The three worst game ad campaigns of 2022

Let us pause at the end of this tumultuous year to pay brief homage to some folks who’ve made things just a little bit worse: the creators of terrible game ads.

These criticisms aren’t directed at the games being promoted. Far too many times I’ve seen ads for games I actually play that have no connection at all to actual gameplay. For all I know, the games themselves might actually be fun. The ads, on the other hand, definitely aren’t.

Homescapes takes the lead-off spot. If the ads are accurate – and that’s a big if – the object of this game is to pull pins out of tubes to route items to the best exit point. The samples shown offer obvious solutions, which the simulated player never seems to find.

I understand this as a marketing strategy. Convince a potential customer that they’re way smarter than participants in the ads, and they’ll feel safe wading in. And here there’s the additional aggravation of watching failure after failure in a system that should be easy to beat.

But even that isn’t enough stress for one ad, apparently. Rather than show the puzzles in the abstract, they’re framed by a story of sorts. A woman attempting to care for a child desperately needs whatever item needs to make it through the chutes. Every loss brings more suffering.

The idea must be to increase the urgency of downloading the game to play it correctly and get help where it’s needed. Instead it’s a mixture of stupidity and cruelty worthy of Elon Musk on Twitch.

Next on the list is Evony. The ads make a significant point of showcasing actual game play, so I’ll go ahead and assume that the game itself is as terrible as the ads. Once again we’ve got deliberately obtuse failures. But it’s also crystal clear that non-stupid strategies will inevitably require the player to inflict painful death on animals. I’ll pass.

And then there’s Royal Match.

The first dozen times the ads run: that king seems like he might be a friendly guy. What a shame it has to end badly for him when the sample player inevitably fails over and over again.

After losing untold hours of my life sitting through ads with no end time indicated and an instant trip to the app store for touching the screen anywhere other than right on the tiny X in the corner of the screen: Die, bastard! Get poisoned! Get eaten! Freeze! Burn! Drown! Die! Die! Die!

There, I feel a little better now.

Review – Black Adam

Dwayne Johnson does a great job as the eponymous title antihero. Stir in some expensive effects, and I figured that would be enough to sustain an empty-headed action movie. But then the script stirs in confusing subplots about the complex relationship between global superpowers and their autonomy-hungry fellow nations. As if the crew of not-too-familiar superheroes wasn’t already hard enough to navigate. Mildly amusing

Review – Carol for Another Christmas

Ask Rod Serling to redo Dickens and you get pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Sterling Hayden takes on the Scrooge part, perfectly typecast as a crabby conservative corporate type clinging to his greed and xenophobia. The usual ghosts take him on an all extra preachy journey from the grim history of war profiteering to a post-nuclear-apocalypse world dominated by an insane cult leader (Peter Sellers). This plays like an extra-long, extra-strange episode of The Twilight Zone, which makes it an interesting look back into internationalist politics in the mid 1960s. Mildly amusing

Review – Unhuman

Often low budget horror movies are bad because they’re made by amateurs who lack the experience and talent it takes to do things right. But the folks who made this one were meticulously awful. It’s like they carefully thought out what would make a movie scary or clever or interesting in any way, and then at every turn they did the exact opposite. The result reeks of “hey, I know where there’s an abandoned building that would be a great place to shoot a horror movie.” Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Sacrilege

It’s like the producers bought a Horror Movie Construction Kit from an online reseller. Then when it showed up without the instruction sheet, they just glued the parts together at random. Motivated by some irrelevant pretext, four women rent a country cottage and then buy themselves a bad time by sitting on the spectators’ bench at a pagan ritual. The production also takes great pains to comply to some kind of peculiar censorship code that allows steamy sex as long as there’s no nudity and violent death only if the gore is kept to a minimum. See if desperate

Review – Downton Abbey: A New Era

At this point I think the only reason they’re still making these is to give every last one of the supporting characters a chance at a happy ending. It’s all sewn together with some nonsense about a surprise inheritance and a weak English manor house reheat of Singin’ in the Rain. If you’re not a fan of the series, this is completely missable. Even if you are a fan, don’t feel obligated. Mildly amusing

Review – Halloween Ends

This one made me sad. Not because of the whole “ends” thing, as I assume this is the end only of Blumhouse’s rights to the franchise. Even the apparently decisive conclusion, well, I’ve seen supernatural slashers find ways to walk away from worse. But this has less Michael Myers than any other movie in the set other than the third. Jamie Lee Curtis is still doing a professional job in her recurring role, but honestly at this point I feel like she’s earned a rest. I’m sure the audience has as well. See if desperate

Review – Tales from the Hood 3

This one lies somewhere between the excellence of the first one and the cheapness of the second. The bracket doesn’t amount to much, yet another waste of Tony Todd’s talent. But the four main stories are entertaining enough and more socially aware than the average low budget horror anthology. Mildly amusing

Review – Grimcutty

For the umpteenth movie version of the Slender Man, the monster here is reasonably entertaining. It’s a shame they don’t do much with it other than cheap jump scares. The plot is a batch of cold leftovers about teens who run afoul of a supernatural menace lurking in their social media. The only genuinely new thing here is the heavy reliance on “ASMR” whispering, which proves to be super annoying. See if desperate

No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to fail.

