Review – Geostorm

Though I appreciated all the elaborate scenes of extinction-level destruction, the story left me cold. I need something a little more plausible. Earth being threatened by asteroids or some other within-the-realm-of-possibility menace makes the plot intriguing. But by the time we’ve gone through a series of ridiculous twists about weather manipulation satellites and zero gravity action sequences, it’s just not as much fun. Mildly amusing

Review – Shutter (2004)

I’m fond of those rare moments when folks making a horror movie can start with a good concept and then do something good with it. The theme here is spirit photography, a subject with great potential to either provide genuine scares or descend into cliché-ridden nonsense. Fortunately the folks who made this Thai production chose the first path. To be sure, parts of this movie are hard to watch (particularly the sexual assault). But overall this supernatural revenge picture is an impressive assembly of coherent story, good acting and some genuine creepiness. Worth seeing

Review – The Final Wish

If the folks responsible for this were bakers instead of filmmakers, they’d be serving their customers bowls of flour, milk and sugar rather than cookies. The ingredients are here. Lin Shaye. Tony Todd. The umpty thousandth piece of inherited junk that turns out to be a monkey’s paw. They just aren’t combined in any kind of interesting or entertaining way. If I’m down to my final wish, this one’s headed to the cornfield. See if desperate

Review – Black Mountain Side

I originally took an interest in this movie after a member of The Thing’s fan group on Facebook sang its praises. Further, the plot summaries promised that the horror would stem from the discovery of ruins more ancient than humanity itself, which of course conjured a tantalizing vision of Lovecraftian adjectives. Instead the archaeological element is a boxy hunk of junk that the filmmakers wisely opt to avoid showing in any detail. And the only real points in common with John Carpenter’s masterpiece are an all-male cast and a cold setting. Beyond that this is a tangle of fragmentary plot threads that aren’t woven together with any skill. Added demerit: cat death. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Greyhound

Aside from a girl-back-home flashback at the beginning and occasional futile efforts by the all-Black galley crew to serve the captain breakfast, this movie is non-stop action. And strangely for a war movie, that’s actually a shame. A faithful recreation of the Battle of the Atlantic would probably be both too boring and too terrifying for a Tom Hanks vehicle, but I was hoping for something a little less like spending two hours watching someone playing a naval combat game on Twitch. The movie would have been just fine with more historically accurate battle scenes, with the ships farther apart and no U-boat commanders taunting their prey over the radio. I enjoyed the effects but otherwise didn’t get much from the storytelling. Mildly amusing