Tag: Horror

Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2016

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

So who else is ready for this year to be over?  I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who felt that things got pretty rough over the last twelve months, but we’ll get to the Bad list soon enough.  For now, let’s try to focus on the things that were GOOD about 2016; namely the movies that you all should have gone out to see when they were still in theaters.  Unlike last year, I did manage to see quite a bit more movies which has led to a somewhat more well-rounded list, even if you can probably guess which genres got a lot of love from me this year.

Without further ado, LET’S START COUNTING!!

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Honorable Mention: Skiptrace

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Now last year I needed an extra spot just to fit an indie film on my list as most of what my local theater got was just the mainstream fare and therefore those kinds of films completely dominated my Best Of list.  This time I actually went through the effort of seeing the smaller stuff, and while most of them still didn’t make it on my list, at least there’s SOME representation this time around to help fill things out.  Because of that, I figured I’d be less serious with my unofficial eleven spot and would choose a movie that wasn’t exactly GOOD but a hell of a lot of fun.  It was a tossup between Skiptrace and Huntsman: Winter’s War, but I’m gonna give it to the Jackie Chan flick just out of sheer nostalgia.  It’s a Renny Harlin action comedy starring Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville; basically making this the greatest thing imaginable for the ONE GUY out there that loves Jackie Chan buddy films but also thinks that Die Hard 2 is the best in the series and that Johnny Knoxville is an underrated actor.  So basically it was made for me and no one else (Die Hard 2 is criminally underrated).  Look, this movie is really sloppy, especially on the production side (why the hell is Jackie Chan subbed, dubbed, and ACTUALLY speaking English all in the same movie!?), but it’s got so many joyful and delightfully stupid moments like Johnny Knoxville being rolled down a hill in a garbage can or Jackie Chan getting in a fist fight while using a Russian Nesting Doll as a shield that it makes up for the cliché ridden script and lack of any real structure.  Even the stuff that’s straight up incompetent is hilarious like how the script puts these two on a train for no other reason than to jump off of it two minutes later, or how a woman gets shot three times and there’s ZERO blood to show for it.  It all adds to the goofy charm that makes it hard to stop watching even knowing just how bad the plot is that revolves around Jackie and Johnny needing to cross all of China looking for a damn cell phone charger.  In the end, none of that ends up mattering all that much when you’ve got Johnny Knoxville trying to dodge bowling balls or when we get to see drunk ass Jackie Chan singing Rolling in the Deep while hanging out in a Mongolian village.  If you’re looking for something incredibly silly and nonsensical with just enough sincerity and heart to avoid coming off as too cynically made just on Jackie’s star power, then you’ll definitely have a good time here.  Also, if you like watching Johnny Knoxville get the crap beat out of him because that happens constantly!

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Cinema Dispatch: Incarnate

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 4 Comments

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Incarnate and all the images you see in this review are owned by Blumhouse Tilt, High Top Releasing, and Universal Pictures

Directed by Brad Peyton

I go to see a lot of movies, and I don’t think I saw a single trailer for this at any of them; not even other horror films or Blumhouse productions.  That seems pretty strange though considering they’ve got a well-known actor in here with Aaron Eckhart who may not be quite A list, but should be enough to sell a movie like this, and yet it seems to have slipped completely under the radar.  That’s usually a bad sign, but it’s not always the case as films like last year’s We Are Your Friends was a movie I never heard of until I went to the theater to see it, and that turned out to be pretty solid; especially compared to other Zac Effron outings like Dirty Grandpa and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.  Maybe the same is true for this little horror flick.  I mean… it’s possible… right?  Either way, let’s find out!!

The movie begins as most demon possession movies do with a young child getting his soul hijacked from some horrifying hell spawn with the victim here being Cameron (David Mazouz) who seems to catch it from this homeless woman as the demons here apparently jump from host to host.  Naturally, the Vatican is all over this and sends out one of their representatives (Catalina Sandino Moreno) to keep an eye on things, but it soon becomes clear that conventional methods are gonna take care of it this time.  Instead, she calls upon… Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart)!  Who is he?  Well he’s some guy who looks to have watched Inception a few too many times and has come up with a new exorcism technique where he goes into the mind of those possessed and convince their subconscious or whatever to reject the monster that is feeding off of their soul.  Of course, Dr. Ember isn’t some bright eyed idealist who’s doing this for the good of mankind!  He has a DARK PAST full of TRAGEDY and WOE, and the techniques he’s developed were all in service of killing ONE DEMON SPECIFICALLY who has something to do with said tragic past.  Of course, it JUST SO HAPPENS (or maybe not?) that the kid is being possessed by that ONE SPECIFIC DEMON, so Dr. Ember begrudgingly takes the case along with his two hipster tech brats Riley and Oliver (Emily Jackson and Keir O’Donnell).  Will Dr. Ember finally gets the vengeance that has eluded him all these years?  Will he be able to save Cameron in the process, or will Ember see him as expendable in the pursuit of a greater goal?  What… exactly did I just sit though?