The following questions appear in Sporcle’s “James Bond Trivia” quiz. The whole thing is a ton more fun if you’re willing to get creative with the answers.

Actual answer: Orson Welles

Better answer: American Ornithologist James Bond

Actual answer: guns

Better answer: Roger Moore’s daughter, Deborah Moore

Actual answer: a toupee

Better answer: a monkey

Actual answer: made of licorice

Better answer: stuntman Bob Simmons

Actual answer: MI6

Better answer: David Bowie

Actual answer: Goldeneye

Better answer: Orson Welles

Actual answer: a body double

Better answer: men wearing blonde wigs

Actual answer: stuntman Bob Simmons

Better answer: a monkey

Actual answer: a member of the Nazi party during WWII

Better answer: a monkey

Actual answer: a laser beam

Better answer: a monkey

Review – Hellraiser (2022)

Oddly, this go-around looks and feels more like a Clive Barker story than the original, Barker-directed entry in the set. The dreaded box has several different configurations, each of which supposedly performs a unique function. Thankfully, they all summon Cenobites to tear into whatever unfortunate soul gets cut by the blade that pops out when the iteration is complete. Overall this is an entertaining blend of series conventions and new innovations. Mildly amusing

Review – Sea Fever

So is a movie that does a kinda okay job at several things the equivalent of a movie that does one thing really well? This story starts out with sea monsters but then segues awkwardly into an alien infection paranoia plot. The acting is good. The production values are good. But somehow it seems content to paddle around without ever really setting sail. Mildly amusing

Review – Shadow in the Cloud

As if we needed further proof that gremlins – the old school airplane attacking sort – can sustain a Twilight Zone episode but not much more. And that continues to puzzle me. This had many of the ingredients of a good horror movie, including a reasonably scary monster and a familiar face or two in the bomber-crew-sized cast. But then the protagonist gets stuck in the ball turret under a B-17, and the bulk of the rest of the movie happens in that limited space. Which isn’t as big a shame as it sounds, as almost all of the non-monster parts of the script (the majority of the production’s running time, by the way) was a dull soap opera rather than a frightening story or even an interesting history lesson. See if desperate

Review – Prey

I was reluctant to watch this movie at first because of all the animal violence described in its DoesTheDogDie entry. But I’m glad my desire to see every entry in the Predator series prompted me to see it anyway. Yes, there’s a lot of animal death in this, which isn’t particularly surprising for a movie about hunting. But the story draws distinctions between the Comanche protagonists hunting for food as part of their culture, the Predator hunting for trophies and European immigrants hunting for the love of slaughter. Set 300 years before the first episode in the set, this manages to equal and perhaps even surpass the original for storytelling quality. Worth seeing

Review – Mary

Gary Oldman must have bet a lot of money on the Patriots in the 2018 Super Bowl. I can’t imagine any other reason why he’d agree to star in a movie this terrible. A financially struggling family sinks all their resources into a used boat that turns out to be haunted. Unlike the Lutzes in The Amityville Horror, our unfortunate protagonists can’t merely get out when the evil possessions commence far out at sea with no ports at hand. This had a mildly intriguing concept: the boat is evil because it was built with salvaged parts from an older evil boat. It just doesn’t go anywhere interesting from there. See if desperate

Review – The Requin

The quotes section of this movie’s IMDb page includes only two entries, one of which is “Jaelyn: [fending off a shark] That’s right motherfucker.” That bit of Shakespearian wit is sadly indicative of the quality of the production as a whole. An American couple on a beach vacation in Southeast Asia find themselves adrift when their hut – which floats for some reason – gets swept out to sea in a storm. The title is literally French for “shark,” and yet the thing’s two thirds done before any killer fish put in an appearance. Which is good, because when they do show up they take the form of old stock footage and tragically terrible CGI. The closest this ever comes to entertaining is one character’s remark that he’s “gonna expect a discount on the room.” If memory serves, that’s also borrowed from the Bard of Avon, the last thing Duncan says before Macbeth stabs him. See if desperate

