Tag Archives: 2023

PARAMOUNT 4K UHD RELEASE: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

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Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote it with Erik Jendresen, this is the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Fallout and the seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. I have no real affinity or knowledge of these, so I went in cold.

A rogue AI known as The Entity has destroyed the Russian stealth submarine where it was housed, the Sevastopol, in the hope that it can be released into the world. IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team have been called in to retrieve it for the U.S., as any government that uses this AI will be ahead. Or so they think, as it is already self-aware. After all, it can manipulate cyberspace itself to control global defense intelligence and financial networks. 

This brings Ethan into the orbit of rogue MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who has a price on her head thanks to CIA director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny). The battle to destroy the AI takes the team all over the world, as they chase Grace (Hayley Atwell), an agent who has already stolen the part Ethan had, while disarming nuclear bombs in airports. That means that you get Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Beni Dunn (Simon Pegg) as Ethan’s fellow agents, as they also go to war with the CIA, who want to arrest them, and the soldiers who work for The Entity, like Gabriel (Esai Morales) and Paris (Pom Klementieff).

The start of Cruise’s last films in this series is the kind of high-action epic that delivers on all fronts. It feels like this series has taken the ball from Bond and run with it, pushing the stunts beyond the Bourne movies and turning them into roller coasters all their own. Even without knowing the characters and their backstories, the car chase in Italy and the airport scenes are so full of twists and turns that I found this an entertaining watch, liking it way more than I thought I would.

How to Kill Monsters (2023)

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Directed by Stewart Spark, who wrote the script with Paul Butler, this begins with the end of a movie: Jamie Lancaster (Lyndsey Craine) is the sole survivor of a monster attack in a cabin in the woods. Claiming that her friends were killed by these creatures, she is arrested by the local cops and locked up for a crime she didn’t commit. Before too much running time, the police station is ripped from our reality and thrown into a nightmarish dimension of elder gods who want to return to ours and taste human flesh.  

Within this squad house, there’s Inspector Landry (Andrina Carroll), who is getting too old for this shit and is ready to retire. There are two cops who don’t get along, Dennis (Arron Dennis) and Melvin (Daniel Thrace). And an entire jail cell of criminals and those arrested for getting out of control, like soon-to-be-wed Blair (Fenfen Huang) and her bridesmaids Ruth (Juné Tiamatakorn), Chelsea (Michaela Longden) and Crystal (Louella Gaskell). They’ll all have to confront the Lovecraftian horrors at the center of this fun comedy horror hybrid. Nicholas Vince, who was the Chatterer Cenobite, even has a small role.

This is a party movie, one best enjoyed with an entire room of friends and a bunch of beer. Sure, there are plenty of twists and turns at the end, but this is also full of gore and even has a chainsaw attack. I had a blast with it and am looking forward to whatever Spark and Butler do next.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ATTACK OF THE KAIJU DAY: Big Freaking Snake (2023)

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Something is causing the rattlesnakes in Southern California to mutate to enormous sizes, and it’s up to Dr. Kaye (Mercedes Peterson) to stop their growth before they destroy Los Angeles. And yes, Dustin Ferguson already made Rattlers 2, but sure, he’ll make it again.

Most of the cast of the Ferguson movies show up. Dawna Lee Heising and Shawn C. Phillips are killed during a 4th of July party, and Brinke Stevens gets into a bathtub full of snakes, which soon kill her. 46 minutes or so of snake mayhem follows, including a big snake, and then ends with nature footage. And no real ending. You expect that by this point. But did you expect nearly ten minutes of nature footage?

Take a look at the box art. You’re about to make fun of it. Well, you’re not the person that this movie is for. Judge accordingly.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ATTACK OF THE KAIJU DAY: Jurassic Croc (2023)

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Immortal Species is an OK title.

Jurassic Croc sells.

Nava is a botany student looking for a plant called a chalawan. He and his friends travel through the jungle to find it and you guessed it, most of them get masitcated by a man-eating crocodile.

