Category: Streaming

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE OUTPOST

It’s pretty easy to declare THE OUTPOST as the best direct to demand action war film ever made, but I’ll go one further: this is probably my favorite since either American Sniper or Black Hawk Down. The main question I post to the filmmakers and studio behind it…how the hell did this not get a theatrical debut? And I do understand COVID-19 and all that mess but in doing my research I think this was always meant to be straight to demand. Then my second guess of an answer would be that there aren’t too many recognizable faces in this, and the main one that is isn’t in the film too long. Director Rod Lurie needs to flex his muscles, get out of his mostly television work, and maybe take on some big budget action films because some of the shots, especially the one take shots, and action in this movie are mesmerizing. IMDB describes the movie with the following: “A small team of U.S. soldiers battle against hundreds of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.” To explain it a little bit better in my own words, The Outpost tells the gripping real story of Camp Keating, which was one of several outposts placed to control the Taliban movement and their supply chain during the war in Afghanistan. The camp was situated in a valley surrounded by mountains, and for the 400 Taliban that rallied for a surprise attack that takes place during the entire last hour of this two hour film, for them it seemed like it was shooting fish in a barrel. It was up to these soldiers to leverage their poor defenses, lack of ammo and manpower they had, to ultimately survive and go back to their loved ones. The film is a fantastic tribute to military heroes, even if one of my complaints about the film is that you don’t really get to know them specifically and only catch fleeting glimpses of personalities. This movie is a direct to demand technical feat.

If you are a war film buff, this is essential viewing. You may be wondering what the hell I’m talking about with the first hour, as it showed what military life was like at Camp Keating, stories that have been depicted many times before in other war films and do it with about the same level of authenticity, but when you get to that hour mark, hold on to your butts, because you are in for a non stop action packed ride the all the way to the end credits. I would say to see this in a theater, but since you technically can’t, try to see this on the biggest screen you can with the best sound, possibly someone that has a nice movie theater living room. The movie stars Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, and Orlando Bloom and they all do an adequate jobs, even though the former just acts like the tough guy he’s been in all of his previous films, the latter is barely even in the film to really critique his performance, and Landry Jones plays the cliched scared guy out of his element, working up the courage to show what he’s really made of. While most of the camera work is masterful, there are one or two shots that gave away that something really bad was about to happen, would’ve rather it been more subtle for more shock value. But you aren’t here to read my nit picky hard critiques I judge films for, you just want to know if the action in this war film is worth your time. Abso-fucking-lutely. The last hour of this film is a sight to behold and is worth the cliched military life hour set up, and even though the lingo and dialogue seems legit, like I said, it’s just been done a little too many times before for me to get into it. That last hour man…DO. NOT. WATCH. THIS. MOVIE. ON. YOUR. FUCKING. PHONE. It is currently on Netflix if you have the service and don’t want to pony up the dough to rent it. But I’d say a rental is worth it. In fact I could see me revisiting this specific outpost in the future and constantly point to it when someone is in the mood for a good war film that they haven’t seen before, especially one this adequately made for direct to streaming.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: THE UNICORN SEASON 1

My wife Diane and I just happened to come upon THE UNICORN SEASON 1 while perusing Netflix a week or two ago. This show is originally on CBS, and we do not have cable nor are we signed up for CBS All Access, although my father had mentioned that he and my mother watched and enjoyed it when they had CBS’s streaming service for free for a month back in June. We ended up pressing play based on that recommendation and also due to the fact that my wife and I are huge fans of anything Walton Goggins. If you don’t know who he is, it’s a real shame, but I’m sure that you do. He was one of Vic Mackey’s crew in the series The Shield, and he was also the main antagonist throughout the series of Justified and Vice Principals. He’s also been a supporting player in movies such as Shanghai Noon, The Hateful Eight, Tomb Raider, Ant-Man And The Wasp, Predators, Maze Runner, Words On Bathroom Walls, the list goes on and on, as he’s had a hell of a lucrative career. And to me, he’s an incredible actor that needs to win an Emmy or Oscar sometime in his career. He has yet to be the leading man in a movie though, but at least CBS is finally taking a chance with him as one on The Unicorn. And while this show is a typical sitcom that IMDB describes with the following, “A widower is eager to move on from the most difficult year of his life, only to realize he’s utterly unprepared to raise his two daughters on his own and equally unprepared for the dating world where he’s suddenly a hot commodity,” he makes the show rise above it’s done before premise and churns out very funny and endearing half hour episodes. The first season just ended a couple of months ago and it has been renewed for a second, which is due to film and premiere who knows when because of the asshole that is this country and COVID-19. But I very much am looking forward to it, and maybe we even wait for the episodes to hit a streaming service I do have, as this is a fantastic binge-able series.

