TdSmth5's reviews

Flood is a hit man who is ready for retirement. He suffers from debilitating headaches and tinnitus. His handler tells him to find a nice girl. And he does. A girl he met during his last job. They fall in love.

His physician now tells him he has an incurable disease and that he has a couple of weeks left. He makes plans. He doesn't want his girl to see him waste away so he breaks things off with her and wants someone to take him out. His handler isn't willing to hire someone so he has to go to the competition. She's more than happy to put out a contract on him.

But then a couple of minutes before the contract is to go into effect, his Dr. Calls him with the good news that he is alright after all. Problem is that he killed the father of lady her hired. So she's not willing to call it off. Instead she doubles the reward for any hitman who kills him. A bunch of colorful hitmen, hitwomen, hitfamilies now go after him. Of course one of them manages to kidnap his girlfriend.

What results is a violent gory action fest that's fun and entertaining. Performances are good, direction is good, the script is ok, the action is pretty spectacular and original. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously.

The Killer's Game is the most fun I've had at the movies in a long time.

Not sure what people see in this movie. There is no story, no arc. There's no character to care for. The kids are neither cute nor endearing. They don't act like kids their age either, but like older kids who act as a script requires. The adults for the most part are asinine. Of course there's no shortage of people who act like that but it makes it hard to connect with anyone.

I did like the setting in Florida though. Any production improves by being set in Florida. Glad they didn't film it in California. I also liked that it's about regular people, not privileged millionaires driving around Beverly Hills.

Performances are ok. Nothing special. No one is required to do anything noteworthy. The characters act either normal or hysterical.

There was an opportunity here for a gritty drama involving poverty, drugs, theft, prostitution, hope, opportunity. Those themes are glossed over. Instead the movie focus on a bunch of kids, who cares what kids are up to anyway. Then there's was the dumb ending.

I enjoyed the first movie a great deal, except for the ending of course, and couldn't wait for the sequel. It didn't disappoint.

Donnie does a quick heist in an airport in Belgium and steals some diamonds. He's part of some cool European crew. They're off now to the diamond center in Nice to offload the diamonds.

But they also plan on robbing the vault of the diamond center no less. The diamond center looks more like a bakery with 3 sorry security guards. Donnie gains the trust of some of the higher ups. So the team starts planning the heist. That's when Nick suddenly shows up in Donnie's apartment. He wants to switch sides and help with the heist. Donnie buys it. But then the owner of the diamonds from the Belgium heist, the Italian mob, grab them and demands the diamonds back.

Good thing the diamonds are in the vault as well. Now the gang executes the heist stealing stuff and recovering the mob's diamonds. This one is more complex and lengthy and is thrilling. As they make their escape Nick is forced to stay back and has to confront security but eventually they all escape.

As they make their way to Italy, they run into some disgruntled former members of the gang who left during planning. But the mobsters show up in time to save the day.

As our gang celebrates their bounty in Italy, there's a twist, and then another. It all ends on a satisfying note this time around.

Den Of Thieves 2 has a very different feel. Big budget, big franchise globe-trotting, sharp sunny cinematography. It lacks the charisma brought by Schreiber in the first installment. And thankfully lacks the over the top antics of Nick pretending to be Vincent Hanna. So here since everyone is part of the team, there is no villain really. The mob doesn't get a whole lot attention. It all comes down to the heists and the action and it's all fun and exciting.

Evin Ahmad adds some much needed hotness, and the rest of that gang are cool and funny, once the mean ones leave.

I enjoyed this flick a great deal, can't find much to complain. It's great to hear that more sequels are in the works. This could end up being one of the better action franchises out there.

I"m not en expert on Poe nor do I follow Flanagan's work so I have no preconceptions about this series.

The Fall of the House of Usher takes place, as often these days, during several time-lines. The present, where pharma mogul Roderick Usher is mourning a bunch of his relatives who died in short order, and is undergoing a trial, falls ill and decides to give a DA who is prosecuting him a confession/family history. There's a short childhood episode when he and his sister Madeline deal with their mother illness. She dies but then crawls out of the grave to kill her boss and father of the kids who owns Fortunato, the very pharma company that Roderick now owns. Then there is a storyline that takes place in the late 70 up to new year's 1980 where a young Roderick, his wife, kid and Madeline struggle financially working some low level positions and are exploited by the vicious new boss of Fortunato. At that time he also meets the attorney as they plan to take down Fortunato. New Year's eve '79 will be a key night in the life of Roderick and Madeline as they meet a strange bartender who offers a deal that will change their fortunes radically.

In the present we backtrack to a day in the trial where the DA announces he has an insider in the family who is collaborating. That forces the family to convene and close ranks. Roderick acts like the boss of the family, with Madeline like the brains of the operation who supports him. His children, 2 natural, 4 illegitimate and multicultural, are mostly dysfunctional and all have odd sexual proclivities. So closing ranks won't be easy among this bunch. There's the smart one who acts as the PR person for the firm and gathers info on everyone and one scientist who is trying to invent a device to heal a cardiac condition. The rest are just living the good life.