Review – Spencer

Sometimes a work of art can entertain primarily based on the amount of work that went into creating it. Kristen Stewart is banking on that here. She clearly exerts a lot of effort to perfect her portrayal of Princess Diana, from the protagonist’s larger-than-life struggles with her neurodivergence and her in-laws right down to her personal tics. The result is professionally assembled and sympathetic to its lead character. But it’s also, well, effortful. Mildly amusing

Review – Intersect

One of the many problems with telling a story backwards is that it disrupts the flow conventions we’re all comfortable with. As a result, this seemed like it was going to end considerably before it did. On the other hand, some of the twists in this time travel tale wouldn’t have worked as well if events were presented in chronological order. I liked the quasi-Lovecraftian subplot about how disruptions in the spacetime continuum somehow attract extra dimensional monsters. Sadly, that was only a small part of a larger soap opera about dislikable characters often operating from unclear motives (even given that effect tended to precede cause). See if desperate

Review – The Cursed

Though slickly produced, this grim tale doesn’t do anything innovative with plot elements as old as The Wolf Man (if not older). In 19th century France, villagers abuse a group of itinerant people and buy themselves a lycanthrope curse, turning some of them into beasts that prey on the rest. Mildly amusing

Review – Skinwalker

This is one of those crappy indie productions where it looks like all the actors brought their own costumes. At least it gave everyone an excuse to wear their Apple Cider Days outfits more than once a year. Assholes disturb a Native American burial ground, releasing a demonic curse that seems tangential to the bickering and other awkward character interaction that serve as the movie’s true reason for existence. Perhaps it’s for the best that they made no meaningful effort to make this scary, because all the attempts at horror (especially the monster makeup) were so inept that they turned to comedy. See if desperate

Review – The Stand (2020)

So if they remake this once every 30 years or so, I could be dead before they do it again. In fairness, this one isn’t too bad (other than the tacked-on ending, which was nowhere near good enough to sustain an entire additional episode). Whoopi Goldberg in particular is aptly cast, and the rest of the that-guy-from-that-thing actors do their jobs well. Production values are good, and for something this long it doesn’t start to drag too often. My only objection is about the faithful rendition of Stephen King’s famous source novel. The story pits self-consciously multicultural, liberal suburbia against anything that isn’t that. The good part is that it makes the story anti-white-supremacist. The bad part is that it also gives it an anti-LGBTQ flavor. Mildly amusing

Review – Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Like the recent seasons of Saturday Night Live, this movie depends heavily on stunt casting rather than good writing. The production sports plenty of expensive effects and cameos from other parts of the MCU (and points more distant). But beyond that the plot wanders between alternate realities until it runs out of excuses for meandering. With all the talent in the cast they could have made something much better. See if desperate

Review – Sonic the Hedgehog 2

If you liked the first one, odds are you won’t object to this one too strenuously. The speedy blue hedgehog is back, pitted against the manic return of Jim Carrey reprising his role from episode one. This is a finest moment for nobody in the production, especially Idris Elba, who is starting to look like he might be sharing an agent with Nicolas Cage. See if desperate

Review – Logan

The most bankable member of the X-Men slowly sputters out in this grim little action movie. Wolverine struggles to survive and care for a senile Professor X in a largely post-mutant near-future world. But when a member of the next generation – pursued by sinister government agents – gets dropped at his doorstep, it’s back in the saddle again. The new kid is more than a little reminiscent of Eleven from Stranger Things, which helps make her the only really sympathetic character in the story. Beyond her arc, this is a familiar mix of growling and fighting. Mildly amusing

Review – Candyman (2021)

I’d be very curious to see something else directed by Nia DaCosta. Because this outing features several moments of pure brilliance, but they’re scattered amid a meandering mess of strangeness just for the sake of being strange (sadly what I’m coming to expect from co-writer Jordan Peele). When it’s at its best, it’s genuinely chilling. It’s also fun when it makes references to the original Candyman movie. But the only good stuff that doesn’t require you to wade through the slower parts are the excellent shadow puppet sequences at the end. Worth seeing

Review – Gaming Wall Street

It’s retail-stock-trading douchebros against the Wall Street elite in a battle that sadly can’t be lost by both sides. The story begins with a bunch of millennial investment nerds who caused some serious problems for a hedge fund that was shorting stock in Gamestop. Before it’s done, however, the scandal sheds some light on just how much of our economy is based on fraudulent transactions by some of America’s “too big to fail” financial institutions. The production loses a star for a completely unnecessary bear hunting sequence, but otherwise it’s fascinating, unnerving stuff. Mildly amusing

Review – Wartorn 1861-2010

This excellent, all-too-brief documentary focuses on PTSD among American veterans from the Civil War to current conflicts. Doubtless due in part to the star power of executive producer James Gandolfini, the crew gets candid access to Army doctors, military commanders, PTSD victims and their families. The result is a poignant portrait of how attitudes have changed in the last century and a half and how the problem still destroys lives. My only gripe was that this could have been longer, making more room for the Korean War and for vets suffering from PTSD without having been directly exposed to combat. Worth seeing

