Every year in October I try to watch and write about a scary movie for each day of the month. Here are my last 16 Scary Movie Mini Reviews for October 2023. Enjoy!
Scary Movie Mini Review #16: One Cut of The Dead (2017) Directed by Shin’ichirō Ueda
Here’s a fun one from Japan: filmmakers making a low budget zombie movie run into real zombies? This movie requires zero spoilers to fully enjoy so I won’t give you any. But if you don’t mind some splattery zombie gore, it’s a fun ride. That’s it. That’s all I can say. Watch it, it’s awesome! (I should watch more zero spoilers movies because writing the reviews for them is so easy.)
Last year I reviewed 31 scary movies, one for each day of October. This October I’m doing it again! Today is halfway through October, so here are the first 15.
Scary Movie Mini Review #1: Kiss of the Vampire (1963) Directed by Don Sharp
This lesser Hammer Horror film has a garish poster that promises “giant devil bats summoned from the caves of hell to destroy the lust of the vampires!” Not surprisingly, the bats are normal sized cheesy rubber puppets on fishing line. Despite that, this movie has a unique tone to it, something surprisingly magical and haunting that’s abandoned in the goofy and rushed climax.
A newlywed couple are on their way by motor car to their honeymoon. They break down somewhere in the German mountains near a castle, and of course there’s a menacing man watching them from a castle window. They end up at a strangely empty inn and are invited to sup with the wealthy doctor and his children who live in the castle. Unsurprisingly the doctor and his children are vampires, but they’re a different type, more satanic personality cultists than undead blood suckers. The young wife is slowly lured into this cult’s clutches, and the husband and local Van Helsing wannabe must save her. All this is rote cliché, but what stands out as unique is the slow, menacing pace and tone, the texture of long gray rainy days and gloomy moonlit nights. These vampires remind me more of the secret society in Eyes Wide Shut than the Draculas in countless vampire flicks, and their menace is more in the way they corrupt your soul than your blood. It’s a pity that the ridiculous rubber bats flap in at the end and ruin everything.
This October, to celebrate Halloween, I’m writing 31 mini reviews of scary movies. Here are the first 15:
Scary Movie Mini Review #1: The Munsters (2022) Directed by Rob Zombie
A surprisingly cute, very silly and fairly faithful prequel to the original Munsters TV show. The stacked-to-the-ceiling art design, crazy colorful neon lighting and off-kilter camera angles are bonkers but mostly fun. My only quibbles: too much background music telegraphing the comedy when it’s already working fine without it, and maybe a bit too drawn out of a running time with a weirdly abrupt ending. If you like the Munsters and want to admire Rob Zombie’s unique filmmaking style without watching an R-rated gore-fest, I think you’ll mostly enjoy this.
Scary Movie Mini Review #2: The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) Directed by Oz Perkins
Tragic drama by way of horror, the Blackcoat’s Daughter is a story about an emotionally isolated young woman who feels so alone that she’s willing to be accepted by anyone who will have her, or in this case, any thing. The film is set in the depths of two frigid, snow-bound Februaries and vividly captures the desolate feelings winter can summon. Some disturbing violence unfolds, but it’s surprisingly overshadowed by empathetic, overwhelming sadness. An effective supernatural chiller that also feels very real.
Hequet is the fourth episode in my web miniseries Summer Stories, and my latest attempt at telling a story with images and sounds only. With this silent style of filmmaking, strong composition, music cues and actor’s movement and facial expressions are key to telling the story. This style of film storytelling has always appealed to me because it places so much emphasis on the cinematography and forces the viewer to engage with the story in a creative way–they have to piece the story together themselves rather than it being handed to them on an exposition platter. I’ve always enjoyed mystery in stories, leaving some of the big questions unanswered, and Hequet is no exception. What happened to the man’s wife? Is the statue really a supernatural entity or just in the man’s head? Who is the mysterious masked woman? Well, that question at least can be answered by watching Summer Stories Episode 3.
I hope you enjoy Hequet, and maybe even get a little spooked in the process! It was certainly a joy to create.
Star Wars Episode 8 is only a month away! To prep for it, why not follow my elaborate and exhaustive Star Wars saga viewing plan?
1. Star Wars: Episode I – the Phantom Menace
Come for the podrace, stay for the final lightsaber fight. This was one of my favorite films growing up, and though the acting and screenplay are pretty rough, it’s probably the most beautifully detailed Star Wars film to date and the most Flash Gordon-esque of the series.
After Watching “Rogue One” multiple times last weekend I was surprised by the similarities between it and George Lucas’s “The Star Wars,” his original draft for what would eventually become “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” I just re-read “The Star Wars,” which you can find here, and I’ve broken down the similarities between it and “Rogue One” chronologically. Obviously there are plenty of spoilers ahead, so reader be warned!
As a storyteller Quentin Tarantino is a cold-hearted chess player. He sets up his characters on the board and then pits them against each other in violent combat, gazing unflinchingly at the resulting carnage, uncaring and unmoved. This clinical approach seemed to be slipping slightly in Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, in which he seemed to truly care for a couple of the characters he sent into the fray, but its back with a vengeance in The Hateful Eight, which is undoubtedly his most sadistic and amoral film to date. That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its redeeming features, but you have to dig through a couple of inches of gore to find them.