A unicorn to a lot of women are men who are straight, attractive, single, monogamous, funny, employed, communicative, caring and interested in her. Walton Goggins character, Wade Felton, is the perfect example of one. He’s even more sought after because he is a widower and not a divorcee. The sitcom has a great supporting cast of characters, two other families that all became friends awhile ago because of Wade’s wife. They consist of known faces such as Rob Corddry, Maya Lynn Robinson, Michaela Watkins, and Omar Benson Miller, and in each episode they each have their side B and C plots that correlate and sometimes intertwine with Wade’s A plot. Thankfully, the show isn’t a multi camera sitcom and doesn’t have a laugh track, which proves that it is confident in its ability to make its audience laugh, which it does. Walton Goggins and co. provide a lot of laughs throughout the first seasons’s 18 episode run. The only thing I was disappointed in involving the show was a stronger season ender (I did my research and am pretty sure they got done filming before coronavirus hit). Yeah, they do a full circle character arc wise and they all reflect on how they have done the past year with the anniversary of Wade’s wife’s death and they all deal with Grace’s, one of Wade’s two kids, dance and there is a potential mystery woman that Wade meets up with and hopes to see again, but usually sitcom’s pack more of a punch with a bigger cliffhanger, especially in a premiere season. But that’s just me trying to find something to complain about as no television show is ever perfect or has the perfect season (Except maybe Breaking Bad). The creators of the show are also the creators of such classics like 3rd Rock From The Sun and Grounded For Life, so they know they’re comedy shit, even if they had misfires such as Cavemen. If you are reading this, don’t have anything to watch, and wanted something light and very funny to pass some time binge-ing wise, then you definitely should not miss The Unicorn. Can’t wait for Season 2 and hopefully it doesn’t get a renewal reversal because of Cunt Covid.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: EVIL EYE (Amazon Prime)

Well, we have come to the end of the first month of 4 “Welcome To The Blumhouse” films exclusively for Amazon Prime, and to be honest, each one was worse than the last. Enough where I’m going to do something rare at the end of this review and give them all letter grades. Just cheap mass produced potato chips that we’ve tasted all before. Not stale, such as Blumhouse’s Into The Dark Hulu exclusive movies, but a taste we start to get bored and tired of quickly after only a few chips. EVIL EYE is easily the worst because just like Nocturne, it is a rip off of another movie. Namely, it’s a spiritual, supernatural, reincarnation, Indian male rip off of Fatal Attraction. Not only that, but the two lead female protagonists talk on the phone and think it is ‘acting’ for over half the short 90 minute run time and then only have two scenes physically together at the end where we are supposed to care what happens to them due to said phone conversations, especially because they are mother and daughter. Due to the cheapness of the film I doubt that those two actresses were really talking to each other and their scenes were of course filmed separately, causing me not to get invested in them. And yes, I know that there is a pretty good screenplay reason for why they only talk on the phone, the daughter lives in the States and the mother lives somewhere in India, but what the movie needed to do was have all the actors and actresses near the same location, I don’t care where, it just needed to happen. That way there could’ve been more physically there scenes with both the protagonists and the male antagonist, where more tension would’ve been built, more suspense, which would’ve made me invested in not only the story, but everything about it.

I guess you could say that my evil ‘film’ eye was being too harsh on the film and my attention waned. IMDB describes Evil Eye with the following: “A superstitious mother is convinced that her daughter’s new boyfriend is the reincarnation of a man who tried to kill her 30 years ago.” What the movie fails at considerably is the execution of whether or not said new boyfriend of the daughter is really the reincarnation of the mother’s abusive ex-fiancee. Kind of spoiler alert, but you know that he really is, because if he wasn’t, there wouldn’t be a fucking movie. The story then goes about the cliched route of everybody thinking that the mother is crazy and that she should see a doctor to get her paranoia and superstitious nature put to rest. And of course, just as she agrees to get help, is when the “big reveal” happens. Now I liked the reveal/revelation, especially what happens right after the mother likes a picture on her daughter’s Instagram before she discovers the half way decent McGuffin object in the photo. The reason why I wasn’t into what was happening when the movie wanted me to be is that all the mother’s interactions with the daughter and the antagonist fiancee were over the phone (and only one brief use of a split screen), and all those moments, all that dialogue and ‘acting’, which again, were half the movies run time, felt “phoned in.” Yes, pun intended.

