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The Complex: Lockdown (2020)
A by the numbers thriller
An 80 minute commercial for a video game, but still a competent movie. No more than competent, though. It's not original, the cast would be more at home in a low budget Canadian sci-fi, the plot is bland and slow, and the whole thing seems cheap.
Useless Humans (2020)
Surprisingly good cast and effects for such an obscure production
I enjoyed the alien, I enjoyed the characters, I enjoyed the tone. The pacing was good so the film never dragged. The twist ending really didn't make sense, but it's fine, it's fine, it's not really about the plot.
Judy & Punch (2019)
Pick a tone and commit
The movie has a vaguely historical setting, but no historical accuracy.
Some aspects seem like fantasy, but are then rooted in real history and geography.
The violence is played for laughs, but is the also meant to be poignant.
Either go full Punch and Judy, like a fantastical Falling Down, or make a gritty piece about the realities of a harsh life in the Early Modern period, but don't vacillate between the two. As released this film doesn't work as either of those things.
Dead Dicks (2019)
A nice try on no budget
The whole movie is set in and around an apartment, with only three actors. They made a practical effect to attach to a wall, and had some make-up to make people look dead. With that they made a movie which is adequate, but has no frills.
The actors do a good job, but the plot doesn't have much for them to work with. The pacing makes the film feel less boring that it should, but there's only so much you can do with no resources and a moderately fleshed out idea.
Yes, God, Yes (2019)
Just watch the short
I saw the short this was based on and it was great. This doesn't really add much of note.
The plot is bulked out with high school stereotypes and a hypocritical priest, played by the horribly miscast Timothy Simons (Veep).
The positives are that it has a great lead performance from Natalia Dyer, and it's a good looking and well shot movie. I'm not sure why they felt the need to set this in the past, but still in the era of the internet and the mobile telephone. That aspect is as well executed as it is pointless.
The film is enjoyable, but it seems like exactly what it is, a misguided attempt to stretch a short film out to almost feature length.
The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020)
Mildly amusing
It's nice to see Paul Hogan still working, and guest appearances from Chevy Chase, John Cleese, Reginald Veljohnson and Newman from Seinfeld are very welcome. One last payday for so many big stars.
Comedy is subjective, but I didn't get any actual laughs out of this. Several times there were funny ideas, but for me it was amusing rather than funny.
There were some poignant moments toward the end, and the entire film has a sleepy and depressing feel, which is probably why the jokes don't land.
The Luring (2019)
Some creepy visuals, but not much of a story
We all know the cliche shot of a child letting go of a balloon, but this film makes the balloon to main villain. Could be an interesting idea.
The plot is very slow. The characters are unsympathetic. The villains aren't menacing.
Some of the visuals are genuinely creepy. The clown is a bit of an obvious choice, but it is creepy. They do some intersting things with the lighting during the conversations with the villain.
The Secret: Dare to Dream (2020)
A tedious romance lifted by a good cast
I had no idea when I watched it that this was meant to be a sequel, or that it had any mystical implications, because it really is just an empty, Hallmark style, film about a love triangle.
The cast is good, even the child actors are more than adequate, but the movie has nothing original to offer.
Random Acts of Violence (2019)
Interesting ideas, but not much else
The film has some interesting ideas for both plot and cinematography but isn't actually good. The plot is slow and uneventful, and the ending comes out of nowhere.
The comic book visuals are potentially interesting.
The cast is good and the technical side is good enough to watch. but I wouldn't recommend it.
Radio Silence (2019)
The most predictable mystery ever made, but otherwise not bad
Radio Silence is about a woman called Dr Jill, who has the same job as Frasier in Frasier. I don't know if that's something that really exists in American cities in 2020, but in this film she is a big deal.
To talk about this film we first need to talk about what people want from a mystery in a movie. It can't be too obvious. People want to be surprised. But on the other hand, want a mystery to make sense. They want to look back after finding out what's really going on and think "I should have seen that coming". But they don't want so little foreshadowing that it comes as a complete surprise.
The problem with this movie is that the twist is obvious right from the start. Dr Jill, played by Georgina Haig, drove a woman to suicide with her phone in show. Now someone is coming to take revenge, and people close to her start dying. In the film, there's the main character, her boss, her love interest, her best friend, and then there's the older woman who works in the coffee shop and has no obvious reason to be there. So someone is obviously taking revenge for the dead girl, and I just immediately assumed it was her mother, who is the old woman in the coffee shop. Half way through the movie the old woman mentions that her daughter died last year, just in case you didn't get it.
