Delayed Reaction: Star 80

Premise: The story of the relationship of Playmate Dorothy Stratten that ended in her death.

This is another reaction I've had to rewrite a couple times because of computer issues. It's really annoying too, because I have a hard time explaining my thoughts on the film. To start, I don't understand how this is a movie made by an Oscar winning director (Bob Fosse), released by a major studio (WB), and starring an Oscar nominee (Mariel Hemmingway). I don't mean that because the movie is bad. I actually quite liked the movie. It's just, on paper, this sounds more like a movie of the week. Stratten was murdered in mid-1980. This was released only a couple years later in 1983. Hugh Hefner sued the movie for how he was depicted in it. They couldn't even get the rights to use Peter Bogdanovich's name. These are not the description you'd expect for an awards-contending movie.

It all comes together pretty well though. Fosse's direction injects so unexpected life into it. It's a lively movie that does a great job mirroring the exciting new life Stratten was living with the doomed end she was racing toward. Hemmingway is really lovely. She has the looks of a Playmate while also pulling off the girl next door charm. It's hard to remember that Stratten was only 20 when she died, but it explains how she could live so much of her life so passively. Eric Roberts is tremendous in the movie. I always hate saying this about performers, but he plays a creep so well. As Paul Snider, he's desperate and pathetic but charismatically so. I could see how he inserted himself into so many circles successfully.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Last Broadcast

Premise: A horror mockumentary about the mysterious deaths of the hosts of a local public access show.

I'm going to give you a peek behind the curtain for a moment. This is my third time fully writing this damn reaction. My computer has crashed on me two days in a row before I could save this. It's a shame. I really like what I said the first couple times. They were lengthy posts. I'm tired of talking about this movie now. OK, now that I've got my complaining out of the way, here I go.

It must suck to be the guys who made The Last Broadcast. This found footage style movie actually predated The Blair Witch Project by a year. In terms of quality, aspects of the filmmaking are even better than Blair Witch. This movie made only 1/11000th of what Blair Witch made at the box office though, and it's only remembered by people who really dig into horror movies. I feel like it's Oz and Blair Witch is The Sopranos. Oz came first. It really started HBO's fateful shift to prestige dramas, but it was messy and made mistakes. The Sopranos was able to build off what Oz did and became a bonafide hit and cultural touchstone.

This movie is ahead of the curve on a lot of things though. It's technically a mockumentary about found footage, which is almost skipping a step. It's playing with the same idea that Butterfly Kisses does 20 years later; like they were commenting on the found footage genre before it even existed. It's also surprisingly technology-centered. I only sort of remember 1998, but the idea of doing a live internet broadcast and carrying on web chats from the middle of a remote forest sounds like wizardry at that time. I get how someone as advanced as Sandra Bullock in The Net could do that, but some shmucks with a public access show? The possibilities in the internet age really are endless.

Other than some small concerns like not knowing how to convincingly dress a set to look authentic, the biggest issue with the movie is the ending. And that's hard to blame them for. This was a new genre, so they couldn't know the rules yet. They broke the cardinal rule of found footage though: always maintain the format. If it's a found footage movie, it should be found footage the whole time. Instead, The Last Broadcast switches to a third person camera after its big reveal, and it lands with a thud. Suddenly, the movie looks 100x cheaper and is less compelling. And, from a perspective two decades later, it just looks lazy. Like the filmmakers couldn't figure out how to do the twist with found footage, so they just dropped it. This took me out of the movie so much.

A mostly good run with a bad ending is still a pretty good movie in my book though, and this is a nice bit of forgotten horror history too.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hollywood Shuffle

Premise: An aspiring black actor in Hollywood struggles to land a job and imagines a world where opportunities for him were better.

Thanks to a quirk in syndication, I've seen almost all of Robert Townsend's 90s WB series The Parent 'Hood. It didn't make a huge impression on me, but I remember liking it well enough. Given that he was the star, co-creator, and most common director, that show was made in his image. So, I was pretty ready for what to expect from Hollywood Shuffle (also directed by, written by, and starring him). A lot of imagined sequences. Plenty of earnestness. Townsend always struck me as the Wayans Brothers' strait-laced cousin.