When the mother, played by Sarita Choudhury, was off the phone and talking to her husband or others, her acting was quite solid, especially when she seemed to be going off the rails mentally and didn’t have a phone to her ear. The daughter, Sunita Mani, less so, as she seemed just a little too ignorant for what was happening all around her. And you just know there is going to be a scene where the daughter finds out who her fiancee really is, but the way it is handled is kind of awkward, as the male antagonist was very careful and precise up until then, and his slip ups to his discovery ended up feeling forced and a bit out of character. The movie is extremely predictable, chunks of dialogue from screenplay writer Madhuri Shekar, who hasn’t done much else (this movie was based off an Audible original, it probably should’ve been kept that way), felt clunky and inauthentic (especially the parts over the phone) and there was no visual flair from directors Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani, who I’m not familiar with either, as they have mostly done shorts. It felt like it should’ve been a Blumhouse Lifetime movie, not something exclusive to prime. It all felt fake. I also think I’m being extra super hard on this movie because Netflix already tried to rip off and do a reverse gender and race Fatal Attraction earlier this year with Fatal Affair, which currently is in my top twenty worst of the year list. This movie is much better than that one, due to that the movie did have something to say about Indian culture, love and marriage expectations, and what the ‘evil eye’ is to their people, but it was still disappointing because even with those factors, it was just another beat by beat rip off of other and better movies with no sense of unique style. I don’t know if my eye will be able to take more “Welcome To The Blumhouse” movies in the near future…will have to probably wait and see what other eyes think of them first before proceeding to give them a chance.

Amazon Prime’s “Blumhouse Presents” Film Ratings:

  1. The Lie: C+
  2. Black Box: C
  3. Nocturne: C-
  4. Evil Eye: D+

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: NOCTURNE (Amazon Prime)

NOCTURNE is just a rip off of Black Swan, just replace the ballerina horror aspects of the latter film with piano playing and you get the former. Blumhouse productions is very frustrating in general. Only one in twenty of their films produced by mastermind Jason Blum is worth anything to write home about, and that one in twenty usually debuts in a theater. The other nineteen are usually direct to streaming (with one or two somehow getting theatrical distribution), cheap little projects, and it shows. Most of these Blumhouse produced films range from being only okay to down right fucking abysmal. The Amazon Prime exclusive ones, these newly introduced ‘Welcome To The Blumhouse’ ones, where they will put out 4 films in one month every several months, are the only okay ones. The Hulu exclusive ones, the one film per month going on two years now, labeled the “Into The Dark’ series, are the abysmal ones. So it is really not that all surprising that Nocturne is in the only okay category. However, while it might be in the only okay category when talking about its overall execution, the thought of it being beat by beat (literally, even the ending) of a much superior film makes you want to fit it right next to the abysmal file. Don’t get me wrong, it is very admirable if you are able to green light and make a motion picture on a small budget, but if you are a production company that mass produces them to no end, kind of like how author James Patterson is able to release 10 books all in the span of a year (I stopped reading his schlock awhile ago), then most of your content is just going to be bland, no excitement or surprises. IMDB describes Nocturne with the following: “An incredibly gifted pianist makes a Faustian bargain to overtake her older sister at a prestigious institution for classical musicians.” Don’t get me wrong, the movie is certainly watchable, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre table.