During every episode there's a death under mysterious circumstances in which a strange woman is involved who we later learn looks a lot like the bartender from 1979. As Roderick confession progresses we learn how he ended up at in charge of Fotrunato, a company that makes opioids and is responsible for the addiction and death crisis. We learn that he has a heart condition, just like his mom and he's pushing his scientist daughter to bring her invention to production. And we learn more about each of his descendants. It will all wrap up neatly in the final episode where it all comes together and what's so important about 1979 is revealed, which we can already intimate long before.

Finally there's the interesting character of Pym, the family lawyer and enforcer, who has managed to keep the family and the firm out of trouble despite everyone's excesses.

Episode 1 is ok, not particularly engaging. Episodes 2-4 are a lot more more enjoyable and fun. Things go downhill from there as the series starts taking itself a lot more seriously and it ends with people reciting poetry nonstop. Hate when characters do that.

Greenwood's voice is pretty compelling here. McDonnell, Hamill, and Trucco do solid work. Siegel, Fitzgerald, and Parker are lovely. I'm a bit torn about Gugino, her voice, and her character Verna. Perhaps it's the character that annoyed me a bit, they should have handled it a bit differently.

The story is good for the most part, there are some smart and philosophical lines. You're expected to pay attention to details from the outset because it all matters in the end. They did a good job giving it some current day relevance with the whole opioid theme. The problem is they killed off the more interesting and entertaining characters early on leaving us little to look forward to. An orgy is promised in episode 2 but it doesn't quite materialize. That's the only episode with nudity. The rest of sexuality of mostly thematic/implied. So I wouldn't quite classify the sex/nudity of the series as "severe." The characters are rich oligarchs so they have their kinks and the series doesn't shy away from it but it doesn't turn it into a spectacle either. And neither does it make much of the horror aspect. There's death, yes, a bit of gore here and there, mostly puddles of blood. But the atmosphere of the series is more drama than horror.

In Candy Land we follow 4 truck stop/gas station/motel prostitutes- 3 girls and a guy, in beautiful Montana. There's also the corrupt town sheriff who has a thing for the guy. The motel owner lady is their madam. One day a religious family shows up trying to "cleanse" our gang, who of course won't have any of it. That day also a dead guy appears in one of the bathroom stalls with eye stabbed and his arms crossed over his chest.

Suddenly the girl who was part of the religious group starts hanging out there by herself, apparently she's decided to leave the group. While it's not clear what she wants to do with her life, our group adopts her assuming she'll join their life. She's shy but somewhat open it seems to the idea. She carries some giant wooden cross with her. But of course she has some plans of her own just as the madam introduces her to a priest who is going to be her first customer. Now things take a turn as the prostitute guy is assaulted Irreversible-style. One of the girls out of the blue has a melt down and says she's had enough and can't do it no more. But by now it's to late...the cleansing has begun.

Candy Land is a solid B horror movie, the way B horror movies are supposed to be: violent, gory, with plenty of nudity. The story is good, the script is well thought out, there's an interesting discussing between religious girl with her mentor for instance. The ending is also pretty surprising. Overall a pretty original movie. Unfortunately the camera focuses more on the least attractive of the prostitutes while pretty much ignoring the other 2. A shame there were no more sights of Montana.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy unusual unrated horror as opposed to predictable sterile PG-13 stuff.

Two Mormon girls stop by at the house of Mr. Reed to do their mission. They can only enter the house if there is a woman present. So Reed promises that the wife is in the kitchen making pie and since it's pouring outside they agree to come in. He's open to hearing about the Church of LDS. One of the girls, the newbie, is eager to recite her script, while the more experienced "sister" tries to slow her down. But Reed quickly takes charge of the conversation. He's interested in their background and present himself initially as an atheist and starts challenging their beliefs. The girls get more uncomfortable as Reed's wife is a no show and he keeps making up excuses. There's no phone signal in the house, the guy can't offer them a phone either. When they want to leave they're told that the door lock is on a timer that he can't override.

So now the girls are stuck with this guy who has something prepared for them. In a room that resembles some chapel he unleashes his tirade about religion. They are all copies of copies. He claims Judaism is the original (I guess he hasn't heard about Zoroastrianism) and makes this point with some dumb Monopoly reference and again with some plagiarized song reference. Then he shows them two doors that lead to the back, one he calls belief and other disbelief. The girls are free to leave through one of the doors but should be careful about which they choose. They take one of the doors which leads them downstairs where there is something or someone. The much promised pie makes an appearance and is offered to the creature. Reed reveals his plan. The girls will be witnesses to a miracle: the pie is poisoned. The person down there will eat it and die, then will be resuscitated and will share what it saw on the other side. And so it happens. Reed calls this person now a prophet.