This summer brought us not one super spy film, but two, with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and when the holiday movie months arrived, it was once again time for another entry in the James Bond franchise: Spectre. Instead of reviewing these three films separately I decided to pit them against each other in a no-holds barred fight to the death. Let’s see who’s left standing when the dust clears.
Characters
Every film needs them, and Mission Impossible has a couple, but they’re all pretty bland. It feels like they all have interesting back stories and relationships that have happened off screen, I just wish they could have happened on screen instead. Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg play their parts amiably, and Tom Cruise’s Agent Ethan Hunt is steely eyed and daring as ever but not much else. Many of the characters in this film were introduced in 2011’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, but then as now they had little depth or development. For such a huge franchise, it feels like an opportunity to create enduring screen characters has been wasted.
All photographic undertakings require some artifice and trial and error. The photographer or filmmaker isn’t so much capturing the exact right image or moment as he is capturing many images and moments and looking for the best in the editing stage. This has always been the case. It reflects the fact that we’re not the creator so much as the created, trying to capture a piece of creation.
Why do all the best films come out in the space of three months?! My wallet and I wish the studios would space them out equally over the course of a year, but there is something fitting about the quality of cinema climbing as we approach our holy days. Here are some mini reviews of the 2015 awards season films I’ve seen so far.
Sicario
Every once in a while I see a film that already feels like a classic, and Sicario is one of those kinds of films. Emily Blunt plays FBI agent Kate Macer who is frustrated by the violent drug crimes she encounters daily in her hometown.
Summer–time for staying at home and lazily watching Netflix!
Blue Ruin
2013. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
The family feud is a staple of classic American storytelling, but it’s hard to imagine the backwoods familial wars portrayed in, say, Huckleberry Finn happening in modern day America. That’s why Blue Ruin is so compelling–it tells a story of revenge and violence between two feuding families that you wouldn’t imagine could happen today, but in a totally convincing way.
I had a really great time at the cinema in 2014, and these are my top five favorite films.
1. Interstellar
I loved this film! I went to see it three times, it moved and inspired me, and even brought me to tears. Interstellar feels like a return to the cinema of the past. It’s full of grand imagery, thundering romantic music cues and features an epic science fiction adventure plot that has very real human stakes.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is as close as filmmaking has come to capturing the feel of reading a super hero comic book. It’s jammed full of thrilling action scenes, muddled plots and subplots, sci-fi techno babble, obscure character cameos, and iconic images. An elaborate fight scene near the end is staged in slow-motion, almost like the individual panels of a comic. It’s not a great film, and it’s certainly not as well conceived or paced as it’s predecessor, but it sure is a joy to behold if you’re a fan of the genre, and especially so if you like super hero comics.
I haven’t done one of these in a while. I still owe you a Summer 2014 Films Part 2 review, but my computer recently crashed and I lost the file. Maybe I’ll post a re-write eventually. In the mean time…
Birdman
2014. Directed By Alejandro González Iñárritu
At its core, Birdman is an observation of man and his sense of worth. It repeatedly asks the question “Is it important to be important?” That question is dodged more than it’s answered, and the story often seems to be more interested in observing the intricacies of stage acting and actors, or mocking popular cinema, or naively criticizing critics. When it does get focused, it’s a fairly intense, emotional observation, with a camera that gets right up into actors faces as they wax eloquent or scream angrily. It offers few answers but raises a lot of engaging questions. The actors are all great. There’s a drum soundtrack that’s killer. It’s definitely worth a watch.
I think I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with filmmakers–many of them just don’t have good sense. Picture this: it’s a year from now and you’re watching the new Star Wars film. There’s a scene where something stupid happens–I mean really stupid, like Chewbacca doing a back-flip in space and blowing Darth Vader’s clone away with a giant rocket launcher. You’re annoyed because this “just doesn’t feel like Star Wars.” Your friends laugh at you and say “of course it does! It’s a popcorn flick after all, what were you expecting? It’s pure cinema!” But is it? Would a film almost entirely devoted to action mayhem really be on par with Lucas’s original Star Wars classic? I don’t think it would be, and here’s why.
I’m thinking about canceling my Netflix subscription. Why? Why not a little history first?
Years ago people would dress up to go to a stage play. Attending the theater was a special occasion, a way to relax after a hard week, or even month of labor. With the advent of cinema nothing much changed. Most people treated movies like they treated theater—as a special night of entertainment. Going to the movies was still at most a once a week event, and people still dressed up.
There’s a new camera in my life! This summer Blackmagic dropped the price of their little Pocket Cinema Camera, and I snatched one up. It’s incredibly powerful for it’s size and delivers a much higher quality image than my Canon DSLR ever did. I picked up a vintage C-mount lens from the antique store–a Bausch and Lomb 26mm f/1.9–and with the help of a Fotodiox C-Mount to Micro Four Thirds adapter I shot a quick demo with it. Here’s the result:
God bless Peter Jackson. He has a good heart and he clearly loves making movies. Nothing shows his love for this craft more than The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. It’s a film packed to near bursting with thrilling sights, passioned monologues and epic moments. Sad to say it has more in common with Dungeons and Dragons, a derivative version of Middle Earth, than it does with Tolkien’s original classic. Continue reading →