The definition of nocturne is “is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.” Night equals dark. A dark movie usually doesn’t have a happy ending. Remember how I said this movie is a rip off of Black Swan? Has the dawn of light risen in your thoughts in what I’m trying to get you to see? Yeah, thought so. The movie is way too predictable and even if Black Swan hadn’t come before it, the very beginning of the film shows the entire story’s hand. There are several chances the film has to surprise viewers and flip all preconceived notions on their heads, but the film doesn’t take any of them. There are two things that are good in the movie, and only two: 1. The cinematography and shots are impressive and 2. The leads Sydney Sweeney and Madison Iseman give impressive performances. Although I would’ve like to see Sweeney play the sister and Iseman play the gifted pianist that made a Faustian bargain. Sydney Sweeney hasn’t really ever played (from what I’ve seen) the wholesome good girl, and while she is fine here, her transformation from a righteous yet shy girl into a jealous sort holding contempt for everyone wasn’t quite as day and night as I would’ve liked it to be. Madison Iseman has played both the good and bad girl (The Fuck It List/Jumanji) in different projects and I think maybe if they had switched roles, their character arcs would’ve been more clear. And don’t go in expecting a full on horror movie. There are absolutely no jump scares or tension, and it is definitely less artsy fartsy (the good kind for me) than Black Swan was. It’s more psychological. But due to the fact that there are no surprises in writer/director Zu Quirke‘s screenplay (she should maybe only stick to directing next time), the only deep rooted question you should be asking your id is why you decided to press play on this title in the first place.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE SWING OF THINGS

If 2020 is a giant dumpster fire, then THE SWING OF THINGS is a mini dumpster fire inside said dumpster fire. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT. I was laughing throughout this whole movie so hard… and not because of the movie itself, but by how awful it was. This film is one of worst sound edited, worst acted, one of the worst edited in general and one of the worst directorial efforts of ALL time. The only reason why I watched the whole damn thing was because…it was a literal dumpster fire and I wanted to watch the entire thing burn to the ground. I’m not listing this as my worst film of the year list because I wanted a title or two you all probably knew at the top, as this is a film I guarantee would elicit a few, “what the fuck is The Swing Of Things?” if it happened to come up in conversation. This is not even a so bad it’s good movie, like Anaconda or Snakes On A Plane, this is a bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad fucking movie that the guys at Red Letter Media would be watching and putting up in competition with other bad movies in one of their ‘Best Of The Worst’ segments. If you happen to catch this movie where it is playing on Hulu, or God forbid, be a giant dumb fuck and spend money to rent the mother fucking thing, it’ll probably remind you of really really bad late 90s/early 00’s gross out comedies such as Freddy Got Fingered, Tom Cats, Say It Isn’t So and Slackers. But those films and my worst film of the year so far, The Wrong Missy, are masterpieces compared to this abortion.

IMDB describes The Swing Of Things with the following: “A groom-to-be accidentally books his destination wedding and honeymoon at a swingers resort in Jamaica.” What is even more embarrassing than that awful film premise is some of the names that they actually got to be in this thing. Supermodel Olivia Culpo, Adelaide Kane, Jon Lovitz, and even fucking Luke Wilson are in this, albeit Lovitz for probably an hour of work and Luke Wilson looks drugged out of his mind just to get through the shoot to get that nice paycheck at the end of the day. I wonder if he joined as part of a lost bet? This is one of those “Sandler Vacation” films, meaning that all involved probably jumped on board because a free vacation was in the cards along with the shoot. The jig is up if you go to Olivia Culpo’s Instagram and scroll down to right before COVID-19 hit, as you can see exactly when the shoot took place. One of her stories has her in the same white bikini she wears in the film, talking about vacationing with her real life football player fiancee. By the way, her and and Adelaide Kane were completely hired only for their looks and scantly clad swim wear and other outfits. I’m surprised that neither one of them filed a sexual harassment suit against any of the other cast or crew. The story is really just a back drop to watch how poorly made this movie is. The only way to describe all the bullshit to you is to give you a list of bullet points of the beats that go down in the film:

  1. A seagull has a cigarette in its mouth and says “God Damn!” as a woman in a yellow bikini runs in Baywatch slow motion type fashion across the beach. Remember how I said the sound editing was terrible? They couldn’t even match the “God Damn!” to when the bird opened it’s beak twice.
  2. A flock of regular little birds, instead of chirps, keep repeating “TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS N ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS” in two scenes for what seems like forever.
  3. Dolphins rape people on this island. I shit you not.
  4. For this movie having a premise of accidentally holding a wedding at a swingers resort, there is little to no sex in this movie. No smart sexual humor either.
  5. The sexual humor that is in this movie has been done before, is cheap, ans is resorted to small dildos and little whips being strapped to pens when signing up for activities on the island. One of the older women in the wedding party can’t decide what she wants to do, so instead of tapping just a pen to her cheek to simulate that she’s thinking, she’s tapping the dildo and/or whip on her cheek. Ha…Ha.
  6. For what little nudity there is in this movie (I’m surprised Culpo or Kane didn’t show anything), the camera obnoxiously zooms in on naked body parts of extras. That joke is about 21 years old, first done in Road Trip…no originality.
  7. Does anyone remember Jack Black’s awfully annoying and racist character, Jamaican White Guy, in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer? There is one here too, but add on about 1000% annoyance.
  8. The audio has an echo and/or tries to readjust itself several times in several scenes. If the movie needed any additional ADR, which it did, Luke Wilson obviously said no, as there seems to be someone impersonating his voice in parts that were probably hard to hear audio wise and needed several more takes.
  9. It’s just a bunch of incoherent scenes strung together, and when a possible plot is brought into the mix, whether or not the male fiancee cheated on Olivia Culpo, it’s solved in less than 5 minutes flat.
  10. A girl character loathes this other male asshole character the whole movie and then has sex with him and blows him underwater to get some secretive info out of him and then for no reason is in love with said asshole at the end of the film.

See what I mean? This movie is COMPLETE BULLSHIT. And very misogynistic and degrading to women. How director Matt Shapira, who replaces Uwe Boll as the worst director of all time for me as this movie compared to ANY of Boll’s make them look like masterpieces, got financing for this thing is anyone’s idea. I honestly think everyone knew each other in some way shape or form, and wanted a vacation, and Shapira got Culpo and Kane because he is a giant fucking pervert flashing dollars bills and a fun time in the sun in their eyes. The screenplay was written by five people…let me repeat that…FIVE PEOPLE. It’s like they were on pot and wrote it together over dinner one night, passing the screenplay to the left and instead of trying to fix and expand upon the previous ones work, just added on to it without reading the scenes that came before. Then once shooting began, everything was shot in one take and the editor had absolutely nothing to work with but the bare bones of dailies. The framing is bad, the actors seem as though they tried to memorize their lines 2 minutes before “Action!” was yelled…it’s basically a feature length porn movie with no sex scenes…and even some of those are better than this trash. When you are on Hulu or if you are wanting to rent a comedy on another streaming site and come upon this abysmal disaster, swing the other way. Swing FAR the other way.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION (Netflix)

THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION, that just premiered on Netflix this past weekend, is thankfully another solid original from the streaming platform, and yet another movie you probably haven’t heard of. Why is it always the good ones that no one hears about or watches, yet you guys kept jerking off to Hubie Halloween this past weekend? Seriously, has this pandemic gotten you all on the spectrum? HOW HAS HUBIE HALLOWEEN BEEN #1 ON NETFLIX SINCE FRIDAY YOU FUCKING HACKS?!?!? **cools down** Anyway, for every Hubie there is something like this that maybe people will discover weeks, months, or years down the line, especially if it gets an Oscar nomination or two this year. I don’t know if this will, haven’t done much research on it other than that it’s 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. IMDB describes this film with the following: “Radha is a down-on-her-luck NY playwright, who is desperate for a breakthrough before 40. Reinventing herself as rapper RadhaMUSPrime, she vacillates between the worlds of Hip Hop and theater in order to find her true voice.” Although the movie bogs down in some cliches, such as her embarrassing herself the first time she is on stage, the best friend agent, and the unlikely love interest, those aspects are quickly forgiven when you realize this is an excellently told gentrification movie about gentrification and overcoming those odds. This isn’t only surface level in your face gentrification themes like the ho-hum Vampires Vs. The Bronx that came out a couple of weeks ago on the same streaming platform. This gentrification is much more subtle, and it goes deep down under the surface, where it should be.

There are not any recognizable faces in this movie, so try to go in with an open mind, and this movie is also in black and white, which I think added a unique look and layer to the film other than if it had just been in color. There are a few snippets of color, but they are used in the right places to strap down the themes the movie has in store for you. With all of that, and even a tad bit over a two hour run time, the movie is very entertaining and well acted. Radha Black has not only crafted an important screenplay that opens the window a little into her biographical life while hitting home important racial and sex themes, but she even has some solid acting chops and a nice eye behind the camera. I don’t know what made her film this in black and white, but it was definitely a nice touch and makes it stand out from other films in that genre. She also frames shots very well, and moves the camera to character point of view with perfect flow and grace. The freestyle rapping was actually decent, didn’t feel staged or fake and had some nice beats. The film also took its time to get to familiar story beats which made them not so familiar, even when you know what is going to happen at the end of the opening night of her play that was taken over by pretentious white douche bags. The subtle themes relating to Radha’s mother was a nice little footnote in the story as well, very emotional. There is nothing much more to say other than to give this movie a chance if you are looking for a pleasing drama that is smart if you need a vacation from the dumb stupid idiotic same old same old bullshit from Adam Sandler. Come on guys, let’s either get him to do better or cancel his ass altogether. Grow some brains during this fucking shit year.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: SPONTANEOUS