Look at this IMDB trivia and marvel that someone wastes as much time as I do on movies like this: “The plant they are looking for in the film is called “Chalawan”. Well, Chalawan is an extinct genus of folidosaurid mesoeucrocodilid folidosaurid known from the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous Phu Kradung Formation of Nong Bua Lamphu province, northeastern Thailand. It contains a single species, Chalawan thailandicus, with Chalawan shartegensis as a possible second species.”

This movie could use less high school romance and more people eating. I think that’s true for almost every film I have ever watched.

You can watch this on Tubi.

2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 31: Halloween Fan Films: Halloween Nightfall (2023), Michael Myers: Absolue Evil (2016), The Nightmare Ends On Halloween II (2011)

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31. I REMEMBER HALLOWEEN: This night, anything goes.

I hate that in the new Halloween films, we’re told the sequels no longer exist, yet they’re still endlessly referenced. Sure, I could be happy with just watching the first two films, but every year, with every new Halloween, the movies that came before seem to get better.

Until we get a good one, there are fan films.

Halloween Nightfall is the kind of movie that you need to shut your mind off for. It tells how Michael got from Smith’s Grove to Haddonfield, but it’s not set in 1978. So you get a Scream mask, a Jason costume, an inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and “Thriller” playing in the same world where Annie, Laurie and Lynda walk home from school with the same dialogue and the same “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” And you get a way better-looking film than most streaming films, created by director Jackson Bennink.

Maybe the Michael in this looks small, perhaps his mask is very Spirit Store, but the director actually took his time doing color balancing and setting up more than just medium shots the entire time, which is above and beyond what I expect for even professional streaming horror these days.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Michael Myers: Absolue Evil (2016): I hate it in true crime when they tell us that before a murder in a small town, that everyone once kept their doors unlocked and after, they knew what evil was. As this short starts, a movie that imagines the Halloween films as if they were real, we hear from Lindsay Wallace, who survived the original attack. She informs us that the entire town knew that he was just a few miles away in Smith’s Grove, at all times, so they had already lived in fear.

With experts like Edgar Warsam, the author of The Devil’s Eyes: The Story of Michael Myers, and filmmaker John Borowski, as well as a news interview with Michael’s mother Edith, director and writer Rick Gawel’s film expands on which of the movies told the right story — yes, the adaptions exist in this world — and an entire sequence that explains the Thorn cult and how it ties into the story of The Shape.

I wish this had a bigger budget; if it had a more TV-like look, it would have been perfect. That said, many of the actors are really great. The sequence that breaks down Halloween II as if it were an actual crime show is absolutely perfect. And going deep into the history of Dr. Loomis is incredible.

This could be a bit shorter and sharper, but for what it is and the budget that it had, it’s pretty good. I’d love to see this with a crew that has worked on true crime and a bit better graphic design. It’d make a great extra feature on a box set.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Nightmare Ends On Halloween II (2011): Directed and written by Chris R. Notarile, this takes the mid-2000s idea of mixing franchises beyond what studios were ready for, creating a trial for Freddy Krueger in which he’s judged by Pinhead and forced to face off with Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers.

Roberto Lombardi, who plays Krueger, has done so in several other fan films, while Hector De La Rosa, who is Jason, has also been in several Snake Pliskin fan films.

Notarile, who also did the effects for this, has also directed movies about the Black Terror, Red Widow, US Agent, Phantom Lady, Spawn, James Bond, Candyman, The Shadow, Darkman and more. You can see his movies on his YouTube page.

I love that Leatherface and The Shape are the same actor, Anthony Palmisano. Even more, I absolutely love that Freddy defeats Leatherface with a nut shot. “Fucking rednecks,” he says.

You can watch this on YouTube.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 24: Heard She Got Murdered (2023)

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24. A Horror Film Directed by Charles Roxburgh

At the end of Heard She Got Married, Mitch Owens (Matt Farley) has returned home from Nashville, and all his old friends have become enemies; the girls he once loved have married his friends. And to watch this — it’s streaming and doesn’t say that it’s a sequel, so some could be lost — you have to know that Mitch has lost it and done something horrible.

