JJJUSTEN MAKES ONE SENTENCIRIFIC REVIEWS OF ALL THE CRAP THAT HE WATCHES LATE AT NIGHT ON NETFLIX STREAMING XBOX SOMETHING WHY BECAUSE HE BORED ALSO BECAUSE

yeah i'm hyped for that! was it ever in theaters around here?

(btw since I can't find anywhere else to put this kinda stoked that the "Red Riding" trilogy just ended up on streaming since i meant to see it in the theater and then kinda forgot)

why did glowing vampire taints make you think of that

"kinda forgot" in this case being shorthand for "ended up in uptown and then got drunk enough that i didnt get around to seeing the movie i went there for."
xpost

yeah it had a one week run at the uptown i think

ok netflix needs to stop being stupid and get part 1 of the trilogy on streaming u fucking clowns

omg

Below - thriller/suspense/ghost? thing helmed by the dude who did pitch black and partially written by darren aronofsky (but not enough to fuck it up) that is all based on a WWII era us submarine w/early role by zach galifinakis and like 30 other people that you will recognize for sure, some jump scares but def not gorehoundy, and man oh man implacable dread of something being wrong combined with the no escape vibe of submarine being hunted by a german warship is thick heady suspense fodder, and as a result this movie is way better than expected and in fact is kinda awesome! A-

there is a scene in below that might make it into my top ten creepy moments of movies in the 2000s

i've been trying to get people to watch this film for years, it totally owns. what moment is the top ten creepy one btw. the mirror?

yep!

this red riding 1st part problem grows more annoying by the day, since i have part 2 and 3 just sitting there taunting me.

maybe ill just get the DVD and OH WAIT THE DVDS DONT RELEASE UNTIL THE END OF THE MONTH

City of the Living Dead last night - its a blur-headed unfocused mess plotwise, but yeah the gore scenes are pretty nuts, and the upside down graveyard is kind of amazing, lots of laughable no $ effect things like the badly felt covered styrofoam coffin, but man when it hits it hits hard, and i will always be a fan of the camera flashes to ZOMBIE (albeit zombie generally = actor w/some jello on their face with living grubs stuck in it) without warning, not for the squeamish despite being 30 years old - Fulci is a mad bastard with really very little interest in tastefulness. B+

(BONUS COMMENTARY: the scene where the actress pukes her (literal) guts out while her eyes pour out blood was accomplished by finding an actress that was actually willing to EAT TRIPE AND THEN REGURGITATE IT ON CAMERA according to imdb. GOOD TIMES!)

Wow, it REALLY took a lot to get a job in those days!

red riding 1974 finally on instant watch btw

hey john have you tried watching it yet? i started, but it died at about the 1 hour mark. i've restarted my computer multiple times but it just goes to the same point in the movie and stops buffering at 49%. but watching any other movie is fine. is it just my computer??

Haven't tried yet, but wow will I be irritated if that is the case.

it works all the way through for me?

speaking of:

Red Riding: 1974 - well i wasnt exactly expecting a romp but this is def a cheerless movie, pretty much dark and dank all the way through, gorgeous visually, perhaps a bit slower than you might expect and built with a strange uneven pace although it is never really boring so much as slightly unfocused and semi-coherent, also its kinda motivationally lacking for a bunch of the characters, not sure why some things were key and others were sorta just dropped by the side, eh still pretty good tho. B

just watched all three of these today. pretty grim, v complicated plot (altho that may have just been me), beautifully filmed.

ok so as a cooldown lap from crazy visitor weekend, we spent monday night watching terrible b-movies, so ive got a bunch of these.