SPONTANEOUS not only easily enters one of my top 5 films of the year so far, but it is easily the best blind buy I have ever made on VUDU. Ever. It also joins Palm Springs and The Devil All The Time as two of the best straight to streaming movies I have ever seen. And…you’ve probably never heard of this film. That’s okay, that’s what I’m here for. It stars 13 Reason’s Why Katherine Langford (she played Hannah Baker) and IMDB describes it with the following: “Get ready for the outrageous coming-of-age love story about growing up…and blowing up. When students in their school begin exploding (literally), seniors Mara and Dylan struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.” It sounds sort of like schlocky fun right? WRONG. This movie takes itself as seriously as it should, blending a pitch perfect trifecta of tone, romance, and dramedy (mostly drama). I was enthralled the entire hour and 41 minute run time and I couldn’t believe how invested I was in the story, characters, the atmosphere of the movie, everything about it. It was also very eerie, because when you watch it you can easily make sound parallels with what is happening in the movie to the bullshit year we’ve been having because of COVID-19. The movie is bloody fun, but it is also very moving, tense, and I was choked up with moments by the end credits. It breaks the 4th wall a couple of times, but not enough to be annoying, and I’m a breaking the 4th wall connoisseur. This movie is better than it had any right to be. It’s a horror film, a sci-fi film, a romance film, a teenage angst film, a quarantine film, a riveting drama, it’s an almost everything film, definitely not for young kids. It’s as if David Cronenberg’s Scanners fucked and had a baby with any John Hughes film you happen to have in your video library.

Any other year, if this movie had played in theaters, and I was a member of the Academy or a producer of this film, I would try and get Katherine Langford an Academy Award nomination. She completely sheds Hannah Baker from her persona…fuck, she sheds any other character she has ever played in other films and completely gives in to Mara’s weird yet lovable teen angst phase. I loved her in this movie. Charlie Plummer, who plays Dylan, is very solid, although I couldn’t tell much of a difference from his performance in this and another film I saw recently where he was also one of the main protagonists, Words On Bathroom Walls. I want to describe why this movie is so great and why it resonated with me so well, but to do that, I would have to divulge a lot of the surprises this movie has in store for you, so this is going to be one of my rare two paragraph reviews, even though I want to scream its praises. Let’s just say if you don’t like this movie, then it’s probably hard to please you with most movies, and you should stick with mind numbing cheap fare like that new American Pie Girls’ Rules movie, which I just reviewed earlier today. This movie was adapted from a novel I now want to read and directed by Brian Duffield, who has been more miss than hit in his career. He wrote the one time watch Underwater earlier this year and he also wrote Insurgent…the second shit film in the Divergent Series (which didn’t even finish the 4 film plan it had)…but he also wrote Netflix’s fun The Babysitter film. Spontaneous is easily his best and another film he wrote comes out next week that I’m definitely going to check out because of this, called Love and Monsters (he didn’t direct it though). He’s a great director here and wish he would try his hand at more. The spontaneous combustion is quite scary and serious, and he films it in a way where it looks real and not schlocky. I spontaneously wanted to watch this movie when I saw a trailer, but I encourage you to skip that and check it out after you spontaneously read just this review.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: AMERICAN PIE – GIRLS’ RULES