Review – Elizabeth I

Helen Mirren once again plays an English queen in an uneven biopic. This two-part, four-hour monster buys heavily into the theory that the love lives of historical figures are far more interesting than anything they ever did to or for the nations they governed. The acting is good, as are the production values. It just isn’t a particularly interesting story. Mildly amusing

Review – Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

Third verse, worse than the first. Though the action shifts to London this time, we’re still firmly rooted in familiar territory. The tear-jerker ending might have been more effective if any of the rest of the movie had given the audience anything to care about. See if desperate

Review – Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

This time around I didn’t go into the experience expecting it to be good, so I wasn’t disappointed when it wasn’t. In this episode the hero from the original is a shopping channel millionaire who gets awkwardly transplanted back into his previous career as a night watchman at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Only now the magical doodad that brings the exhibits to life at night has been shipped to the title location in Washington. Before things can be set aright, the story picks up Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), George Armstrong Custer (Bill Hader) and Hank Azaria doing his best Boris Karloff impression as the ancient Egyptian villain. The accent and some of the other gags are entertaining, but more often than not the humor follows the drawn-out, un-funny precedent set by the first one. Mildly amusing

Review – Cruella

I walked away disappointed by Disney’s attempts at a post-modern reimagining of the villain from Sleeping Beauty. Thus I was pleasantly surprised by what they did with Cruella de Vil. Emma Stone is charming as the title character, a streetwise orphan trying to go legit as a fashion designer. Her elaborate stunts aimed at her Miranda-Priestly-esque boss (Emma Thompson) are clever and entertaining. And this is the most extensive use of rack music I’ve ever seen. Overall this is an entertaining transformation of one of the most despicable characters in the studio’s history. Worth seeing

Review – 47 Ronin

This production is roughly one third Japanese legend and two thirds Hollywood action movie. Though I understand that adding Keanu Reeves to the mix must have helped sell the concept to box-office-conscious studio executives, the explanation for how a white guy ended up connected to the nobility of feudal Japan took some time and detracted from the main story. Overall the movie is flashy, fast-paced and expensive without being anywhere near as interesting as some other tellings of the tale. Mildly amusing

Review – Fun and Fancy Free

Emerging from its wartime loss of materials and animators, Disney re-enters the realm of theatrical-release by combining two shorter productions that were originally both supposed to be feature length. The first, “Bongo,” marks one of the rare occasions the studio ever paid royalties to the author of a source story. Alas, Sinclair Lewis’s dumb story about a bear who escapes from a circus rattles on for quite some time without ever supplying enough entertainment to justify its existence. The second half – “Mickey and the Beanstalk” – features a familiar story and stars a trio of familiar characters. Even so, it takes some strange twists (why does the giant have to be a shapeshifter in addition to being huge?). And it gets interrupted frequently by the live-action comedy stylings of Edgar Bergen and his dummies. The result is more nostalgic than it is entertaining. Mildly amusing

Review – Jungle Cruise

Once again a Disney theme park ride gets turned into a lackluster movie. I guess it’s been long enough since the Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy came out that the filmmakers figured they could boost the plot and characters without anyone noticing. Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson have both done better work elsewhere, but for the most part this is an entertaining little action adventure picture. Mildly amusing

Review – Freaky Friday (1976)

This is a cut above most of the rest of the live action slop Disney was serving up back in the 1970s. Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster star as a mother-daughter duo who end up swapping personalities for a day. The situation provides enough comedy fodder to sustain the running time. On the other hand, I remember liking this as a kid, so maybe it’s just the nostalgia talking here. Mildly amusing

Review – Man in Space

This is an episode from the Disneyland TV series from 1955, so I shouldn’t be reviewing it as a stand-alone production. But it’s just such an intriguingly specific moment in the history of the space program, airing two years before Sputnik and six years before Yuri Gagarin. Plus the animated speculation about space travel was made possible in part by good old American know-how supplied by Dr. Wernher von Braun, who appears onscreen and served as a paid consultant. Mildly amusing

Review – Onward

This picture will likely be best remembered for its release date. It hit theaters right as the COVID lock-down began in 2020, forcing the studio to take a big box office hit and move the movie straight to Disney Plus. On its own merits, this is a reasonably entertaining situation comedy/drama about two elf brothers trying to magically resurrect their dead father. Dungeons and Dragons fans will derive endless entertainment from seeking out the dozens of sub-references to the game. Mildly amusing

Review – Strange Magic

Because Barbie Fairytopia would be way better if it got a Rock of Ages treatment with a ton of Boomer-and-Gen-X-era love songs. But then again no. See if desperate