Fear Chamber - Boris Karloff in one of his last roles (maybe last idk) plays a scientist who leads his son to discover a intelligent rock formation that feeds human on human fear so he captures ladies at the "Institute for Employment of Foreign Women" and scares the bejesus out of them and extracts their fear energy in a big ole syringe which of course sounds like it cant miss but unfortunately the entire film transfer is actually slightly out of focus, and produced in english by a mexican production company so EVERYONE is overdubbed and the titular fear chamber looks suspiciously like a shitty state fair trailer mounted haunted house with the addition of a sex dwarf(!) and a scary lesbian and a mental patient named lobo that appears to have an ACTUAL lobotomy scar and upon further research may have in fact been cast by getting him on loan from the local mental institution, and also it is just a terrible movie. D (even given the b-movie grading curve im using today. unfun)

to be fair we only made it about 25 minutes in before giving up, so maybe it breaks through and shines in the final acts

"Below" was good!

"New Guy" was pretty awful!

Red Riding: 1980 - def a step up from the first one, didn't realize that its directed by the dude who did man on wire and wisconsin death trip, very different style visually but still v v lush, makes me realize that u brits have it all over us when it comes to the quality of yer tv, realizing that this is a series where paying attention is of the utmost importance, lots of subtle clues etc, also was not expecting paddy considine who is as always awesome, still not the fastest paced thing in the world but seemed to have hit the stride unlike the first one, looking forward to 1983. A-

glad you dug below btw, re: new guy - idk, something in the tone and the sense of humor just hit a sweet spot for me, also doesnt show the seams of its super low budget all that often esp in the acting (which is rare). last 10 minutes is definitely a little bit of "uh waht" tho which is a shame.

I just found the plot twists generally incomprehensible and I thought it looked pretty shabby.

oh i also forgot another one from the b-movie weekend

Spider Baby - straight up no question the funniest so good its bad movie i have seen in many years (maybe ever?), that secret combo of not making any logical sense and being filled with talentless hacks and a script that seems more assembled than written, but with an oddly fast pace which is rare as hens teeth in shit movies like this, def worth giving a shot to on a night where getting drunk and taunting the screen sounds like a good plan. A- (NOTE: GRADED ACCORDING TO UTILITY, NOT ACTUAL QUALITY)

"so good it's bad" eh

ha

this is what happens when i type on ilx while on the phone pretending to pay attention to a dude on the quest for "ULTIMATE TONE"

the title "Spider Baby" is seriously creepy, though!

I hope you sold that dude a Bowflex

i actually resolved his quest for ULTIMATE TONE by calling here from my cel phone and telling dude that the other line was ringing and i had to go

which i do, maybe, a lot

hahaha that is awesome

well it was revenge movie tuesday at the fabulous jjusten estate so:

The Horseman: dark dark film about the reaction of a father to the loss of his daughter under unpleasant circumstances, lots o carnage and bad times for arguably bad people but this weird beating heart of almost compassion and sadness underneath, the agonizing feeling that there is something not quite right about the way the protagonist is behaving and he is aware of it too, which comes across well because the lead actor is simply stellar and makes all the right moves to make it all work, and considering that this is the director/writers first film iirc it all works amazingly well, altho subject to that weird bluish dark tone that seems to have beset modern gritty cinema but oh well. A

RED: this one is odd, its another revenge thing but way slower, calmer, more implacable, also the main character is 70+ years old so there is a different motion to the whole thing, tom sizemor is in it but thank god keeps his clothes on and his usual tom sizemoreisms to himself, actually the cast in general is kinda striking because youve seen lots of them before, one kinda unutilized side plot and a few hamfisted summary moves from the kinda not needed reporter character (who is maybe the only sorta not so good actress in this), lead actor is pretty great, also for a botched production with a walk off the set initial director (lucky mckee, who i think is fantastic, but seems to be hard to work with) the end result is stunningly solid, and both terribly sad and strangely redemptive. A

I also watched MacGruber (on disc) and it was a horrifying pile of shit.