Finally another character is introduced. Another church guy who goes looking for the girls, but as always Reed has all sorts of lies and excuses ready. So the guy leaves. In the meantime the girls plot their escape, one of them is attacked by Reed, the other discovers a room full of "prophets" in cages. Reed of course wants the girl to learn a lesson: what is the ultimate religion. The girl reveals all she has realized by now about him, some more battles ensue to see if the girls can escape or not.

Heretic is your ultra minimalist movie--few characters in a couple of settings engaged in a battle of wits with Reed. Grant does a good job in making the whole thing tolerable. In other instances everyone would be racing their lines as quick as possible to show how smart they are. Not here, here we have reasonably interesting conversations at an adult pace. But frankly, and what filmmakers fail to understand is that there is a limit to how much argumentative back and forth one can take, even if a topic like religion is interesting. The script is very philosophical so you get eventually the whole brain-in-a-vat scenario. But the whole thing requires Reed to be in constant god mode, knowing everything the girls will say and do. It gets silly in that Reed has a miniature reproduction of the inside of his house and positions figurines of the girls in rooms. But they too go into god mode where they see through him and realize things, they really shouldn't be able to. The whole prophet angle is refreshing, even though we've seen it before in it's most powerful form, I'm referring to the glorious Martyrs of course.

Heretic is smart, over-researched, but worthwhile. With Heretic the writers have rehabilitated themselves after giving us the laughably ridiculous A Quiet Place: Day One.

I wasn't exposed to the marketing so I didn't know what to expect. The title is kinda silly and the movie poster not particularly compelling.

Often these heavy-handed retro-style films deliver in style but not in substance. And Longlegs goes in heavy with the 70s style, but then for some reason sets the movie in the 90s I guess to show us repeatedly official portraits of Clinton.

The atmosphere is there, so is the tension. "Impending doom" is often mentioned, but rather than doom it's more impending twist or impending climax, kind of like in Seven. But here it's not delivered. There is a lot of material: coded messages, evil dolls, satanism, but it doesn't come together well enough. Perkins needed a second writer and probably a different director to fully exploit the material.

The main problem is that this movie is solely centered on agent Harker. We learn nothing about the doings of the villain in the meantime. And Harker is dull and uninteresting. But then in typical fashion and by some cosmically bizarre coincidence she will be the center of the whole thing requiring the villain to be in total god mode to divine the future decades ahead.

Any director who known his job would have made a lot more of the villain, showing us his work here and there. Heck, the movie is called Longlegs for crying out lout. But then Longlegs isn't exactly the charismatic villain he could have been either.

Perkins has a future, he just needs to let go of his ego and nepotism and go back to learning about screenwriting and directing.

In the beginning we see some people being interviewed for some dance job. They're asked about dancing, about their ambitions, and most importantly, whether they are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. This takes a while because so many people are interviewed. But we don't see this directly rather through an old CRT TV. There are books to the left of the TV and VHS tapes to the right, the most recognizable: Suspiria.

Then we see the entire dance troop, apparently everyone got hired, rehearsing their routine. The dancing isn't particularly impressive, we get a bit of everything from ribbon dancing to slam. Fortunately as a European movie we get some good electronic music. Once the rehearsal is finished, there's food and sangria and they party/hang out. We hear some lame conversations and learn insignificant things about some of these people, the majority of whom are unattractive. The name that most often comes up is one Selva (jungle in Spanish) played by the unappealing Sofia Boutella.

Then they start dancing individually with everyone else surrounding the dancer. Here the camera is on top. A dumb move that doesn't let you see the dancing, which gets progressively more frenetic and ends almost in a mosh pit. Next everyone starts screaming and acting up and all weird. They realize that the sangria has been laced with LSD (?). They blame a Muslim guy who doesn't drink and therefore is alright and kick him out.

Things do advance a step in terms of what we learned about the characters while they are all drugged. Nothing particularly interesting or extreme. At this point the camera is upside down and close to the ground traveling through the bodies. Coloring has turned black and red--as in the climax of Suspiria.

Next day some guys arrive and walk through the building finding our troupe in various states of intoxication. One isn't alive. And there's a revelation about who put the LSD in the sangria.

At best this movie is a whodunit. Except, who cares. There's no effort to get us to care. Nothing interesting goes on. Despite the two cinematographic curiosities: the camera on top, the upside down camera close to the ground, the whole movie is flat and dull. No character stands out or matters particularly. There was opportunity to give us some extreme and shocking developments, but Noe oddly enough doesn't quite go there. There could have been sex and nudity. But we barely get that. I take it Suspiria was the inspiration for this mess, but it doesn't do it any favors or justice.

So Texas and California have joined to secede from the US. Florida is also involved somehow. Things have gotten violent. Recordings of the president are aired over the radio.