Review – The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

Two familiar tales get the late-1940s Disney treatment. The opening bit from The Wind in the Willows tells the anthropomorphic animal story of a rich a-hole who loses everything due to his own folly, imperils his friends and learns nothing from the experience. At least it’s narrated by Basil Rathbone. The second half is better, at least when it finally gets around to the part of the story with the Headless Horseman. Both bits relied heavily on physical comedy, making this seem less like a Disney approach to literary adaptation and more like the work being done by the rival Warner Brothers animation studio at the time. Mildly amusing

Review – Eternals

This movie helped me answer a question I’ve been curious about for some time: what would I think of a superhero movie if I had no idea who any of the superheroes were? In all of the MCU and DCEU movies I’ve seen, I was at least familiar in passing – if not a fan from childhood – of all the major players. But in this crew I’d never heard of any of them beyond their identities as the ancient sources of folk legends. Oddly, my lack of familiarity with the characters and plot elements didn’t affect my opinion much. It’s pretty. It’s loud. And ultimately it doesn’t amount to much. Mildly amusing

Review – The Deep House

I understand why guy-with-a-camcorder movies tend to suck. If you’re spending next to nothing to create your magnum opus, you don’t have much incentive to make anything that audiences might actually enjoy. But this isn’t guy-with-a-camcorder drivel. This is a story about a pair of social media producers who scuba dive down to a submerged house, remove a crucifix from the basement door and suffer the consequences. Most of the movie takes place during the dive, requiring a considerable amount of expensive underwater set and camera work. Those parts of the production were genuinely impressive (other than some small details such as modern-looking door handles in a house that had supposedly been at the bottom of a French lake for decades). Unfortunately, the story is nowhere near the equal of the technical quality. The movie hits its halfway point before anything even vaguely supernatural happens. And the script of the back half – consisting mostly of “Ben! Answer me!” screamed over and over – would have been way better suited for extreme low budget garbage than for something that should have been good. And the filmmakers seem to have given almost no thought at all to how viewers would react to the “running out of air” motif. If the protagonists are going to drown no matter what they do, being chased by ghosts is kinda beside the point. I was even disappointed by the bit at the end of the credits, which could easily have been more clever. See if desperate

Review – The Forever Purge

Trump’s white supremacist followers continue to supply storylines for Purge movies. This time around, extremists decide that they don’t want the Purge to end after its appointed 12 hours. After the whistles blow they just keep right on killing, transforming the entire country into one big January 6 insurrection. A racist rancher undergoes an almost Disney-worthy transformation when his family is menaced by the Purgers and rescued by Mexican immigrants. The production follows in the footsteps of previous entries in the series, supplying plenty of gory violence and mindless thrills. Mildly amusing

Review – The Batman

For anyone who (correctly) felt that Batman and Robin was far too cartoonish and silly, this go-around takes the exact opposite approach. Sadly, the moody art house version doesn’t work much better than its goofy predecessor. For starters, the self-conscious quest for edginess takes familiar characters in some odd directions. Colin Farrell plays the least penguin-y Penguin ever. Paul Dano’s Riddler is a cheap Zodiac Killer knock-off, which makes him simultaneously more scary and less interesting. Zoë Kravitz works well as Catwoman, and Jeffrey Wright does a competent job as James Gordon. But if Robert Pattinson ever hopes to distance himself from Edward Cullen, he needs to quit playing pasty, emo characters. The bat suit was clunky, as were the battles that employed it. And don’t get me started on the wreck of a muscle car Batmobile. But the thing that really ruined it for me was the pace. Everything seemed to take twice as long as it needed to. And losing most of the fight scenes in the shadows didn’t exactly help keep things moving smoothly. See if desperate

Review – Encanto

What a beautiful, awful movie. The story is absolutely uncomfortable: a magical family lives in a magical house. They bully the sister who doesn’t have magic powers, and they ostracize the brother whose gift is precognition of bad fortune. Sure, by the end everybody learns to be better people in an oh-so-Disney way. But it’s a long, sad time getting there. On the other hand, the visuals are incredibly complex and colorful. I wish there had been a way to watch the animation without following the plot at all. Mildly amusing

Review – Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Simu Liu is absolutely charming in the title role of this big-budget fantasy effects piece. The story is standard stuff: a talented young martial artist discovers his secret destiny and goes on to save the world from the encroaching powers of darkness. The forces of evil have a slight Lovecraftian twist, which I enjoyed. Overall this is an apt MCU adaptation of the source material. Mildly amusing