Is it wrong of me to not think this movie was THAT terrible? I mean, yes, it’s very inauthentic when you consider that it is supposed to be a girl centric version of an American Pie story and it is written by two guys. The film did keep my interest the whole way through…and I chuckled throughout it… so to me it was just…harmless? And better than all the other 4 straight to video American Pie Presents films? So am I recommending AMERICAN PIE – GIRLS’ RULES? The only answer I can come up with is ‘sort of’, as I appreciated more for what it was trying to do than Adam Sandler’s new bullshit Netflix Halloween film. It tried to gender swap the American Pie movie because of today’s overly ridiculous political correctness debacle, and it did it…politically correct…and to be fair, I think teenager girls will get a kick out of it, even though there is no way that they talk to each other likes the characters talked to each other in this movie. And if you are much older than a teenager, I guess if you have nothing else to watch and need something to quickly kill and hour and a half. It certainly isn’t boring, just don’t go in expecting any greatness spawned from the original four films. The only aspect that makes this an American Pie Presents movie is that one of the 4 main girls’ last name happens to be Stifler. Out of the five direct to video films, which I’ve only now seen this and Band Camp, I think there has been a new Stifler(s) in each one, and I couldn’t tell you how the fuck they all relate to each other. Maybe that’s the joke, each movie becomes so much more convoluted involving the Stifler family tree that it wants viewers to take the Tenet approach, “Don’t try to understand it, just feel it.”

IMDB describes this film with the following: “It’s Senior year at East Great Falls. Annie, Kayla, Michelle, and Stephanie decide to harness their girl power and band together to get what they want their last year of high school.” That harnessing their girl power turns into a way too coincidental plot of them accidentally falling for and going after the same guy. And since this new guy at school happens to be cool and not an asshole, us viewers know that he isn’t going to try and end up with all four girls. The plot is so ridiculous and convoluted that you know exactly what girl he ends up with when they meet on screen for the first time, and you know what other guys the other three girls end up with as soon as they first show up to share the screen as well. For me, the movie was all about the crude and sexual humor jokes surrounding the outlandish plot. They involve the girls saying weird stuff about their bodies, sex toys including vibrating underwear, randomly screaming obscenities, and I’ll admit it, I chuckled, so sue me. The movie isn’t just dirty humor the whole way through at least, it knows when to lay it’s sweet and charming chips on the table and actually bring some humanity into the mix. The acting is decent for a direct to video debut as well, as it seems like more of a real movie than the other spin offs brought us. Sara Rue plays the school’s new principal and her scenes were probably the best of the bunch with that picture perfect blend of crude humor and charm. And Danny Trejo seems to have filmed his scenes maybe after production was done as a silent Janitor, but those didn’t work for me as it felt like an excuse to have one recognizable face in the credits. There’s nothing more to say about this film other than that if you go in expecting a harmless crude and sexual humor romp that in no way masters the greatness of the original four American Pie films, you maybe won’t be disappointed. Who knows, my brain might be a pie chart right now whose sanity is just a tiny, incoherent, sliver of a piece.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: BOOKS OF BLOOD (Hulu)

BOOKS OF BLOOD, a Hulu Original Movie that released a couple of days ago, is just generic and bland horror, plain and simple. There are a couple of good yet cheap jump scares and a couple of neat bloody visual shots, but for the most part it is all uninteresting, schlocky cheap, not frightening, and the intertwining of the three stories near the end left a lot to be desired. IMDB describes the movie with the following: “A journey into uncharted and forbidden territory through three tales tangled in space and time. Based on the Books of Blood, a series of horror fiction collections written by the British author Clive Barker, Books of Blood adapts Clive Barker’s framing device story from his novels but also includes brand new stories written for this film that Barker was involved in creating.” In essence, this is a sequel to the much superior film Book of Blood (they went with just an S here, like Aliens did), released in 2009, but more of a reboot/remake as the main story that binds the other two together is the same from the 11 year old film, just rewritten with different story elements and plot twists. Other than a couple of good scares and some neat bloody visuals. the only other compliment I could give it is that it has two decent performances from Britt Robertson and Anna Friel. Other than that, if Clive Barker did help coming up with these brand new stories, which is kind of confusing because the screenplay is credited by two others, then he is truly out of his game, and hasn’t been relevant since his decent novels, stories, and filmography of the mid 80s to early 90s.

I’m just going to list a one sentence little log line in my own words for each story:

  1. The first story involves a professional killer whose latest assignment clues him in on a priceless book, called The Book of Blood, that may allow him and his wife to permanently retire.
  2. The second story involves Jenna, a depressed and hypersensitive girl who suffers from ‘misphonia’ (an abhorrence of sound), and as she learns her mother is about to send her back to the psyche ward, she steals her cash and sets out for Los Angeles and may or may not end up at the BnB from hell.
  3. The last story involves Mary, a psychologist who has gained fame as a skeptic that debunks all theories or beliefs that are not solely scientifically based after she lost her 7-year-old son to leukemia and then met Simon, a potential medium.