Unlike everyone else in the world, when people tell Mitch something, he believes it if it lives up to his dream of playing music. Just those moments when he is on stage and it works make it all worthwhile, even if he’s now a big fish in a small pond. But for a little while, he was the only person in Tritown to get away.

With Tara gone — which you need to see the last movie, and I don’t want to spoil it, but maybe she isn’t gone — Mitch starts to rebuild his life, starting a new band, even if people want to call them The Barricades. The promoter wants them to be beefy. The band might not be able to handle the nonstop creativity that Mitch needs. And the promoter cuts their sound, just as Detective Mayo (Jay Mayo) is convinced that Mitch couldn’t have done the crimes he’s been accused of. Promoters never want to pay and always look for ways out. Mitch might even have a new love interest (Theresa Peterson), or he’s always looking for ways to get his music played.

Every Moturn movie that Roxburgh and Farley make gets stuck in my head because they feel real. I’ve actually spoken with Matt, and his unbridled need to make things is real. I always wonder how much is true and how much is the movie; I don’t want to know, I just want to see everything they make.

I take it personally when people leave negative reviews of these. Seriously, it’s like someone talking shit on one of my friends’ bands.

There are teasers for three different sequels: Heard He Got Multiplied, Evil DJ and Sinister Siesta. I’m ready for all of them. The Moturn Cinematic Universe is a real thing. This ties in several of the films and feels like it goes full mad science, just like Magic Spot. Again: here for all of it.

You can watch this on Fawesome.

GENREBLAST FILM FESTIVAL: SHORTS BLAST #2 // RETURN OF THE SCI-FANTASTIC

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The best sci-fi and fantasy shorts GenreBlast has to offer.

The Man That I Wave At (2025): Directed and written by Bob Hylan, this hit on something that I think about all the time. Sam Pamphilon keeps wondering why a neighbor, Marek Larwood, waves at him. They don’t know one another. How has he become so familiar with him? Why does that waving guy in front of the store, those air blowing things, stay at his post all day? Why are people trying to drive him insane? How can we know anyone outside of ourselves, except on a superficial level, and even then, we only know them based on the outward perception and our own unconscious bias? Maybe I’m thinking too much…but this was a great short with a perfect punchline at the end.

Supercritical (2025): The place? A post-apocalyptic nuclear fallout shelter. The issue? A young scientist (Misha Brooks) bothers the team leader (Amanda Bruton) with a series of progressively inane HR requests, including how many days off he gets at the end of the world. Directed and written by John Osment, this does a perfect job of showing off the inanity of the workforce, what it’s like to be an older leader and how the world doesn’t end when they tell us that it’s all over. The struggle of your job will remain.

Song Is a Spell (2023): Director and writer Cameron Kit is “a feminist sci-fi filmmaker and video artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She has directed over 30 films. Cameron is the host of the podcast and radio program They Came From Outer Space, a sci-fi movie review show airing on WRIR 97.3 since December 2018. She is the founder and CEO of YOYOS, a documentary storytelling company focused on future tech like AI, nanotech and Urban Air Mobility.” In this short, an all-girl band, Caliban, accidentally unleashes a spell during band practice when Ana brings her spell book to practice and uses it for lyrics. This almost causes Flow and Rosemary, her bandmates, to split the band. Can they solve problems and actually improve at playing? I had a lot of fun with this one, as it really gets across the yearning of being in a band.

The Weatherman Who Knew Too Much (2025): Directed and written by Kaylin Allshouse, this has washed-up weatherman Barry (Beau Roberts) finding out how to predict the weather from a fortune teller named Great (Catherine Collier). All he really wants is Anglie (Angela Katherine), the bartender whom he sees every night, but as he becomes famous, he must decide what is most important to him. I really could see this as a full-length film and enjoyed this one quite a lot.