What better approach to tell this story than from the perspective of...press photographers? Yup, that's what Garland has figured for no good reason.

So we get an unrecognizable Dunst, Moura who still can't act in English, Garland favorite Harrison who doesn't do much of anything here, and the cute Spaeny, an aspiring photographer who looks like she's 12.

They decide to make the trip of several hundred miles to DC to interview the president, assuming he's still around since he hasn't been seen in a while.

What do our lame press folk come across? Not much. A short firefight between secessionists against the army, where the army loses. A group of secessionists torturing thieves. A sniper team trying to take out a sniper holed up in a mansion. A group of unidentified soldiers end up killing some press friends of our group for no reason.

Eventually the gang makes it to DC where the battle is more serious and the secessionists are successfully making their way to the White House with our goofs in tow.

All this may sound somewhat interesting. But it's not, at all. I like Garland's work up to now. He always gives you something to think about. But not here. As all reviews point out, this movie is pointless, empty, devoid of message, and doesn't even try to provoke thought. There's no character development. Obviously you're not going to root for the press, especially not these clowns. Acting is mostly poor. Not much happens. The odd thing is that even the critical reviews give this movie an undeserving average score of around 6. This movie is just bad. I give it one start for the lovely Spaeny and one for the fact that somehow the movie isn't entirely unwatchable. But you sure don't get your time's worth here.

It almost feels like this movie was forced on Garland and he took revenge by making a complete dud. Or some marketing genius decided to call this movie "Civil War" even though civil war is that last thing this movie is about. Don't waste your time.

Didn't have any expectations for this movie, as I now generally stay away from movies set in medieval times. I'm just tired of the cold look, perennial mud, rain, candlelight, British accents, and silly over-acting. The Reckoning obviously has all of that but it has a lot more. Near the end they even managed to film two scenes outdoors in sunlight. But it's Charlotte Kirk who steals the show from the get go as a regular wife and mom who finds herself accused of witchcraft years after her own mother was killed in front of her eyes for the same crime and by the same inquisitor now judging her.

But this isn't just drama, there's plenty of horror, too. Her husband died of the plague and she has erotic dreams of her husband, that quickly turn into satanic nightmares. So in a way there is some possibility that she might have something to do with the devil after all. I was contemplating an unexpected ending, but they went for the easy route. In the meantime she has to face torture by her inquisitor and his sidekick, interestingly a former "witch" who somehow survived the stake. There's plenty of nasty people around who want to see the girl dead but she also runs into some nice folk who try to help.

Overall a pleasant surprise of a movie. Big Kudos to Charlotte Kirk who aside from the main role also co-wrote and co-produced this movie, and doesn't shy away from nudity.

The reviews and rating make no sense. Looks like people saw the title and were expecting something else entirely, probably something along the lines of the other movie by the same title. Well, no it's not that. It's sci-fi and like the vast majority of sci-fi, it's lower budget. But unlike most sci-fi, this movie doesn't take place in two rooms with 3 characters. The script here is much more ambitious. It was aiming for something along the lines of The Arrival. But there was no financial backing evidently, no billion-dollar effects, no "A" list cast. There are some issues with sound, effects, the main character could have benefited from a different casting. But it the story here that matters, and the story is good and interesting. It slowly works toward what we expect to be an interesting resolution. And it delivers. Plenty of movies fall flat at the end. Here the ending is satisfying and resolves the suspense created. Overall a good effort. The writer/director has a bright future.

Some couple made up as usual these days of a pathetic guy and a girl in charge go out to spend some time in a cabin the woods. They plan to get marries so the girl puts on a bride dress. Guy disappears. When she finds him, there's 4 bad guys who threaten him. She doesn't give in easily so her guy is shot. She defends herself, manages to escape, and injure some of the bad guys. They catch up with her eventually, serially rape her, kill her and bury her.

The bad guy boss shows up at some point and the goofs have some make up some ridiculous story. He sends them to look for her.

At some point the bride is possessed by some native Indian bride's spirit who underwent a similar fate centuries ago. So no she's revived and looking for revenge and some items as well.

The Bride is ultra low budget. Despite that they managed to give us some nudity and some gore. The movie is short but it feels long since for a good chunk nothing is going on.

I give it 3 stars, for the nudity, the acting of the actors portraying the bad guys, and the script during the final act that actually gets kind of funny.

3 computer nerds are dragged almost against their will to some sweaty room in Laos to run some secret operation by some military tough guy.

The operation involves dropping 4 AI robo soldiers in a village in Laos that is controlled by a drug cartel. Things are off to a bad start when the chute of robot 4 doesn't open so he crashes. The other 3 are off to the village.

Problem is by now some ridiculous medical students in the area got lost and ended up in the village where a navy SEAL deserter lives and tries to help them out and protect them from the violent drug lords.