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“Maybe I will do that I, Frankenstein sequel after all.  It wasn’t THAT bad, was it?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Shut In

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Shut In and all the images you see in this review are owned by EuropaCorp

Directed by Farren Blackburn

So when did this movie get announced, because I didn’t know anything about it until I looked up the new releases for this week.  It’s not like Naomi Watts is an unknown actor, and horror movies are big business right now, so the fact that I didn’t even see a trailer for this at any of the horror films I saw this year is not a great sign of what’s to come.  Still, it’s not like movies that get a whole bunch of press are guaranteed to do any better, and a lot of great horror films don’t even get a theatrical release, so maybe they just didn’t know how to sell something like this.  Does this film deliver yet another fantastic horror experience in a year that has already had so many, or will this just get lost in the shuffle?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the Portman Family who at one point consisted of three able bodied and happy members, but after a car accident has been reduced to the mother Mary (Naomi Watts) and her son Steven (Charlie Heaton), the latter of whom has suffered severe brain damage and is pretty much unable to move or communicate.  After six months of this routine where she cares for her son and then goes to work as a childhood psychologist, things start to change when one of her patients Tom (Jacob Tremblay) is being moved to Boston so that he can get more specialized care.  The night after Mary finds this out however, Tom shows up at her doorstep… well technical he smashes the window to her car and crawls inside, and while Mary is trying to figure out what to do next, the boy disappears into the night.  So not only is she dealing with her son who is in need of constant care, she now has a possible dead boy on her conscious (they’re up in Maine so it’s snowing all the freaking time) and starts to hear things go bump in the night along with a series of night terrors that are making it hard for her to distinguish between fantasy and reality.  Are the things that Mary is hearing at night real and a possible threat to her and Steven?  Will Tom be found at some point, or is he really just a kid-cicle waiting to be uncovered once Spring rolls around?  Wait, didn’t I see this movie like a year ago!?

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“I wonder what The Babadook would be like if it didn’t have The Babadook in it.  Steven, get the camera.  Oh right… I’ll just get it.”

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The NekoCon Diaries 2016: Fan Panel Recap

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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So when you’re like me and don’t know what to do with yourself other than look at overpriced figures at the Vendor’s Hall, it’s good to have a schedule to provide some structure to your con going experience; hence why I attended so many panels this year.  Well, that and I knew I was going to recap them for the website; and that’s a win-win in my book!  Today, we’ll be focusing on the fan panels which are hosted by individuals attending the convention rather than the invited guests or representatives of some company looking to market directly to their fans.  Do these manage to have an authenticity and love of their respective fandoms that you wouldn’t find in more professional presentations?  Let’s find out!!

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90s Animation Revisited: Rejoin Your Childhood Friends

Hosted by Peggy Miller

This was the first panel I went to at the convention, and right off the bat it put me in a sour mood.  This was nothing more than nostalgia baiting with nothing even resembling insight or depth into what made these cartoons so memorable (or in certain cases, infamous).  Rattle off the name of a series, show the opening, ask the audience what year it came out, and repeat nineteen more times.  Hell, they couldn’t even stick to the decade as several of these started in the late eighties but remained popular throughout the nineties.  Fair enough I guess, but what about showing Power Rangers which was NOT an animated show?  I’ll let you all know right now that my biggest problem with most of the fan panels this year is that they’re sometimes a mile wide but always an inch deep.  This one did manage to have a breadth of content by name checking twenty different shows in an hour, but so what?  No mention of Klasky Csupo shows, no mention of how Mighty Mouse: the New Adventures from 1987 was the jumping off point for many prominent animators in the following decade, no mention of Disney Television Animation who made half the shows name checked here, and most egregiously (at least in my opinion), they couldn’t even be bothered to tell us all that the creator of Doug was born less than a hundred miles away from where we were sitting.  That’s a VERY easy factoid to just throw out there to the audience and I’m sure several people would have gotten a real kick out of it.  The only thing you’d get out of this is what you already would be bringing into it, and I just don’t think that’s much of a panel.

