being able to pay for an operation to give him sight. Yet he also wants justice to exist and he helps Ni Yan (Gao Weiman), a bride accused of murdering her own brother after being assaulted at her wedding, for personal reasons.
Obviously borrowing from the Zatoichi series — which also inspired Blind Fury — this movie looks gorgeous and has some great visual style when it comes to the fight scenes. You may wonder if a blind swordsman should look so good when he’s slicing the competition into ribbons, but these are not the things you should think about. You should sit back and enjoy the seventy-seven minutes of fast action and a plot that actually is pretty decent.
This movie was successful enough that there’s already a sequel.
A giant sea serpent — much like the Loch Ness Monster — called Willatuk has been in the waters of Seattle for a long time. Well, at least as far back as 2012, when director O.W. Tuthill made Seattle’s Loch Ness: The Lake Washington Sea Monster.
Now, he’s showing how the residents of Seattle deal with the monster, like Chief Clamintile of the Wonkatilla Tribe, whose people worship it as the God of Ocean, or the hunter (Dan Schwert) who has been brought up by his father to kill the beast.
It’s all narrated by Graham Greene and the director/writer is better known for his music work, so that sounds good. I’m kind of astounded by this because a movie that has a horrific monster poster ends up being about interfamily strife and how we deal with the world. Of course, some of the actors are better than others, but this is an oddball movie that just worked for me, as it has a vision and didn’t get notes from anyone. It’s very much it’s own movie.
Punk rocker Kat Oden (Liv Roush) doesn’t do much, other than get high with her lover Nick (John Enick). Then one night, a masked man (James Parks) takes her, chains her to a bad and prepares to do…something. Detective Charles Dobson (Ralph Garman) is trying to find her but she may end up loving being kidnapped a little better than real life.
Directed and written by Josh Roush, who has made several films about Kevin Smith, this was made for almost no money and yet has a solid cast — Daniel Roebuck, David Koechner, Harley Quinn Smith, Donita Sparks from L7, Vernon Wells and Smith — who are all really fun in their roles.
Wrong Reasons has deleted Scenes, outtakes, a Q & A, commentary by director Josh Roush, co-producer Matt Rowbottom, composer Cam Mosavian and star Liv Roush as well as another commentary with Roush and executive producer Kevin Smith, an introduction by Smith, a trailer and more. You can get it from MVD.
7. “META” MILITIA: Be on the lookout for any one of an enemy squadron of self aware films operating in your area. Report if seen…
This film takes the 2018 short film of the same name by the comedy troupe 3Peat and makes an entire horror film around a Juneteenth weekend spent at a cabin in the woods. Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and Shawn (Jay Pharaoh) arrive first and find an old board game from the racist past that challenges them to trivia to the death. She’s shot with an arrow and he’s captured before the credits.
Lisa (Antoinette Robertson), Allison (Grace Byers) and Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins) are the next to arrive, followed by King (Melvin Gregg), Lisa’s ex Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), Shanika (X Mayo) and Clifton (Jermaine Fowler). And just like every 80s slasher, the town is full of dread, scarred up convenience store clerks and authority figures like Ranger White (Diedrich Bader) who get in the way of drugs and sex in the woods.
By the time the substances start working, the board game — The Blackening — is back on the table. The voice of the game’s mascot tells them that he has Morgan and if they want to see him alive, they must answer black pop culture questions. One about the black guest stars of Friends — Aisha Tyler, Gabrielle Union and Janet Hubert would be good answers — leads to Morgan being beaten.
Now, the game changes and claims that whoever is the least black will be killed. Well, Clifton did vote for Trump.
Directed by Tim Story and written by Parker and Tracy Oliver, I laughed out loud at a few moments in this movie and was pleased that it remains an actual slasher despite referencing how much its characters know about horror movies. I mean, the tagline is “We can’t all die first.”
From the cabin being referenced as looking a lot like the Sawyer house to the killers making the ch-ch-ch, ah-ah-ah noises like Jason, there’s even a scene where Morgan goes on and on about an episode of Dateline where a brother and sister kept their incest-bred kids under the stairs. Of course, that’s The People Under the Stairs. And if you love Scream, much less Scream 2, the killer asking if Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps survived is beyond movie geek referential.
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