Connection (2025): In this short by Tom White, Agent Carsons (Joshua T. Shipman) is tasked with interrogating an extraterrestrial (Trip Rumble), but learns that he himself is the experiment, as the sessions begin to cause visions of his ex-wife (Maggie Gough) and leave a voice inside his head. I really liked the unexpected nature of this — it seems as if you’re being set up in one way and White takes you down a completely different path. Definitely a head-scratcher in all the best of ways.

Deb & Joan (2025): Isaac Rathbone directs and writes this short, in which a scientist (Leah Nicole Raymond) is surprised that a robot (Gabby Sherba) has developed not just a sense of humor, but feelings for her. The lead scientist, Dr. Roman (John Austin Wiggins), demands that she see the astronaut robot as just that, a machine, before a four-year mission to Ceres, a moon of Jupiter. Rathbone said, “Our team is developing a retro-future aesthetic for this project. No ray guns, beehive hairdos or mylar jumpsuits. Instead, audiences will see the future from a perspective of the past. The world and technology of Deb & Joan will have a feeling of continuing evolution as opposed to being polished and sleek.” This film lives up to its promise and succeeds despite its short running time and small budget.

Astrovan (2025): Matt Heder directed and wrote (with Bryson Kearl and Will Hunter Thomasan) this film, one of my favorite shorts that I’ve seen at GenreBlast, in which Max (Andrew Lindh) and his pet pig Cliff want to watch a Trailblazers game, which causes them to get the help of Roger (Steve Agee) and then…aliens.  Van life, cooking recipes, promises to fathers, conspiracy theories…this is like my YouTube Watch Later but all in one well-made short. I loved this and want more of these characters and this story.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Beau Is Afraid (2023)

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Sept 1-7 John Waters Best of the Year Week: To be fair, these movies aren’t ALL funny, but JOHN WATERS is funny. He’s become more of a writer and public commentator these days. Still, he helps keep the arthouse from taking itself too seriously with his annual top-ten lists, while celebrating the comically serious.

I knew that Beau Is Afraid would be my Southland Tales or Under the Silver Lake.

Ari Aster made two movies that generated a lot of hype: Hereditary and Midsommar. Like the two films I mentioned above, Beau Is Afraid is very much a movie being made by a creative who has that rare moment of being able to get anything they want and going wild.

Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) hasn’t had the best of lives. His father died while making love to his mother (Patti LuPone), and he’s waited his whole life for Elaine (Parker Posey), whom he met once on a cruise ship. Now, he’s trapped in a crime-filled city, shoved out of his apartment, hit by a truck and stabbed by a serial killer. He’s saved by Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane), but things fall to pieces, as they do throughout, as their daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers) tries to get him to drink paint, angry that he’s replaced her dead brother. She dies instead, and her mother sends a vet, Jeeves (Denis Ménochet), after him. Roger had promised to take Beau to his mom’s funeral, but now who knows? As it is, he’s lost in the woods, watching a play by The Orphans of the Forest, which he takes on as part of his real life; then Jeeves shows up and kills everyone.

He finally makes it home and gets to make love to Elaine, who dies, and then his mother appears, taking him to an attic filled with his twin brother and his father, a penis monster who kills Jeeves. Yes, I just wrote that. Beau tries to escape, and he finds out that he’s on trial. His mother has records of every visit to his therapist (Richard Cohen), and no matter how much he defends himself, his mother refuses to listen. His boat exploded, and he decided to give in, drowning. The end, as the audience leaves.

What does it mean? Aster and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski said that Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life were all films that influenced this. There’s also a realization that Mona has controlled Beau’s life all along, and everyone, even Emily, was all his employees, paid enough for their family for years to be happy as long as they were in his life. It also feels like a piss take on the audience, who are expecting a great adventure and are given strange journeys through someone’s life that go nowhere.