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Cinema Dispatch: Boo! A Madea Halloween

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Boo! A Madea Halloween and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate

Directed by Tyler Perry

I knew this day would come.  Ever since this guy came on the scene, I’ve just never had an interest in seeing anything he’s made and until now I’ve never had a reason to.  I mean I knew becoming a film critic would have its downsides… but come on!  Oh well.  No point in putting it off any longer.  It’s time for me to sit down and watch a Madea film.  Who knows?  Maybe it won’t be all bad.  Hell, it looks like it’s the spiritual successor to Ernest Scared Stupid, so maybe they’ll replace Jesus with Halloween Kitsch? Yeah, probably not.  Still, is it any good?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is all about Brian Simmons (Tyler Perry) and his increasingly strained relationship with his teenage daughter Tiffany (Diamond White).  Tiffany wants to go to a Halloween party that’s hosted by a Frat House that’s conveniently located within walking distance and wants to drag her Good Christian Preacher’s DaughterTM friend Aday (Liza Koshy) along with her.  Brian says no, Tiffany says Fuck You (not literally) and so he has to pull out the big guns; namely Mabel “Madea” Simmons (Tyler Perry again) along with her friends Uncle Joe (Tyler Perry… again), Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis), and Hattie (Patrice Lovely) to babysit while he goes out on a business trip… on Halloween.  Tiffany isn’t about to give up without a fight though and convinces the four of them that there’s a ghost in the house to keep them distracted while she sneaks off to the party and things get more shenanigan filled from there.  Will Tiffany learn a lesson about listening to her father after getting to the party?  Is there something ACTUALLY haunting Madea and her friends at the house, even if Tiffany’s story was total bullshit?  God damn, is THIS what I’ve been avoiding all these years!?

 

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I WISH Tim Curry would show up in this damn thing!

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Cinema Dispatch: Ouija: Origin of Evil

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Ouija: Origin of Evil and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Mike Flanagan

In a year that’s already been pretty good for horror movies and sequels, has it been just as good for horror movie sequels?  Well ironically enough for a genre known for churning out sequels, there’s really only been two I’ve seen this year; The Purge: Election Year which is one of the best films of the year so far, and Blair Witch which is one of my least favorites.  Sure I heard people liked The Conjuring 2, but I hated the first one with a fiery passion so I highly doubt it would end up on the good end, and then if you wanted you could count 10 Cloverfield Lane as a horror movie which I would put on the good side even if it’s sequel status is somewhat questionable.  My point is that the data on horror sequels this year is, shall we say… inconclusive.  Will we have a more definitive answer one way or the other with this prequel (I know that’s technically not the same thing as a sequel, but I’m freaking counting it!) to a movie that was universally panned just two years ago?  Let’s find out!!

The movie takes place in 1967 at the home of the Zander family, made up the mother Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters Lina (Annallise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Wilson).  Alice is barely getting by after the death of her husband as her fortune telling business isn’t quite paying the bills, but they’ll make due for now and they even get a new item for the show that should definitely drum up some business, right?  Well those concerns become secondary as it JUST SO HAPPENS to be a ghost living in the house already that has started to take control over young Doris and is clearly after something but we’re not sure what.  For now, it’s just using Doris to pretend to be the dead father and freaks everyone out with the Ouija Board as a way to… I don’t know; keep Alice from calling the Ghostbusters?  Either way, Alice is more than happy to have a REAL (and presumably benevolent) ghost in the house to not be used to keep a roof over their heads but to also get some closure with her “husband” after his tragic death.  Of course, Lina smells bullshit from a mile away and knows better than to trust something possessing her sister CLAIMING to be her dead father, so she starts to investigate and even gets a local priest involved (Henry Thomas) to find out exactly what’s going on; something the ghost isn’t too happy about.  Will Lina and the Padre stop this madness before it’s too late?  Just what is the ghost after if it needs to pretend to be good rather than just kill everyone in their sleep?  How the hell is it gonna convince everybody of that when it keeps messing with her face!?

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“Look at that!  How is that normal!?”     “Oh will you relax?  She’s just yawning!”

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