Review – Warning Sign

A deadly bacteria gets released in a lab that’s secretly manufacturing deadly bacteria. Can the lab workers’ friends and family – led by the local sheriff (Sam Waterston) – cut through government bureaucracy and disinformation in order to rescue their loved ones from the ensuing lockdown before it’s too late? And in so doing, will they release the plague into the wider world? This production does a reasonably entertaining job of making the audience wait for the answer. Mildly amusing

Review – Winchester

The true part of this story is familiar enough: Sarah Winchester, widow of the firearms manufacturer William Wirt Winchester, believed she was being haunted by the ghosts of people slain with her husband’s rifles. So she had a mansion built (and built and built) with no end of eccentric details in order to placate and/or befuddle the restless dead. Simply positing that her ghosts were real should have been enough to sustain a good horror movie, especially with Helen Mirren in the title role and permission obtained to do at least some of the filming in the real location. Alas, the plot never finds a way to get off the ground. Mildly amusing

Review – Justice League

Once again Zack Snyder makes a DC Extended Universe movie that plays like a mopey version of its Marvel counterparts. Having killed Superman in the last one, Batman must now form a superhero team strong enough to take on a Thanos-esque baddie with the unlikely name of Steppenwolf. Though not completely charmless, this nonetheless comes across as a depressing revamp of The Avengers. Mildly amusing [and I should also note that two years later the studio let Snyder re-cut this to remove the color, shrink the aspect ratio and add a lot of extra footage, none of which made it any better]

Review – Into the Woods

At the risk of being the umpty-thousandth viewer to vent this gripe, this thing really goes to hell at the midway point. The first half of this adapted-from-the-stage musical is an entertaining re-imagining of several familiar fairy tales. But then suddenly a giant squishes everything, throwing the kingdom into chaos and forcing all the characters to re-examine their life choices. Maybe it’s profound, but at the risk of sounding like a witless rube, it isn’t very entertaining. See if desperate

Review – Venom

Venom didn’t make his first comic book appearance until after I’d stopped reading Spider-Man as a kid. And I kinda regret that, because he seems like a really good villain, a nice combination of vicious, powerful and scary. But here he’s the hero. Or to be more precise, he’s an alien symbiote that attaches himself to the hero (Tom Hardy). Once they finish with the how-did-this-happen part, this eventually settles down into a fun anti-hero action yarn. Mildly amusing

Review – Spider-Man: Homecoming

Freed from the vagaries of the studio rights ownership deals that kept the character out of the MCU, Spider-Man finally gets his own (semi-) stand-alone movie. I appreciated the decision to skip the pace-killing, all-too-familiar origin story and cut straight to the new battle between the teenage hero (Tom Holland) and the Vulture (Michael Keaton), who in this iteration holds the undignified position of being a supervillain who steals scrap metal. Mildly amusing

Review – Horror Noire

This is an excellent documentary about the role Black filmmakers have played in the horror genre over the years. It covers mainstream horror movies with Black characters, horror movies made specifically for Black audiences (especially in the 1970s), and of course the racism encountered in both. Worth seeing

Review – Mandy

Here’s further proof – however unnecessary – that no matter how terrible a production is, it’s still probably someone’s favorite movie. Nicolas Cage stars as the vengeful boyfriend of a woman kidnapped by a Manson-esque hippie murder cult and their biker henchmen. If you’re willing to buy the idea that a story must be profound if it’s lethargic and confusing, here’s a piece of high art for you. And you’ll have at least some company, as I’ve read several baffling, positive reviews of this thing. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Beware the Slenderman

Though the title makes this sound like yet another witless attempt to turn an internet trope into a horror movie, this turns out to be something far more disturbing. Inspired by online rumors about a sinister figure known as the Slenderman, two 12-year-old girls decided to go Leopold and Loeb on one of their classmates. This documentary raises all kinds of interesting questions about media influence, mental health and juveniles in the justice system. Mildly amusing

Review – Insidious: The Last Key

Yeah, I’ve seen the word “last” in horror franchise titles before. In this one, Dr. Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) is asked to help the current occupants of the haunted house where she grew up. The story features an unpleasant subplot about child abuse, but otherwise it’s what fans have come to expect from the Insidious series. See if desperate

Review – Ready Player One

In a dystopian future where everyone lives in trailers stacked on top of each other, the only hope our young protagonist has is a high stakes competition in a vast and elaborate VR world. The cyberspace setting gives director Steven Spielberg plenty of room to play around with all the cultural references Warner Brothers can supply, ranging from King Kong to The Shining. The story isn’t all that interesting, but the visuals are impressive. Mildly amusing