No surprise, I ended up liking Hollywood Shuffle in the same way that I liked The Parent Hood'. The humor was a bit broader than I care for. Most of the sketches sound funnier as a pitch than as a sketch. Like the school of black acting. Sounds like a funny idea. The actual jokes they used didn't make me laugh. Rambro is a funny name. The sketch was meh. My indifference to the humor in this movie is why I'm hesitant to ever watch UHF again. Townsend and the other Hollywood Shuffle Players are good though. It's not at all surprising to see some Wayans show up in the cast.

The problem message movies like this have is that they are often fighting the last week's battles. Movies don't come together very quickly, so an attempt to respond to the moment ends up being a response to yesterday. There's some of that in Hollywood Shuffle. A lot of the black stereotypes seem to be responding more to the 70s depiction of black culture; the same stuff that Blaxploitation played on a decade earlier. There's also the Catch-22 of this being a movie starring a black actor that is about how black actors don't get any good roles in movies. That's the exception, not the rule when you realize that the year this came out, only 1 of the top 50 movies in the box office by my count had a black actor in a lead role. In this movie it's kind of like if you tell me "I never get to eat ice cream" while you're eating ice cream. Even if it's your first-time eating ice cream in a year, I can't help but be suspicious of your claim.

I really appreciate the questions this movie has about no representation vs. bad representation and how it points out the lack of opportunities in really simple terms. The idea that Townsend is never going to play Superman is succinct and effective. It's also a little funny, because he starred in The Meteor Man 6 years later and then was the patriarch in a super hero family for a Disney Channel movie (Up, Up, and Away!) in 1999. Still, it wasn't until 2018 with Black Panther that a black actor really got a chance to star in a blockbuster superhero movie, so his point stands.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Some Kind of Hate

Premise: The kids at a reform camp are picked off by the vengeful spirit of a girl who died there.

I get why there's an overlap between fans of horror and fans of metal music. They are both designed to challenge what polite society finds acceptable. There's a lot of satanic imagery in each. There's an outcast appeal to them. I've accepted that there will be stuff like a superfluous metal song thrown in at the end of V/H/S. But, I'm really not a fan of horror movies that just assume the people watching it will also like metal.

Some Kind of Hate has a number of non-metal reasons that I didn't care for it. The moment the movie lost me though is when the main character gives a playlist to the girl he likes and say she probably won't like it because she's a cheerleader. He then goes on to poetically profess his love of metal music. To start with, every single thing about Gracie Gillam's character screams "I'm a metal chick". The cheerleader detail is just funny. Troubled guys get to be loners at school. Troubled girls have to be former cheerleaders. I feel like I can assume a lot of things about the people who made this movie based on that.

Honestly, what turned me off in this film more was all the suicide imagery. I wouldn't call this "torture porn", but it's definitely a movie that's exploitative about the violence. It's full of throat, thigh, and arm cutting. Moira (Sierra McCormick) literally has a neckless of razors. I don't do needles and I don't do razors. That's a personal threshold for me. This movie does reflect a different horror ethos in general than I care for. It's really not a scare movie or a suspense movie. It's just a bloody revenge movie. It barely even counts as horror in my book. It's more of a gruesome thriller perhaps. The supernatural element does make it undeniably horror though.

Anyway, I didn't care for this movie. It relished the violence too much. It wastes a surprisingly strong cast on a script with thin characters and lazy dialogue. The one unique element was the idea of a slasher movie villain who does damage to the victims by doing damage to herself. That's a cool idea, although not one that I physically enjoy watching. I'll be a little generous about this movie because I recognize that a lot of my feelings have to do with personal taste more than quality.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Phobia 2

Premise: A Thai horror anthology movie.

Part of the reason I watched this is because, when I first noticed it on Netflix, I spent way too long trying to figure out if there was a Phobia 1, because I always want to see things in order. It turns out, the first movie in the series is actually called 4bia. It's an anthology with 4 short segments. So, naturally, the sequel with 5 short segments is call 5bia Phobia 2. Given that these are anthologies, I didn't see much harm with watching Phobia 2 first, and there wasn't.