Review – Thor

I first reviewed this years ago during its first run in theaters, but the review vanished from my computer. So today I did a re-watch. To the extent that I remember what I originally wrote, my opinion remains unchanged. I was unpleasantly surprised at some of the changes made between the comic books and the movie adaptation, particularly the decision to transform the hero into a jock dumbass. The effects are good, particularly the stylish interpretation of Asgard. But for the most part this serves as a set-up for future MCU installments rather than a good story by itself (something I probably didn’t see the first time around). Mildly amusing

Review – Turning Red

Disney puts a clever twist on the onset of menstruation in a precocious teenager’s life: rather than the typical effects, she starts transforming into a large red panda. The storytelling relies heavily on physical comedy, but along the way it makes some good points about growing up and maintaining connections to one’s heritage. And of course it’s nice to see any American-made media that centers around and remains sympathetic to its female characters. If this manages to increase red panda popularity, that alone would make it worthwhile. Mildly amusing

Review – The Pacific

If I was a Marine who served in the title location during World War Two, this follow-up to HBO’s Band of Brothers would really piss me off. The 101st Airborne got a nostalgic miniseries that would have seemed right at home back in the 1940s. This one, on the other hand, plays as half home front (or extended leave) soap opera and half jungle-war-is-hell-themed mayhem more closely akin to Hollywood depictions of the Vietnam War. Given the even split between brutal, bewildering combat and mooning over girlfriends, I can’t imagine who the target audience for this might be. Frankly, I found the whole thing a frustrating, unworthy follow-up to its ETO predecessor. See if desperate

Review – Death on the Nile (2022)

After finding some success with his version of Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh once again pastes on Hercule Poirot’s ridiculous moustache for this similarly familiar Agatha Christie classic. Between the cast, the costumes and the sets, they spent a pretty penny on this production. And as a result they got a pretty picture. Despite all the red herrings, the ending seemed kinda obvious, especially for Christie. But the journey was entertaining enough to keep the destination from being too much of a disappointment. Mildly amusing

Review – Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall

As the title implies, this is a documentary about journalist Kim Wall’s murder and dismemberment at the hands of psychotic entrepreneur Peter Madsen. The case drew media attention in 2018 thanks in no small part to the unusual crime scene: a private submarine owned by the killer. For a guy who had a reputation as a brilliant engineer, he was an incredibly stupid criminal, changing his story several times and leaving a ton of evidence for the police to find. But the more interesting part of the story turns out to be about Wall, who was a promising young reporter before she met her unexpected fate. Mildly amusing

Review – Halloween Kills

This damn thing is literally nothing but murder and inside jokes. No story at all beyond threads from other Halloween movies. Just a mess of stunt casting and sub-references sandwiched between witless gore. And I do mean witless, even by the loose standards of the slasher sub-genre. Michael Myers is now killing people completely at random. You don’t have to have sex or be a family member to end up on his victim list. You just have to be anywhere in Haddonfield. He even does one couple the courtesy of knocking before he comes in to dish out the stabbings. The end also adds an extra note of pointlessness to the whole mess. See if desperate

Review – The King’s Man

Imagine watching a game of Pong. Half the screen is a reasonably entertaining pastiche of pulp adventure yarns. The other half is a father and son arguing about whether or not the boy can enlist in the army. Even the half that didn’t suck nonetheless had problems. The fight scenes were sometimes poorly paced. In particular, Rasputin took longer to die in this movie than he did in real life, which is saying something. And when the supervillain finally emerges from the shadows at the end … suffice it to say that the folks who made this should have spent some time watching RuPaul’s Drag Race so they could find out what happens to queens who do a reveal that doesn’t amount to much. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – The Twilight Zone (2019)

Normally “abandoned” blog entries are reserved for movies or maybe limited miniseries. But on this rare occasion, I’d like to state my reasons for giving up on Jordan Peele’s reheat of The Twilight Zone even though it’s a continuing series. I absolutely loved Get Out, and I found Us fascinating as well. But this Peele project is intensely terrible. The first episode – a stand-up comedian slowly erases his own life – was a one-joke production that proved far too predictable to sustain its running time. But no big deal. Rod Serling’s original run had its share of clunkers, too. And the second episode was “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” which I figured would be much better. Nope. Instead of an awesome, plane-destroying gremlin, we get a writer listening to a mysterious podcast predicting the disappearance of the flight he’s currently on. It felt like watching a movie called Godzilla only to have it turn out to be about a guy fixing a flat tire. Nor did it help that the podcast narration was supplied by the super annoying voice of Hardcore History’s Dan Carlin. If the second episode was enough to start Richard Matheson spinning in his grave, I was prepared to pursue the series no further.