Review – Ferdinand

Wow is there ever a lot of animal peril in this, especially for a children’s movie. I understand that the underlying story is about a bull who refuses to fight and be killed in the ring. I loved Disney’s cartoon short when I was a kid. But here they literally kill some of the bulls. And later revealing that they’re not actually dead kinda doesn’t make it better. The voice talent is good, and the animation is acceptable. But the script is weak. See if desperate

Review – Annabelle: Creation

Why spend money on productions like this? As it relies entirely on jump scares, all the producers need to do is pick some random past release (preferably the most boring movie they can find) and add bright flashes and loud noises at random intervals. Or maybe don't even bother with a plot at all. If moviemakers need to cater to audiences who crave nothing more than cheap adrenaline rushes, let the fans  stare at a blank screen and have an usher drop by once in awhile and blast an air horn at them. The Conjuring franchise continues its downhill slide from an apex that wasn't much more than a speed bump to begin with. See if desperate

Review – Deadpool 2

Though the first Deadpool movie was straightforward enough to stand on its own, this one tends more toward the need to be familiar with the comic book characters before you take on the movie. It’s entertaining enough. But there seemed to be a lot going on that depended on one’s ability to get the inside jokes. And as I’m not familiar enough with the whole X-Men thing to do that, I felt left out in several spots. Mildly amusing

Review – Deadwood

At the outset I should point out that if you aren't a serious fan of the original Deadwood series, this movie may be difficult to follow. On the other hand, if you are a fan then this is the closure you’ve been waiting for. Familiar characters are back, albeit older. Fair warning, though: unlike the series, the story here departs significantly from the historical record. So for plot and character developments, all bets are off. I also would have guessed that one of the town’s devastating fires would have factored in somehow, given all the foreshadowing the show did. Nonetheless, this is a worthy conclusion with all participants in fine form. Worth seeing

Review – The Nun

This prequel to The Conjuring has all of the purposelessness of the original with few of the scares. A big part of the blame for this movie's failure rests on the decision to set the story in Romania. After umpty-thousand Dracula movies, American audiences expect this part of the world to be the abode of endless creepiness. Deprived of their ability to disrupt normal life in the US, the moments of unspeakable evil seem relentless, murky and unimaginative. And I wish I'd put a counter on the jump scares. They're so frequent that their impact – lessening with each successive booga-booga – fades to total inanity. I ran out of interest way before the director ran out of footage. See if desperate

Review – Tomb Raider

This appears to be the product of a series of super strange choices. The first attempt to bring Lara Croft to the silver screen followed the action-heavy, plot-light look and feel of the game. But in this take the protagonist is far more human, right down to being broke and working a bad job. The platform hopping doesn't even get underway in earnest until halfway through the movie. The result is oddly non-gamey for a production based on a game. Mildly amusing

Review – BlacKKKlansman

The premise here is made all the more fascinating by its roots in a true story. A Black police officer (John David Washington) uses a series of phone calls to talk his way into the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. As he obviously can’t show up for the meetings in person, he enlists a white officer (Adam Driver) to collaborate on the sting. Spike Lee does a great job of telling the story without letting it turn preachy or absurd. Worth seeing

Review – The First Purge

I continue to be amazed at how the Purge series develops. It got off to a really lackluster start, but each successive entry has better production values, more clever scripts and more of a point. Which is of course the exact opposite of how most movie franchises progress (or rather regress). This prequel sticks closely to the anti-Trumpist themes of the last one, explaining here how the whole Purge thing got started. To be sure, it's a simple-minded action movie. But it's nice to have escapist fun that targets a problem worth targeting. Mildly amusing

Review – The Meg

This is the most time, energy and attention I've ever seen devoted to a super-giant shark movie. Usually they're more the province of the SyFy channel. In this one even the explanations are elaborate, building in temperature inversions at the bottom of the ocean to explain how a 60-foot-long predator could exist without ever coming into contact with humans. The movie packs a few scary moments, sadly offset by some unnecessarily sad bits. This is also impressively well tailored to make a seamless transition to Chinese media markets, which I found more interesting than the story itself. See if desperate

Review – The Predator

Here's a space monster for the Trump era: just make the stupid thing bigger and that's bound to make it better. In all fairness, the jumbo-sized Predator is one of the movie's high points. The production is also clearly designed for the age of comment sections, with lots of little in-jokes such as the acknowledgment that the aliens are really more sport hunters than they are actual predators. Though the action sequences are top notch, the "talky" parts of the script often seem a little pointless. Mildly amusing