Meanwhile some village kids discover robot 4 and steal its module--the very module which allows our nerds to control it, or destroy it if necessary. Robot 4 of course wakes up just fine and without the module is basically a free AI.

Tough guy reports to a guy in the Pentagon who orders two robots go after robot 4 and the other go into the village where it shoots up everything and our dumb students + the SEAL + the kid have to try and escape and survive. Pentagon guy is in contact with corporate guy who owns the robot enterprise.

The whole operation is now thoroughly fubar, since you have scores of witnesses and a rogue robot. Not to mention that our nerds are starting to get unhappy since they didn't sign up for their robots to be out there killing civilians and start fighting amongst themselves.

The idea now is for tough guy to install an upgraded module in Robot 3 so it will destroy robot 4. Additionally tough guy has an EMP device with him to neutralize whatever robots are nearby. Turns out the upgraded module gives robot 3 also the ability to speak. Pentagon guy has some tricks up his sleeve as well in case it all goes to heck.

In any case, robot 4 ends up with robot 3's module. And when faced with humans, starts asking questions. Not just any questions, but deep philosophical ones. "What am I?" "What is life"

In the intro we are told that thousands of corporations are working on AI for the purpose of getting lucrative government contracts. Thus this movie gets at the core of the AI issue. It's not about chatting with cute bots, or what jobs will be lost. It's about what will happen when governments militarize AI.

And this movie presents on such in instance. The robots here are cool. So is the little violence and gore. The government/corporate interaction is intriguing. The nerds while mildly annoying are interesting as well as they face their own moral dilemmas. But the problem of course is everyone else starting with the obnoxious medical students. More could have been done here with the drug lords, they don't get enough attention.

Overall quite a debut for multitasker writer director etc. Toia who does a great job directing the foreigners, especially the kids, but not so much directing the insufferable students. There's a lot going in this movie and it's unnecessarily long, 20 minutes could have easily been cut and that budget directed to more action. Most importantly this movie is very timely and asks the right questions, questions that no one else will ask.

A girl is playing with her daughter at the beach.

Next she wakes up in a small room tied to a chair with a table in front and a pen on it. The the room goes red, a voice tells her to complete a task. There's a timer in front of her counting down. When she breaks the rules, the room turns blue and the voice threatens her daughter. When she accomplished the task, lighting turns normal, she hears a noise that knocks her out and then she wakes up the next to to complete another task. The idea seems for her to develop her telekinetic skills.

One day her husband is in the room and eventually he us used as a motivating factor in the experiments while the woman keeps dreaming about their daughter.

After completing the experiments she gets to leave and finds herself in some warehouse. There seem to be other rooms with experiments. When security shows up she gets to put her powers to good use.

We also learned what really happened at the beach. The girl now has a choice to make and she makes a surprising choice.

Initially I thought Control would be one of those ultra low-budget single character single location movies, but it does have more to offer and I found the story engaging. When the girl goes into god mode, things get super cool. Still low budget. They put the funds to good use and made a movie worth watching.

A student at Oxford no less is working on some experiments, unsupervised by faculty. Apparently it involves making energy/matter disappear or appear elsewhere. Her experiments start succeeding. She enlists the help of her rich romantic interest who recruits some annoying girl to help. Eventually they manage to get larger objects, plants, cats to teleport. Finally the scientists girl herself for some reason decides to subject herself to the experiment. She goes under the device. The screen goes black. Next she wakes up in her bed.

Now everyone around her acts weird. There is no talk at all about the experiments. The other two guys do what they do and ignore her pretty much. One day, someone breaks into her house and steals her stuff. It's a guy in a monkey mask. Pretty much every day there are protests by animal activists in front of the labs. She thinks it could be one of these guys. The girl is losing her memory so she has to write everything down. Cops are starting to look into what is going on for some reason. A door is locked in the lab and the girl can't get in. She takes blood tests that are disposed off by the guy instead of analyzed.

Eventually she breaks into the lab and freaks out forcing the guy to explain to her what happened.

Like so many sci-fi movies this one is also low budget, has an interesting premise, not much science unfortunately. But it suffers from a completely uncharismatic lead and an entire second act that is dull and unsatisfying. We know something isn't right, we know some explanation is forthcoming but it takes forever for the movie to get and in the meantime the story doesn't advance and nothing captures our interest.

The final explanation is interesting and surprising to some extent. But the focus isn't in the science after all. So it's ultimately no satisfying. This movie needed a bigger budget, a different lead, and probably a co-writer to polish things and leave us with this dull long second act that goes nowhere. Alternatively, cutting 20 minutes wouldn't have hurt.

Some guy (Alex) leaves jail and sets up some high tech operation evidently intent on surveillance and revenge. Turns out that in his teens, he, his sister (Sara) and their friends are about to try parasailing for the first time. The girl insists she wants to be the first. Her parachute harness starts tearing and she falls and dies. Turns out that Alex and Sara are lower class while their friends (2 brothers, and some others) are filthy rich. They are at the brothers' vacation house when all this happens. The rich dad is a major league ahole and talks Alex into taking the blame for Sara's death. That's how he ended up in jail.