Is it about anything? Does it have to be about anything in particular? Maybe it’s about ambition and what you can do when you can do just about any movie you want. It speaks to a big vision, so much grander than his past films, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

John Waters said, “A superlong, super-crazy, super-funny movie about one man’s mental breakdown with a cast better than Around the World in 80 Days’: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, Nathan Lane, and Amy Ryan. It’s a laugh-riot from hell you’ll never forget, even if you want to.”

GENREBLAST FILM FESTIVAL: SHORTS BLAST #1 // FOUNDERS FEAST

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A selection of darkly humorous genre shorts that match Chad & Nate’s sensibilities perfectly.

In Old Ranchos (2025): Directed by Matthew Lucas, who co-wrote the story with Patrick Flynn, this is the story of an old west lawman (Krymis J. Fernando) on the run who meets a seductive siren (Natalia Berger) who offers him a chance to fix his past. This is absolutely gorgeous, and that short description will not prepare you for the film you’ll watch, one that combines what feels like the Italian West with horror, multiple realities, and a shocking ending that, although you’ll see coming, is the perfect payoff. Wow — one of the best shorts I’ve seen in some time.

 

Olga’s Eyes (2023): Olga (Viviane de Muynck) is a vampire who loves music but is trying to settle into her old age, and with that comes a dislike of killing. Her daughter, Simone, thinks that she can still help people, so she places her in an old folks’ home where she can assist those close to death in crossing over to the other side. Directed and written by Sarah Carlot Jaberthis, this film, shot in black and white and nearly silent save for its soundtrack, offers a loving look at the vampire genre while illustrating that age catches up with all of us, even those who claim they will remain young forever.

Baby Blues — Going Dark (2025): James P. Gleason directs and writes this short, in which Barney (Tyler Poelle) needs a tooth out and turns to a substitute dentist, Dr. Carroway (Shanti Lowry) and her assistant Penny (Aliya Victoriya). Having a tooth pulled is bad enough, but what happens when the power goes out? How about no anesthesia? Maybe going to the dentist isn’t a big deal for those who have experienced BDSM, but there’s no pain like tooth pain. Those shots in the gumline hurt now, and I haven’t been to the dentist in months. This short may frighten you more than any other horror film this year, depending on how you feel about your molars.

Boiling Point (2025): Doug is having the worst day of his life. Guy Time is on their way to a boy band competition. A car crash brings them together, and nothing will be the same again. Directed and written by Nathan Declan Gallagher, this film boasts incredible character work, as nearly everyone in it has a fully formed personality, and the production seems way more informed and intelligently written than many full-length films. This was quite the start to my movie fest watching at GenreBlast!

ARROW VIDEO BLU RAY RELEASE: Perpetrator (2023)

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Directed and written by Jennifer Reeder, this is the tale of Jonny (Kiah McKirnan), a teenage girl living in a town where young women keep disappearing. Before she turns 18, her father sends her to live with Aunt Hilde (Alicia Silverstone) and undergo a family spell, the Forevering.

Now, Jonny thirsts for blood and is filled with power. She decides that she will be the one to find these women and to destroy whoever has been stealing them. That sounds basic, but when you see the dynamic colors by director of photography Sevdije Kastrati, you’ll realize this is something special.

This is a serial killer movie, a coming-of-age tale, a feral beast inside a young woman, a detective story, a superhero movie of sorts, and so many other things. It is many things, sometimes too many things and yet the one thing it is never safe. It’s in no way boring, either. It’s a bright burst of color, of ideas, of blood and gore, of a filmmaker going for it.

This limited edition Blu-ray has new audio commentary by writer-director Jennifer Reeder and director of photography Sevdije Kastrati, a video essay by filmmaker Jen Handorf, on-set cast interviews with Kiah McKirnan, Alicia Silverstone, Melanie Liburd and Christopher Lowell, two music videos and three short films directed by Reeder, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options by Creepy Duck Design and Duke Aber / Shudder and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Kat Hughes and Marianne Lampon. You can order the film from MVD.