Phobia 2 is a pretty typical horror anthology. Maybe a little above average. The first part, Novice, was my least favorite. Something about the style of it I kept tuning out. The second segment was my clear favorite with a nice twist. Parts 3 and 4 were pretty strong too. They had some familiar but well-executed ideas. I think I've made my irritation with comedy thrown into a horror anthology well known, so you'd think the 5th short would've been my least favorite. To be honest, I'm not sure how I really feel about it. Apparent, it features characters from a short in 4bia, which makes sense. They felt more lived-in than the characters in the other shorts, like I should already be familiar with them. Apparently, the film being shot is also a fake sequel to a real movie from that director. So, this fifth segment sort of felt like if someone threw an Abbott & Costello short into an anthology film. It works pretty well, and since they save it for the end, it didn't impact my mood for any of the other shorts. So, I suppose the lesson is, if you absolutely must be funny in a horror anthology, save it for the end.

If you are in the mood to deal with subtitles and don't mind a slow start, Phobia 2 is one of the good horror anthologies out there.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Black Christmas

Premise: A murderer stalks and kills the girls living in a sorority house.

I look at the critical assessment of Black Christmas at the time of its release and wonder what Reactions that I've written will age this poorly. The opinion in 1976 was that the movie was overly-violent, slow, and lacked a satisfying ending. Here's the thing though. This movie rules.

At this point, Black Christmas is best known as one of the very earlier slasher movies; it actually did a lot of what Halloween was praised for four years later. And I'm pretty sure John Carpenter has credited Black Christmas as an inspiration. The violence is quite tame by today's standards. It makes great use of the killer POV scenes. It's crazy to think that people didn't like the ending, because it's a pretty perfect horror movie ending. I love how much is ambiguous.

The craziest thing about the movie is the talent in front of and behind the camera. I was not expecting this tiny Canadian production to have a post Romeo and Juliet Olivia Hussey and slightly pre-Superman Margot Kidder. And, I didn't realize Bob Clark, the guy who made Porky's and A Christmas Story, directed this. That guy has surprising range.

The big thing that sets this and Halloween apart is the music. It's crazy to think about how much the score makes Halloween. I agree that at some places, Black Christmas got a little dull. Just imagine if you could throw in the Halloween score during some of those parts. Even without it though, I found plenty to like about Black Christmas.

Side Note: Marian Waldman as the alcoholic house mother certainly helps earn this movie some camp points. She's a little ill-fitting, but you'd have to take her out of the film over my dead body.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Butterfly Kisses

Premise: A found footage/mockumentary horror movie investigating an urban legend that might be real.

I think we all remember the scene from The Princess Bride with the Sicilian. Before drinking a poisoned cup, Wallace Shawn's character goes through a "dizzying" explanation of how he's choosing which cup to drink from. It's one of the better uses of the "I know that you know that I know" joke that's been done a million (I counted) times. Butterfly Kisses is sort of the horror equivalent of this. You see it's is a horror movie designed to look like a documentary about some found footage that the filmmaker wants to prove is real. This movie has layers.

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project made $140 million off buzz created from people thinking it was real, or at least buying into the fun of thinking that it was. Since then, found footage filmmakers have been chasing that high. Most employ the style as an easy technique to mask other shortcomings (cast, budget, etc.). Butterfly Kisses is one of the few that has asked what it would take to make people question the authenticity of another movie now. It's an impossible task, but the movie does everything it can. The movie becomes a dissection of the found footage genre. It includes actual people in it like author Matt Lake and one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project. The documentary crew filming this question why they are doing this. The aspiring filmmaker who happens upon these supposedly real tapes is questioned along the way. Numerous people credit him for making a good found footage horror movie even while he insists that the tapes are real (or at least not made by him).

Ultimately though, the movie proves that with audiences, it really is "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I love found-footage movies. I'm willing to suspend disbelief while I watch them. However, it destroys the effect if every 5 minutes, someone points out the possible inconsistencies of the filmmaking or reminds me of the easy tricks Found Footage movies use. I really appreciate the experiment of this movie, to see if you can put the genie back into the bottle and get audiences to question the authenticity again. However, Butterfly Kisses proves that there are diminishing returns the more meta one attempts to get about it.