Alex is convinced there was foul play so his mission now is to find out who killed Sara and why and avenge her death. So we have these two time periods then. The teenage years and the adult years and the episodes jump back and forth--over time more and more frenetically so that in season 3 it's hard to tell when something happened. He targets the rich family and finds out plenty of dirt on the father, the mother, the two brothers. They also have a younger sister and he ends up hooking up with her and she actually helps him out. Someone else makes contact, some anonymous person over the internet who offers help.

The investigation into the who takes up 2 seasons. In season 1 there's plenty of deception and one quickly notices a pattern. New characters are introduced or we learn more about a character and find out he/she had reasons to kill Sara. So it turns out that everyone wanted Sara and then wanted her dead and had the means and the opportunity to do it. Problem is that Sara is an unattractive, unremarkable, uninteresting girl so it makes no sense why everyone is obsessed with her. But she was the only girl in the group for some reason.

In season 2 we learn a lot more about Sara herself so she does in some way start becoming a more interesting character. After learning who killed Sara, Season 3 is all about explaining the why and there's off course a few twists here and there. The show takes an unexpected turn as Jean Reno's character becomes really the prominent character here.

The ending is somewhat unsatisfying I must say. It would have been better had they done the why and the who in parallel instead of revealing the killer earlier instead of spending a bunch of episodes and explaining the why and the how.

Who Killed Sara? Shines for its outstanding production. Can't say I watch many Spanish-language series, but I was surprised by the quality of the production. Music/sound effects also are first rate. Initially there's plenty of sex and an afwul lot of gay sex. The story, too, overall is very good. Carolina Miranda is beautiful and a bombshell. She stole the show. First time I see Jean Reno in a Spanish-speaking role, but he's excellent. His acting unfortunately makes the rest of the actors look bad. Frankly, I was hoping for and expecting a weird surprise twist ending, given that some of the themes the series touches are pretty twisted but it went for an easy outcome.

Overall, it's a show worth watching. It takes a bit too long to get where it wants to go, since it's really one long 25 episode show and you can't watch the seasons independently from each other.

Around the time of the US invasion of Panama the CIA decides to make a deal with some contra guerilla fighters. Mel decides to recruit some buddy of his, Becker, who is currently a mess because his wife died. Along for the ride monitoring things is another agent, Burns. Becker is supposed to make the deal happen: he has to buy a Soviet chopper from some bad guys in Panama and deliver it to the guerilla guy. The Panama guys are involved in drugs and Becker has to go undercover and work in a casino where the gets to meet hot girls and the partying bad guy who is supposed to sell him the chopper. He is also contacted by a DEA agent who offers help if he helps them out in turn. Things of course don't turn out as expected at all and Becker ends up stabbed in the back from all sides just as the full invasion breaks out. Yet he somehow has to make it out alive and try to make some deal happen.

Panama has a good idea and story. The cast does the best it can. Mel always delivers but here he is a tertiary character. Kiara Liz is absolutely adorable. Cole Hauser isn't the most compelling lead but does alright. The problem of course is that this was done with a 3rd of the budget necessary to make it a solid international spy undercover thriller. It's not as bad as the rating here suggests but this is an unfortunate case, where they should have really desisted with the project unless they could procure the appropriate budget but instead went ahead and ended up producing a C-level movie.

Some kid is killed. The policy quickly finds enough evidence to arrest some guy. Problem is the guy has enough hard evidence that puts him somewhere else entirely during the murder. How to solve this? Well, the suspects ends up getting killed so that takes care of that. Now the show takes a turn to the supernatural, as we learn that something happened to him before the murder and in fact there have been similar murders elsewhere, where the main suspect has a solid alibi. We learn this because the main cop bring in some annoying psychic to help. She theorizes that this chain of murders of kids are committed by some creature that is able to take the human form of those it scratches. The question that is who is the current creature's embodiment and when will it strike. We learn early on what the creature is up to but it takes forever for the rest of the characters to get there. Eventually they confront the creature and its sidekick in a surprising shootout.

The Outsider starts out pretty good and interesting. Like most shows these day, the episodes are unnecessarily slow and long. I have to say I was very suprised that this was a show for adults featuring adults. No anorexic teenagers flying around and beating big guys to a pulp. And the first two episodes with Jason Bateman were strong. Unfortunately once he's gone, there's no one to connect to. The rest of the main cast is frankly mediocre, hideous, and lousy. How on earth did any of those people ever get hired I can't fathom. Similarly, cinematography is poor, dark, discolored. Why producers insist on making shows unpleasant to see makes no sense to me. I didn't expect the supernatural turn the show took, which was occasionally creepy, but more could have been done with the creature and more of a horror angle could have been included. Overall, this show is worth seeing but not by much.