Review – Inventing Anna

Shonda Rhymes starts with a magazine article about a run-of-the-mill con artist and magnifies it into a nine-part miniseries, embellishing along the way. In truth, Anna Sorokin (Julia Garner) – better known to the world as Anna Delvey – barely counts as a con artist. She ran a simple fraud scheme on some high profile New York financiers and spent a lot of time in hotels without paying. So she seems less like a gifted grifter and more like a blend of common thief and delusional child. The trouble with stretching her story from an average-length movie to more than nine hours of screen time is the complete absence of sympathetic characters. Anna herself might have made a good anti-hero, but she provokes too many uncomfortable situations; if you’ve ever had a card declined in a restaurant, she’ll treat you to plenty of chances to relive the experience. Reporter Jessica Pressler’s fictional stand-in, Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), might have seemed heroic if her obsessiveness hadn’t driven her to multiple breaches of journalists’ ethics. Everyone else – from bankers to lawyers to the sycophants who attach themselves to Anna because they think she’s rich – manage to seem loathsome just by being themselves. With no characters worth caring about, this just wasn’t engaging enough to justify its running time. Mildly amusing

Review – Dune (2021)

This is just never going to work. What is this, the fourth attempt to bring this story to the screen? Of course I’ve also tried the original novel and the graphic novelization to similar ill effect, so maybe I should personally stop giving it another chance rather than griping about Hollywood’s business. They stopped the plot midway through, so I’m assuming they’ll release a sequel at some point. And I’m guessing it will be a lot like this one: beautiful but vapid. The art direction, special effects, cinematography, really every visual element of the production are all excellent. The actors all look like supermodels (even the Harkonnens). But the characters and their story remain unapproachable, like a stiff interpretation of the holy scripture from some unfamiliar culture. Mildly amusing

Review – The Last Duel

 Here we have the Rashomon version of one of the last times in French history that a legal dispute was ever decided by trial by combat. When Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer) accuses Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver) of rape, her husband (Matt Damon) proves politically unpopular enough to prevent him from seeking justice in the courts. So he challenges her attacker to a duel in which God will allow right to prevail. You can tell Ridley Scott directed this because of all the crap floating around in the air. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that he’d try another long, moody, Medieval drama, though it was more bad luck than bad filmmaking when this flopped due to poor promotion support from the studio. Mildly amusing

Review – Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Going into it, the folks who made this movie must have realized that they weren’t going to be able to create anything as eerie as the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series, especially not Stephen Gammell’s excellent art work. So they didn’t bother to try. Instead, this is a handful of elements from the books stirred into a gumbo with everything from high school bullies to the Vietnam War. The main thread is about a ghostly manuscript that writes itself, bringing doom to all who find their stories told within its pages. Mildly amusing

Review – Incarnate

I’ve consumed enough of these things that now they just taste like their ingredients. A bunch of Constantine. Some Dreamscape. Maybe a touch of The Exorcist. It’s like biting into a piece of cake and getting only the separate flavors of flour, sugar and milk. Bleh. Aaron Eckhart (who according to the trivia notes on IMDb took this role way too seriously) plays a wheelchair-bound demon hunter looking to settle the score with the evil spirit that killed his wife and son. He gets his chance when Maggie – yes, the demon’s name is Maggie – settles into a child and challenges him to a fight. From there you can write the script yourself by keeping an eye on the clock and figuring how many more twists and turns they have to work in during the remaining running time. See if desperate

Review – No One Gets Out Alive

This gets off to a slow start. Actually the very beginning is a fun sequence of simulated Super 8 chillingly reminiscent of the opening to The Exorcist. But when the main story kicks in, it’s the slow, sad story of a woman who journeys from Mexico to Cleveland only to find herself victimized by people who prey on undocumented workers: a sweatshop owner, a con artist and the landlord of a run-down boarding house. It’s the latter of the three who proves to be her biggest worry, as the house conceals dark secrets. The supernatural entity, when it finally appears, turns out to be genuinely innovative, well worth the wait. Worth seeing

Review – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Alas for Henrietta Lacks. Doctors took her cells without notice or consent and turned her into a cornerstone of medical research without even acknowledging her existence. And then she isn’t even the subject of her own movie. Instead, this is the tale of how author Rebecca Skloot (Rose Byrne in an oddly annoying performance) researched her book. But of course the real star of the show is Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. You can tell she’s the star because Oprah Winfrey plays her. Thus this becomes the story of how challenging it is to write when your collaborators spend their days wavering between eccentric and genuinely mentally ill. I was particularly fascinated by the scene toward the end when the two surviving children get to meet their mother’s cells, which was both strangely touching and just plain strange. Mildly amusing

Review – The Privilege

If this production is any indication, the German version of teenagers vs. evil is prettier than its American counterpart but sadly not smarter. This starts off as rich kids beset by the boogeyman, and by the end it boosts plot elements from just about everything from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Get Out. Imagine what that would be like if it looked like a Peloton ad, and you’ve got the picture. See if desperate

