Review – Hellarious

For the last five minutes or so I’ve been trying to come up with a Hell-related pun more apt than the title. No luck, so I’ll cut straight to the review. Here we have seven mostly terrible attempts at horror humor. The first story was somewhat amusing (and reminded me of a joke from Matinee). But the rest fell flat for one reason or another. See if desperate

Review – 8-Bit Christmas

I’d appraise this at around a quarter of the title’s stated value. Imagine A Christmas Story rewritten as a Nintendo ad, and you’ve got the gist of all but the last five minutes of this movie. And not only was the twist at the end syrupy sweet and more than a little implausible (even in the realm of Christmas miracles), but it also for no obvious reason redeemed a character who spent the rest of the movie being an asshole. The contrast provides an all too accurate comparison between the naive optimism of the early 1980s and the cynical stupidity of 2021’s retro version. See if desperate

Review – Crazy, Not Insane

In law school I took a class in mental illness and the law, the often-awkward relationship between an often-inexact science and a system that demands precise proof. The fact that there was a whole class on the subject demonstrates the level of complexity and uncertainty involved. The career of Dorothy Otnow Lewis, the subject of this documentary, proves to be a perfect case in point. Lewis advocated for the unnecessarily-revolutionary noting that many violent criminals are mentally ill, often due to physical and mental abuse and trauma from their childhoods. But of course the question of using mental illness as a defense in a criminal prosecution is a tricky business, especially when a controversial diagnosis such as Dissociative Identity Disorder enters the debate. Thus Lewis and her work make an interesting subject. Mildly amusing

Review – The Wind

This is one of those slow-paced, subtle horror movies you kinda need to be in the mood for before you watch it. However, if the mood strikes you, this is a good scratch for the itch. Somewhere in the open frontier of the late 19th century, a woman, her husband and their neighbors find themselves beset by an amorphous evil. Is there something supernaturally wrong with the land where they live, or has the protagonist been driven insane by isolation coupled with tales of demons? Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because the result is the same either way. Though this isn’t a movie for fans of jump scares and gore, it rewards viewers who have the patience to let it unfold. Mildly amusing

Review – For All Mankind

A ton of NASA footage is edited together to tell the story of the Apollo space program. The structure follows a typical voyage from the Earth to the Moon and back, assuming that such trips could ever be considered typical. That’s an advantage because it helps turn the trips into a single, easily-followed story. But other than famous moments such as Apollo 11 and 13, it’s often hard to tell which moments come from which missions (unless you’re better than I am at telling one crew-cut white guy from another). Mildly amusing

Review – A Return to Salem’s Lot

Larry Cohen conducts a master class in how not to make a movie. Start by attempting to make a sequel to a production people like, virtually guaranteeing that your work will be found wanting in comparison. Then write a script that makes no sense, moving awkwardly from scene to scene without logic or purpose. Cast Michael Moriarty in the lead so he can demonstrate his aplomb for flat, indifferent delivery of bad dialogue. Then heap an extra measure of disappointment on the audience by putting the vampire from the original in the movie’s poster despite the fact that he appears nowhere in this production (a bit of shameful chicanery continued by HBO for promotional materials on its streaming service). Dull. Not scary. Not even bad enough to be funny. Aside from giving 12-year-old Tara Reid her big screen debut, this movie serves no function at all. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan

Serial rapist Billy Milligan’s successful use of the insanity defense raises more than one docuseries-worthy question. Is Dissociative Identity Disorder a real thing, and if so how does it differ from Hollywood’s version of people with multiple personalities? Can it be used to establish the legal grounds for an insanity plea? And in this particular case, did Milligan authentically have DID, or was he a clever sociopath pulling a con? As moot as these questions may objectively be, they become downright irrelevant once they’re buried under a heap of terrible filmmaking. Director Olivier Megaton serves up a fidgety mess of jump cuts, heavy filter work and ominous soundtrack. He arranges interviews with key subjects ranging from attorneys to psychiatrists to journalists to family members (Milligan’s, not his victims’). But then he films them in peculiar, random locations, such as abandoned prisons, empty churches and bank vaults. The result is consistent with the Netflix aesthetic, which unfortunately makes it an unpleasant viewing experience. See if desperate