I was recently in DC, and it’s not really hanging out with friends unless you subject them to something sublime or face-clawingly awful. A nearby theatre was showing Willow; seeing the flop fantasy turned cult classic seemed like a way to satisfy everyone.
I hadn’t seen it in at least twenty years, and remembered only that Val Kilmer could barely handle his hair, the baby had great faces, and the credits rolled under the Renn Faire flute jig to end ‘em all.
Wow, did I forget a LOT about Willow.… Read more »

[Note: Alien Resurrection was the winning bid for Con or Bust. Turns out that is, in fact, what it took for me to watch Alien Resurrection again all the way.]
Watching Alien Resurrection is like going to an extremely confusing and uneven semester of a mildly-unaccredited film school; you learn the importance of repetitive visual motifs to establish relationship dynamics, and and you also learn that one-upping the last installment in your inherited franchise should take priority over everything else no matter what, NOW CALL THE EFFECTS GUYS.… Read more »

A woman sits at a table, making paper chains. She has a worm inside her; the man who put it there is asleep in her bed. He’s halfway through taking everything she has. When she wakes up again after the worm (in a process so surreal it’s better experienced than described), her life is broken.. A man who carries the same wounds, in every sense, sees her on a train. He says hello.
That each of these moments is almost unbearably tense is part of the art of Upstream Color;… Read more »

In which I tackle a horror movie just bad enough that I can get through ten minutes of it, and in which I also can never escape Sam Neill. Is that my personal early-1990s horror-movie fate? Sam Neill everyplace? Let’s find out together, shall we?
Timestamp: 00:46:17
We open with this kid, who’s very scary, mostly because of his hair:

Someone telekinetically opens and slams the doors; maybe Satan, but also maybe it’s just this kid. I’ve seen kids! They slam anything!
The doors open again to reveal a smug… Read more »

Roger Ebert died today. I wanted to write something about it; I tried thinking back to my first review of his, maybe, as an intro.
But I couldn’t remember. I’ve never watched movies without Roger Ebert there.
When I was a kid I remember sneaking looks at Ebert and Siskel talking about movies that were only for grown-ups, and watching Ebert’s face light up when he was talking about a moment he enjoyed. When I was nine, I remember being relieved that he loved Beauty and the Beast as much… Read more »

The Host, released this weekend, comes accompanied by a lot of baggage, from its source material to the fact that it was directed by the man who made Gattaca and then somehow also made In Time. Perhaps more than the story it was meant to tell, this movie is trying to tell the story of a viable big-budget non-series YA novel-to-movie endeavor. From box office returns, it sounds like that’s not going well.
From seeing the movie, I’m not at all surprised. Here are ten things you should know about… Read more »