Some students decide to go accept a friend's invitation to Sweden. The Swedish guy is part of some folk commune. One of the kids sees this as an opportunity as he's writing a thesis on some of these practices. Chris and Dani who are supposed to be a couple come along as well. Dani's family just died in the intro from carbon monoxide poisoning.

First thing they do as they arrive in Sweden is of course take hallucinogens, what else. Eventually they arrive at the new age folk communist commune in an open field with three buildings where everyone is dressed up in embroidered white clothes. There are two British friends of the Swede as well.

They are received with open arms for the summer solstice celebration. During the first meal everyone awaits the arrival of the two elders who emerge from one yellow pyramid. Once they give the silent order, everyone proceeds to eat. The thesis student is interested in what is going and asks questions and takes notes. Everyone sleeps in a building that is a single room with beds, so no privacy. A baby cries constantly every single night. We are told the next day will be an important one as an event will happen that only happens every 90 years. Everyone then gathers at the bottom of a cliff. The elder woman appears on top of the cliff and jumps. The visitors are in shock but stick around anyway. Then the elder guy appears and follows suit, but he doesn't die so a huge mallet is brought out to end his suffering.

There are more meals, some drama among the kids. The Swedish friend tells Dani that he too lost his family but regained a new one in the commune. Eventually things start going downhill for our friends as they start violating commune rules. One urinates on a sacred tree where the ashes of the dead elders have been placed. Another one takes picture of their sacred book, something he was told is prohibited. The two Brits allegedly left--without telling anyone. One girl starts getting interested in Chris and starts doing voodoo stuff to get in his pants. There's the traditional midsummer dance around the pole/contest that Dani ends up winning and as such ends up being the "may" queen and takes on a leadership role during the rest of the rituals. While she is taken somewhere, a drugged Chris does end up having sex with the girl who was interested in him. Dani catches him in the act and for no good reason has a break down--even though there wasn't much of a relationship with Chris to begin with. Here's something interesting about the community aspect of the commune. While Dani suffers and while the girl enjoys the sex, they are surrounded by other girls who join in their feelings--screaming in suffering or moaning in pleasure.

When Chris comes back to his senses of sorts he runs into a barn and finds a corpse. That's when things unravel. The last ritual is one of sacrifice and Dani and Chris will play an integral part in it.

Ari and his editor are back. This time giving us a 2 and a half hour long movie just for this basic story. No wonder someone decided to edit this down. So we get the same style as in Hereditary, again with a decent story but drawn out excessively long. The characters are weak here as well. No reason to care for any of them. No one stands out in the commune either. Florence Pugh is adorably cute though. The bits of violence, gore, and sex are good though. But in between there's just a whole lot of nothing. Ari claims to be interested in presenting relationships (and clearly has mommy and daddy issues) but can't portray a single meaningful relationship. Far from being creepy or horrific or even interesting, the commune is goofy and ridiculous and laughable. Only the music in this film manages to create some tension. A shame really, as something far better could have been done with this material.

In the intro some lady buys the puzzle box from someone in Serbia for a rich guy named Voight. Some time later back in the US, a kid is a at degenerate party at Voight's. He runs into the lady who tells him he can meet Voight elsewhere in the mansion. The kid goes and finds the puzzle box, which now is in a very different configuration that the one's we're used to. Voight shows up and encourages the kid to solve the puzzle. He points out that if the kid solves it he (Voight) will get a prize. The box releases a blade and punctures the kid's hand and the blood summons chains. Of course that means the end of the kid.

We meet our lead, Riley, who's a reluctant recovering addict, her boyfriend, her brother, his lover, some girl. She lives with the brother who's tired of taking care of her. The boyfriend proposes a job. They can break into an abandoned warehouse and steal whatever is there. They go and find a container inside the warehouse. Inside the container is a safe, which they have no problem opening. Inside the safe is a box, inside the box is the puzzle box, which they take, thinking it should have some value.

Riley eventually gets kicked out by her brother and she ends up taking drugs and starts messing around with the puzzle box. She starts seeing cenobites. Her brother finds her to apologize and starts messing with the box, gets cut, cenobites show up and he vanishes.

Riley makes it her mission to find her brother. She tracks down the lady from the intro who is dying in a convalescent home. She warns her of Voight and the box but ends up cutting herself with it so she gets a face to face with Pinhead. Riley joins forces with her boyfriend and the two other kids to break into Voight's mansion. Inside the mansion are secret hallways, a fancy hall with some strange roof that opens and changes shapes. It doesn't take long for the cenobites to show up but they don't want Riley, they want someone else and are welling to trade her life for a couple of others'. She also finds Voight's writings that spell out what the box is for and how it works. One of it's configurations is "resurrection" so she has hopes for her brother. The kids eventually do meet poor Voight in the hall, who indeed did get his prize. It just wasn't what he had imagined. And that's a lesson for Riley who has to figure out a way to solve the puzzle of getting out of this situation. Voight, too, gets a second chance as they all meet in the hall with the cenobites.