They do try to throw in some red herrings. The boyfriend had access to the first murder scene, but then he gets killed. The boss is conspiring against her, but that's just to fake harrassment for publicity, not to commit murder. But I never thought it was anyone other than the old woman. And it was the older woman.
Now there is, in this film, an example of good foreshadowing. The boyfriend says she should have a gun and that he will give her one, and it isn't mentioned again, and it isn't shown. Until the end. Then the old woman walks in to murder Dr Jill on the air, and it cuts to black and there's a gun shot. Then it cuts to Dr Jill telling the police that she had a gun, so the old woman is dead. Good foreshadowing for Dr Jill having a gun. The cut to black is a bit of a cop out, but it's an okay ending. But that core mystery is so obvious it just ruins the movie.
Mighty Oak (2020)
An unfortunate message from a confused movie
Oak is a kid who can play the guitar quite well. But he's not really the main character of this movie. The real main character is a girl who thinks Oak is the reincarnation of her dead brother. Her brother was in a band, which she managed, and after his death she went completely insane. She was sectioned and she attempted suicide. This is a decent set up for a movie. She can have some character growth, get over her grief, maybe help Oak through his problems. He's bullied at school and his mother is a drug addict, so they could help each other deal emotionally with their struggles.
That's not what happens.
I'm going to jump straight to the end of the film, because that's my problem with this film, the ending. They've been setting up this ending where she gets over the death of her brother and moves on with her life, and Oak goes off to be a normal kid with his grandparents, after his mother's death. Instead, the insane woman fakes documents giving herself custody of Oak, and this is presented as an entirely positive development. Admittedly, his grandparents are unpleasant and authoritarian, but probably still better than a gambling addicted rock roadie. Then, with no warning, it turns out that he really is the reincarnated brother, and the movie ends with a reproduction of the opening scene, but with the kid replacing the brother. There's also a coda where she's back with the man who dumped her because of her obsession with her dead brother, and shes pregnant now, too.
Normally the pregnancy would be symbolic of her moving on with her life after the brother's death, but here it's the opposite, it symbolises that she's happy to be creepily obsessed with a small boy who is the reincarnation of her brother, and it's so stupid.
It's a weird and pointless ending, and it really doesn't make any sense. Apart from that the movie is fine. Good cast, decent child actors, well shot. The twist ending is just a real problem.
Alpha Code (2020)
Well shot but predictable and dull
This film has a real budget and real talent behind it. It has devent actors. Actors I've seen in other things. The problem is the plot. There isn't one.
Let me explain. The production values of this film are great. It's filmed well. There are a couple of horror sequences that have interesting props, good lighting... it's got Denise Richards. She's one of those straight to DVD actors now. There's an action scene, which is good enough. The main actor seems to know what he's doing in an action scene. But then he doesn't do anything. The main character is completely passive, and the plot is empty because of that.
At the start of the movie he takes his daughter to a cabin where they can have some bonding time, and she gets abducted by aliens. Theoretically he spends the rest of the movie trying to track her down. But he really doesn't do anything. He meets Denise Richards, he decodes a way to communicate with the aliens, and then he summons aliens, but he doesn't really do anything even with that. He can just read the code because the aliens put it in his head. Then an alien turns up and explains the plot of the movie. A deus ex machina exposition device.
The alien tells them that their dughter is an alien hybrid, and Wolf and Denise Richards aren't the characters we've seen in the movie. They were actually married and just don't remember it because they asked the aliens to wipe their memories. It would have been nice if they had set up any of this. I don't want to tell professionals how they should do their jobs, but maybe have Wolf and Denise Richards start to have feelings for each other to foreshadow this, maybe have them work it out on their own so they actually do something in the movie, maybe make any of this matter to the plot, but no. Just have an alien turn up five minutes before the end of the movie and explain what happened in the movie, and also resolve the entire plot.
Big thumbs down.
Game of Death (2017)
A film of two halves
In a horror movie you often get a setup where a group of sexy teenagers go to a cabin in the woods, where they encounter some horrible monster and all die. This is the budget version. A group of bland twenty somethings go to a house in a field and find a board game. Then they all decide to play the game, even though some of them are complaining about it, and the game is cursed. Now they have to kill people or their heads explode.
Man, I love to see a head explode. People just get covered in blood and brain, and eventually they realise the game is real and set off to start killing people. And it's all just boring. The kills aren't any good, the film production isn't any good, and I just don't care about any of it. It's not bad enought o be interesting, it's just bland and lifeless.