and BAD BIOLOGY has its own thread so

Black Water: more aussie creature horror for the gore grist mill except whoops its DULL AS FUCK and srsly if you ever wanted to watch a movie that mainly featured three people (and well less as time goes on but) sitting in a tree trying not to make noise for 75 minutes well hoo boy have i got a show for you, to be fair it is capably done i guess and there are tiny nits of tension hidden under the slog but over all blarrhrhrhhrrgghhh D+

i have a ton of these to catch up on so this might get a bit hectic

no worries, we stand ready to read your reviews

(well, at least I do, now that I have finally gotten enough sleep)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: ah man terry gilliam just cant get a break, peeps die, planes buzz his set, studios slash and burn his stuff in post, but yknow this time somehow he actually pulls together the broken pieces and makes it work (too bad the marketing dept kinda softballed this as a kids movie which btw HUGE WARNING LETTERS FOR PARENTS holy shit it is not) - theres not a lot of sense made here but yaow for the first time since brazil it looks like a gilliam film, and to put this in perspective i am no fawning fanboy at this point thanks to tideland being one of the worst most punishingly bad films ive ever seen, plus there is the bonus of watching american treasure johnny depp recreate ledgers performance so well that it is honestly pretty fucking eerie, colin farrell looks like a guy thats in the movie, jude law fucking blows tho. B+

Penn and Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour: i dont even know what the hell they were trying to do here, looks like a failed pilot but yknow that isnt shocking since it is deadly boring with a light dash of xenophobia thrown in for fun, teller talks a lot tho so if thats been on your bucket list uh here you go. D

The Wild and Wonderful Whites: A remarkably sympathetic doc about a full on hillbilly outlaw family still rolling along in West Virginia getting in fights, shooting each other, and having other sordid psycho "fun" but lest this sounds like a rootin tootin fun ride through bucktoothed backwoods git-r-doners theres some teeth in here and the film maker stays out of the picture for the most part, letting 4 generations of whites lay out their insane worldview for all to see, so for example when moms buddy starts crushing up pills on the maternity room side table for her it hits in all the right emotional spots. A-

John, sometimes I think you choose movies to watch by putting up a list of the most bizarre titles you can find and then throwing darts at it.

Not that I'm judging that or anything.

Bomb It: theres like a million grafitti/hip hop documentaries out there (including some obv classics that are kinda unfuckwithable) and of course most of them are train jumping bullshit puff pieces about how awesome artist X is and how they are the true street etc etc etc but holy shit this is the real deal, rolling through the globe and getting in depth about non-NYC world graffiti culture and garnering some absolutely amazing moments in the process and some sobering meditations on the commodification of it within US culture vs areas where it still holds significant political weight, closing with a brillant return to a graf artist in LA that just gets SAVAGED by their own brainless statements about how important they are after watching dudes in south africa painting a mural on a shantytown in front of a team of wide-eyed kids stuck living there. A

dude, did you ever see "Rize"?

my movie choices are determined by a long scientific process that usually involves the early AM hours, some booze, and an instant watching queue that consisetently hovers between the 450-500 range.

xpost yes i did! and despite the fact that i hate hate hate lachapelle, its pretty incredible imo.

the slow motion bits in that were pure insanity.

The Descent Part 2: formula appears to have been take all the legit tense stuff out of the first film, add a bunch of stone ass stupid characters that make the dumbest decisions possible (particularly the trope laden gruff and tough dont give a fuck small town sheriff) make a couple of decent choices along the way and then make sure to bleakify the ending for no reason other than probably hey the writer is a dick. C

American Grindhouse: lets just get the ilx incest factoids out of the way and mention that a famed old ilx troll executive produced this at the start, so moving on this is about the least interesting most cursory scan of grindhouse ive ever seen, and thats not because i am some grindhouse guru or anything, but down to the quippy title cards that intro each segment this is a halfassed skim with no information that you havent already seen in one of those commercials that IFC runs all the time trying to get the hipsters to upgrade their cable, minor points awarded for the early historical stuff which is interesting but only lasts for the first 15 minutes of the movie before it turns into a "here are the names of some blaxplotation movies and then some talking head will yammer about nothing" i love the 80s routine. D