It's good finally see a Hellraiser movie that was made on a decent budget. The story is rich and complex as we learn new things about the power of the box. We meet new and old cenobites clad in flesh alone without leather. There's plenty of sex and gore as there should be in a Hellraiser movie. At 2 hours this movie is a bit longer than it needs to be. I'm not sure Riley makes a particularly good lead. They could have done a lot more with the Voight character, especially in the beginning, there was a lot more story there that should have been told. As to the new Pinhead...I'm not as thrilled as others pretend to be. Her voice is unremarkable and so is the character as a whole. The overly stiff delivery of her lines is a letdown, even more so of one of the signature Pinhead lines. The actress is trying too hard to impersonate the irreplaceable Bradley but without the voice acting chops. She should have instead tried to do something of her own with the character. They should really think about an evolved Pinhead character instead of a bad copy.

Overall, I'm thrilled to finally see a relatively good Hellraiser movie. Still would like to see a re-envisioned remake written and directed by Pascal Laugier though.

We're told that some old lady has died. Then we meet her daughter's family. The woman who is a mess and makes dollhouses, the husband who of course is irrelevant in the family, and their two fugly kids who couldn't look more different from each other and their parents: some dumb good for nothing dopehead and some little girl that has some issues. For no good reason the woman asks dopehead to take little girl with him to a party where he smokes dope and the girl eats candy with nuts to which she is allergic to causing her to have an anaphylactic shock. Dummy races to drive her to a hospital and while the girl has her head out the window trying to breathe he swerves out of traffic decapitating the girl against a light post.

Now of course the woman is an even greater mess. At her usual help group she meets a woman who offers to do a seance to get the dead girl to talk. Sure enough stuff happens during the seances. She finds the girl's notebook that has a bunch of scary scribbles against her dad. When the woman throws the book into the fire, her husband ends up burning up. Meanwhile, the seance lady is screaming weird stuff at dummy. When he comes home and finds all this he runs into the attic to see his mom hanging from the ceiling try to cut her own head off. He then goes into the tree house where he finds a couple of surprises.

All this sounds pretty good. Problem is that the whole thing is drawn out unnecessarily to 2 long hours. Things only get going during the last half hour. In the meantime we're punished by the camera that won't stop giving us pointless closeups of the repugnant dopehead's face. There's something to be said about the direction, the style, the music that make this whole affair tolerable, but again, nothing is gained by the excess in runtime. Ari seems to think that every single minute of his work is worthwhile. No it's not. They could have easily cut out 30-40 minutes of this and ended up with a better movie. I did appreciate though the backstory that in reality should have been more the focus and deserved more attention.

In the intro some woman hangs herself in a mansion.

A catering girl serving arrogant rich people during some corporate event decides to send in a DNA-ancestry test from the company sponsoring the event. Now that she's in the databases she can look up her distant relatives. One of them contacts her. It's some Brit. He invites her to the wedding of some relatives there.

She reluctantly (TM) goes then to this all expenses-paid trip to a British castle. She right away has a run in with the arrogant chief butler as the abused catering girls arrive, with whom she connects immediately. Then she meets the owner of the castle who "saves her" from the butler. They are attracted to each other. Tuns out the entry hall of the mansion is the place where the woman in the intro hanged herself. There are some huge monster statues all over the place. She is told she can't go into the library. At night she discovers the location of the hidden library key. Later we see how the butler sends one of the catering girls in there. Let's just say she doesn't fare well. Our girl is introduced to the whole family, which is almost entirely made up of guys.

Next day she meets 2 bridesmaids. A sweet and friendly one, and a creepy arrogant one who keeps pushing our girl's buttons, which is easy to do since she has a huge chip on her shoulder. Our girl gets closer and closer to the mansion owner who suggests they should marry and she sort of agrees. Later that day there's a family dinner where guy announces, much to girl's shock, the wedding of the two. So this meeting is of three families that have been connected for centuries. The fourth missing family member is finally present--the girl. And in marriage then all of them will prosper. Then butler brings in a catering girl, slashes her throat and passes on glasses of blood for folks to drink.

Turns out mansion owner is a big time vampire who needs the girl to keep the line going. During the wedding they will exchange blood which will turn her into a vampire and give him strength. Of course she's not interested in massive wealth and eternal life, what American would be... So she has other plans for the wedding.

The Invitation then comes across as a vampire-themed version of Get Out with an unappealing cinematography reminiscent of Euphoria. I'm glad someone finally made a vampire movie with a budget. Unfortunately the politics, casting, and poor cinematography don't help the story much. Missing is also more violence, gore, sensuality--in other words everything a vampire horror flick should have.