The way the stories are linked together before the end credits and the content in them individually are anemic and clumsy. Frustrating too because all the stories show potential but they back off before that potential is fully realized. There are not any likable characters among them all. The best story of the three is the 2nd one which stares Britt Robertson. Even though all the characters are a bit flat, her performance, and along with Anna Friel, who plays Mary in the third story I mentioned, clearly showed that they tried with what they were poorly given. The stories don’t “tangle” organically, as you can tell that a couple of threads were thought up of last minute to try and make the viewer exclaim, “oh so that’s what that was!” I’d like to think that people are smarter than that and also answered with, “Nah, we ain’t buyin’ it.” One of the teleplay writers hasn’t done much, wrote the mediocre The Haunting In Connecticut, and wrote the abysmal Carnosaur and Snoop Dogg’s 2001 horror film, Bones, so with Adam Simon, you get what you pay for. However, the other teleplay writer, Brannon Braga (who also directed), should know better, as he has written some great episodes of television, such as 24, The Orville, Cosmos, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It doesn’t even seem to be as if he’s trying here. The only thing this movie made me want to do is go out and search for Clive Barker’s 6 ‘Books of Blood’ that were published in 1984 and 1985 and read those. I bet they would make for a great Halloween treat. This ‘book’ I threw after slamming down the back cover in angry angst, hoping that I could draw blood from it.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: CHARM CITY KINGS (HBO Max)

Out of three original movies since their launch (American Pickle and Unpregnant, I count Class Action Park as more of a documentary than movie) CHARM CITY KINGS is easily HBO Max’s best. And most of you, including me, probably haven’t heard of it. For me to describe it easily to you, it’s a 2 hr youngster, gangsters with dirt bikes, redemption drama. IMDB describes it with the following: “Fourteen-year-old Mouse desperately wants to join the Midnight Clique, an infamous group of Baltimore dirt-bike riders who rule the summertime streets.” This Midnight Clique, what you can garner from my description, they rule the streets both physically AND metaphorically. And while the movie does relegate to gangster group and youngsters trying to avoid a life of crime cliches during its runtime, and the movie drags just a tiny bit in the second half, the movie keenly kept my attention the entire run time, I thought it was very entertaining, the acting is top notch and the direction is visually striking. I haven’t heard of actor Jahi Di’Allo Winston, apparently he is great in a television series called Everything Sucks! but he’s fantastic here as Mouse, and I’ve heard of Meek Mill, I’m not too familiar with his regular music except when it’s in movies like Creed or Spring Breakers, but he’s a pretty damn good actor as well. However if you are looking for mainly dirt bike action sequences & stunts, other than a pretty neat chase at the beginning where the camera glides across the inner city effortlessly and the end credits, it was lacking just a little bit. Director Angel Manuel Soto, who I’m not familiar with, does a remarkable job with the rest of the film, there is neat camera work even in the tightest of spots, and I look forward to his future career.

For me though, not having that many dirt bike action sequences worked, because it easily could’ve been a movie that was all stunts, action and no substance. This has plenty of substance. The screenplay was written by Sherman Payne, who apparently has written the worst episodes of both Shameless and Season 3 of Scream The TV Series (yikes). Charm City Kings stretches his craft for sure, but that probably had something to do with the story was thought up by Barry Jenkins, whose film Moonlight won best picture at the Oscars several years ago (deservedly so although I would’ve loved for La La Land to have one) and even though I didn’t much care for If Beale Street Could Talk, it was written and directed well for what it was. Now Barry Jenkins is doing a live action CGI sequel to Jon Favreau’s terrible shot by shot CGI live action remake of The Lion King and all I have to say is…good luck with that. Anyway, the film is really really good for something straight to streaming. It’s not masterful or even great, but it’s very good. The movie even made me choke up a bit. Mouse has a side job as a veterinarian before he gets involved with the clique, so you can see everything that is coming from a mile away, but at least they didn’t totally abandon his vet skills like so many movies have done before, hoping you forget about a character’s gifts so that they can bring it back in an emotional climax. I also would’ve liked to see a bit more with the female love interest for Mouse, but at least it had a completed arc. But it’s the Winston and Mill show here and their chemistry and their scenes together make Charm City Kings for what it is, not so much the king of streaming movies, but a worthwhile charm.