Review – Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

The only thing that distinguishes this from countless other TCM sequels, remakes and remake sequels is the return of Sally Hardesty, the sole survivor from the original. Her quest for vengeance might have been more compelling if it had been a bigger part of the plot or (spoiler alert) if it had been successful. Beyond that, this is an unimaginative parade of fumbled attempts to kill Leatherface (not that he can be killed in any event) mixed in with racism and school shooting flashbacks just to keep things topical. Overall this picture has the distinct scent of a production that went through multiple directors and other production setbacks. See if desperate

Review – Band of Brothers

There’s something profoundly comforting about this limited series. Without getting obsessive about it, the story structure and production values reference a simpler age when we dealt with Nazis by killing them. Based on the book by Stephen Ambrose, the plot follows members of the 101st Airborne from enlistment to the end of the war. As with any tale told over the span of ten episodes, the experience is uneven. The boot camp clichés at the beginning and the post-war episode at the end aren’t particularly interesting or entertaining. But D-Day and Bastogne are considerably more engaging. The cast is a parade of that-guy-from-that-thing faces, which helps distinguish characters who otherwise come across as interchangeable white guys in green uniforms. Macho posturing and war-is-hell grimness aside, this was a relaxing way to spend a few Friday nights. Worth seeing

Review – Ouija: Origin of Evil

This production started with two strikes against it: it’s a sequel to an uninspiring horror movie, and its premise is as cliché-ridden as they come. Though the characters and the story do indeed turn out to be on the stale side, the production has some fun moments, too. Some of the scares are good, though they return to the same wells too frequently. And on the technical side, the director added some quirky touches to make the movie look more like it was shot in the early 1970s. Mildly amusing

Review – Frame 313: The JFK Assassination Theories

One thing that mystifies me about Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists is that “the motorcade route was changed to accommodate the assassins” invalidates almost every theory out there. If that’s true, then obviously the Warren Commission were a pack of liars and fools. But then the Mafia, the pro-Castro Cubans, the anti-Castro Cubans, the KGB and several other suspects identified in this documentary couldn’t possibly have been the main perpetrators. That only leaves a plot within the federal government itself so vast that it swiftly becomes purely ridiculous. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg here. I liked the decision to present five different theories, including the Warren version. But none of them make enough sense to be persuasive. Mildly amusing

Review – JFK Revisited

This may be a new visit, but it’s an old address with a familiar cast of characters. Oliver Stone’s latest foray into Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories doesn’t amount to much more than JFK redone as a documentary, so if you’ve seen the famous version then you can skip this one. Even if this stuff is new to you, this might not be the best starting place. Stone and company serve up a disjointed presentation that jumps randomly from point to point. The construction makes this whole mess sound even crazier than it normally would. And that’s a shame, because there are some important points buried under a thick blanket of Dealey Plaza nitpicking and irrelevant speculation. See if desperate

Review – Hotel Transylvania: Transformania

More cartoon douchebags placing their loved ones in jeopardy thanks to their personal insecurities and basic dishonesty. More loved ones forgiving douchebags for placing them in jeopardy. At least it was short and Adam Sandler free. See if desperate

Review – The Eyes of Tammy Fay (2021)

Suitably enough, Jessica Chastain outshines everyone and everything else in this production. Between the voice, the mannerisms and the prosthetic makeup, she nails the title character to an uncanny degree. Honestly, it I didn’t know it was Chastain in the role, I would never have guessed. As a result, Tammy Fay Bakker comes across as entirely sympathetic, even when she shouldn’t have. The rest of the cast has varying degrees of success keeping up. Andrew Garfield makes an acceptable Jim Bakker, but Vincent D’Onofrio seems to be under the impression that Jerry Falwell and Richard Nixon are the same person. The story starts to sputter a little toward the end, but otherwise this is a solid portrait of the problematic entanglement between religion and grift. Mildly amusing

Review – Mortal Kombat (2021)

This reboot is slicker and more expensive than its predecessor, but the story remains video-game-adaptation simple. Once again Earth’s hereditary heroes do battle under confusing circumstances with invaders from another dimension. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but it provides enough glue to hold the action sequences together. Fight choreography is good, and the effects fit in nicely. Mildly amusing

Review – Peter Rabbit 2

Second verse, highly similar to the first. It’s impossible to watch this sequel without noting how often the jokes depend on the movie making fun of itself for commercially exploiting something charming, artistic and non-commercial. This left me wondering (and not for the first time) if a relentless meta-awareness of badness makes something not bad. That said, the animation is good. Some of the physical comedy is funny. And the parade of celebrity voice work is impressive. Mildly amusing