Until it isn't any more. There is a specific shot. It's a long single shot, the camera moves through a working hospital, and it looks really good. That's the start of easily the best part of the movie. Two of the killers go to this hospital and start killing people and it finally feels like they're trying to make a movie. They're doing things with the camera, the kills are better, they do weird transitions involving video game footage, they just do things. \
The only misstep is that they didn't kill the kid. The girl in the couple at the hospital has a chance to save them all by killing a little kid, a terminally ill kid, and she doesn't do it. I know Hollywood doesn't like killing kids, but this is a low budget horror film where peoples head explode. You've got to kill that kid.
Then one of other kids playing the game arrives to kill her friends to save innocent people. The camera follows her in, it's an interesting shot, although not as good as the killing spree, but this character is awful. She succeeds in killing her friends, so only her and one of the others is left, and the game says they must kill one more person. She kills her friend to win the game. She gives a stupid speech about choosing life, and abandons all that stuff about saving innocent lives. She decides to kill to survive, just like the game wanted.
So a film that goes from boring to interesting halfway through, and has a frustrating ending.
MY problem with the film? Got to kill that kid.
Savage Creatures (2020)
Fun without a budget
Vampires, cannibals, zombies and an alien invasion. And no budget at all. It's from Mill Creek Entertainment, so you know there's no budget. So this film, which is full of supernatural elements and an full on alien invasion, takes place almost entirely in and around a single house.
However, they actually do a really good job. The vampire fangs are fine. The zombie make up it ok. There is a scene where the cannibals are dismembering the vampires, and one of the few things this film could afford was a rubber arm. So they have two camera angles, and you see him cut this rubber arm off a body (which is off screen), then they cut back to the other angle and the cannibal is puzzled because they arm is still there. It's cheap, it requires no budget, but it gets the job done. Nice work, film. That's an efficient use of a limited budget.
They've only got a few actors, but they spread out introducing new characters. They've only got one building to film it, but they move around the building to make it less tedious. Sometimes they go out in the woods, but they don't just wander around aimlessly like so many cheap movies do when they go out into the woods.
So the entire film is cheap, but the only time it really hurts is when the aliens arrive. They look terrible, but they sound great. They make the most adorable sounds when they die.
So those two are the vampires, they survive some suburban cannibals, kill them, and they aliens arrive and turn the entire human race into zombies. The vampires are immune because they don't have souls, and they fight the aliens briefly, then set off to survive on blood banks.
I don't love this film, but I actually enjoyed it. Some decent character writing and the efficient production make it interesting enough to last more than its seventy minute run time. I recommend this movie.
Woodland (2018)
A supernatural horror lacking in horror and supernatural elements
Intensely boring.The film falls into a pattern of following one man's daily routine, and so we get him doing the same things over and over again. Here he is, walking through the woods, talking about trees. Here he is fishing with his boss, the only other character to mention. Here he is not experiencing paranormal events or anything horrifying.
It's well filmed. The cast is okay, although they don't really have anything to work with. The old man gets a couple of moments to act towards the end. There aren't a lot of effects, but those they use are fine. There just isn't anything going on. Boring cyclical activities, and very occasionally something mildly creepy happens.
The horror elements are limited. There's a girl in make-up, there's a big CGI shadow of something we don't get to see, and there's a mild air of fatalism that pervades the entire movie.
I'll avoid spoilers, but I'll tell you that the movie really goes nowhere. The plot doesn't develop, there's no tension, and there's no climax.
The Man from Earth: Holocene (2017)
An unremarkable sequel to a unique film
The cinematography has gone fron pseudo-retro to peri-soap-opera, and the acting is still a bit ropey.
It lacks a lot of what made the original unique. It's not all set in a single location. There isn't as much to think about. The character he went off with at the end of the first film doesn't return, while a couple of the others do. As soon as I heard of this film's existence I worried it might detract from the original, and while I don't think it does it also doesn't really add much.
Well, it adds some heavy handed social commentary about global warming or something similar. Also, they end the film with a mid-credits scene setting up a villain for the sequel likes it's a Marvel movie.
The main plots are the original main character aging, despite his ageless immortality, probably because it took them a decade to make the sequel. Why is he aging? They never really answer that and it just doesn't really go anywhere. The other plotline is about a gang of college kids trying to prove he's immortal, and that plot takes up too much of the run time, becomes quite annoying, and then goes completely off the rails when the religious one goes ape and kidnaps our hero then decides to knife him.
It's no match for the original.
I'm glad I watched it, but I probably won't watch it again.