Review – The Silence

It's pointless at this point to become the thousandth reviewer to observe that this comes across as a knock-off of A Quiet Place, both because this one came out later and because the other one was better. Though this one has its moments, for the most part it does everything wrong that the other one did right. For example, the monsters make their screen appearance too early and spend too much time in the clear light of day. It also spends a big chunk of time pitting the protagonist family against other people, which struck me as a mistake. If you've got good monsters, why bother with a stereotypical religious cult? See if desperate

Review – A Quiet Place

Someone more clever than I pointed out that the same people who did the Bird Box challenge should be encouraged to do something similar with this production, seeing how long they can go without making a sound. The premise – society has been destroyed by alien monsters that hunt entirely by sound – is at least original, and in places it manages some clever moments. The movie also does a good job of slowly revealing the monsters themselves. It was nice to see filmmakers put some thought into their work for a change. Worth seeing

Review – Saturn 3

Return now to the ancient days of 1980, when a brief glimpse of Farah Fawcett's boobs was enough to draw audiences to a thoroughly insipid movie. Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel take turns chewing the scenery in an outer space rework of the Frankenstein story. The monster here is a eight foot tall robot with a super teeny head, depriving it of a considerable amount of scare power. See if desperate

Review – Apostle

Imagine The Wicker Man only way, way dumber. Our hero arrives on a small, isolated British isle trying to solve a mystery, only to find himself thwarted by the strange, cultish islanders. Current horror movie tropes – particularly excessive gore – replace what little charm this production might otherwise have mustered. And gut-wrenching violence makes a poor substitute for more subtle terrors. At least it packs a happy ending, if you feel like horror movies need that sort of thing. See if desperate

Review – The Autopsy of Jane Doe

It's just so hard to make a horror movie set in a single location without making it look like it began life as a stage play. And the theatrical nature of this production does nothing to counter the stiff feeling of the story (pardon the pun). Like many other unexplained horrors, the strange nature of the anonymous woman's corpse loses a lot of its power to scare once it's explained. As a result, Brian Cox's scenery chewing becomes the most frightening element of the show. Olwen Kelly's ability to hold perfectly still and hold her breath for lengthy shots is impressive, but the overall rating is nonetheless dragged down by the violent death of a house cat. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Interior

A guy is trapped alone in a haunted house, a place far too suburban to pack much of an inherent aura of dread. Mind you, I don't necessarily require a dilapidated mansion next door to a cemetery, but it might have helped to shoot in a spot that looked a little less like it might be the producer's mom's house. The bland setting does help a couple of subtle, spooky shots to work pretty well. But an occasional creepy bit isn't anywhere near enough to sustain a story so dull that it seems to drag well beyond its relatively short running time. See if desperate

Review – Terrifier

The killer clown from All Hallows Eve gets his own movie for some reason. The production relies almost entirely on extreme gore, including a designed-to-stir-controversy scene in which a naked woman is suspended upside down with her legs apart and then split in half. Back in the 1970 and 80s (when I first developed a taste for scary movies and we used to watch clowns for breakfast), that would have been shocking stuff. Now that pre-existing misogyny has been wed to a near-constant sense of over-stimulation, extreme violence that at one time might have shocked now tends only to bemuse. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – The Purge: Election Year

This time around the usual plot line about ordinary people trying to survive the country's annual 24-hour crime spree is joined by a left-wing candidate whose opponents are trying to take advantage of the chaos to assassinate her. The thinly-veiled anti-Trump moralizing is spread pretty thick (not that I'm necessarily objecting), particularly toward the end. Excessive preaching notwithstanding, the production includes some dislikable villains meeting satisfactorily violent ends. What more can one ask from an entry in the Purge series? Mildly amusing

Review – Boggy Creek Monster

Some of the fine folks of Fouke, Arkansas, are interviewed for this documentary about the bigfoot-esque monster that first gained national attention thanks to The Legend of Boggy Creek. The production involves a lot of wandering around in the woods while locals tell their tales of encounters with the beast. Overall this is neither credulous nor incredulous to be interesting to anyone other than those already fascinated by this corner of the cryptid kingdom. Mildly amusing

Review – First Man

Ryan Gosling brings his dull-eyed emptiness to the lead in this Neil Armstrong biopic. The effects work is meticulous to a fault, re-creating the look and feel of early space flight so realistically that it's nearly as nerve-racking as the real thing. Though the characters' personal lives are beyond maudlin (which doesn't work well with Gosling's typical emotionless stupor), the historical details are fascinating enough to carry the production. Mildly amusing