While the central conceit of the movie is a letdown, this is quite well made. The "found footage" looks great. In the lead role, Seth Adam Kallick convincingly plays a man whose obsession slowly destroys his life. The legend of the Peeping Tom is a good one. Perhaps, if this movie was more about the main character doubting himself than the rest of the world doubting him, this could've been more effective.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: I Trapped the Devil

Premise: A man and his wife show up to his brother's house to find that he claims he has the devil trapped in his basement.

In terms of bang for your buck, it's hard to beat making a horror movie. I Trapped the Devil is Josh Lobos' debut film. It's filmed almost entirely in a single location (one house). The entire cast is maybe 10 people. No need to even hire extras. It couldn't have been very expensive. Yet, he's still able to make a really solid horror movie.

The core idea is pretty original - what would happen is someone said they had the devil trapped in their closet? The type of movie is pretty familiar though. It's 90 minutes of people debating about if they are in a horror movie or a drama movie about mental illness. Think about it, the thing that actually makes this a horror movie is that you believe there might actually be the devil in that closet. Otherwise, if you really believed the bother trapped some random stranger in the closet, this would be just an absolute bummer of a movie about the brother's mental illness. This movie does a great job of keeping up a good baseline level of tension throughout. It keeps adding new information to tip the balance in the "devil or insane" debate one way or the other. It uses that classic horror trick of making the scariest scenes about what you can't see. And what a lovely creepy devil voice they use from behind the door. Perhaps that makes it too clear that it's actually the devil, but I'll allow it because it is so unsettling.

My biggest issue might be more of an Amazon Prime issue than a film issue. I'm all for amplifying the effect of a scary movie by choosing to turn off the lights. I'm not a fan of making a movie so dark that I have to turn off all my lights to see what's going on. The contrast on this movie was awful. Often, I could not see what was happening in scenes. Similarly, I can appreciate how getting quiet can amp up the tension. However, I shouldn't need to consider turning on subtitles because if I shift in my seat, it will overpower the dialogue. There is a chance that it's just a shit transfer to Amazon or maybe even my TV (which I don't have any other problems on). It led to a subpar viewing experience though. Also, I was hoping for at least one decision in the movie that would surprise me. One moment where I thought: "Wait, what now?" After the cool premise, which is in the title, it was pretty much the movie I expected. I think Josh Lobos proves he has a lot of knowledge of horror movies. Hopefully, with his next movie, he finds something a little fresher to do with that knowledge, because this is a really solid debut.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Eli

Premise: A bubble boy goes to a secluded facility to get a treatment to cure his disease, but he suspects that something more nefarious is going on there.

With a lot of horror, the less you know the better, so if you are reading this to decide whether or not you should watch Eli: you should. That's my stance. It's good. It's short. Best of all, it knows that you've seen a horror movie before. You should probably stop here.

The best think about Eli is that I thought it was pretty bad for the first hour. It was recommended to me by a friend, and I was really starting to question his judgment. That hour is filled with repeated horror movie cliche's about haunted houses, vague religious undertones, and a protagonist who no one believes. Maybe if I was a different kind of viewer, I would've been looking for a twist harder. I know something would be revealed by the end, but I figured it would be an expected twist, if you know what I mean. I was 100% not expecting this to be a covert exorcism movie. Bravo. They hid that pretty well. They foregrounded it well too. The movie was smart about it. They put the religion in there but quietly. They got me looking one way with the haunted house, the extreme rare disease, the secrecy of the compound, and the trope about no one believing the protagonist. I didn't expect them to add another layer at the end. The only real indication I had that something was going down was that it burned through more of the plot than normal with 30 minutes still left. I was really pleased with this movie despite the imperfections.

Yes, it did have a few quirks that bothered me. It never made sense how accessible Sadie Sink's character was in an otherwise locked-down facility. That first hour does drag until the good twists start. A few of the events that happen to fill the time don't make a lot of sense. Like, what's up with the scene where he knocks over the dresser? This is definitely a movie where the payoff makes up for the investment though.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World

I saw this movie when it originally came to video in 2004. It looked like my kind of movie. A period war film with Maximus and a huge production budget. At the time, I remember being underwhelmed by it and a little bored. Over the years though, I've heard a lot of people insist that it's actually really good. So, I figured 16-year-old me just wasn't appreciating stuff that 33-year-old me would.

Nope. I still found this movie pretty boring. I'm sorry. I want to be a more high-minded and pretentious type, but I just found so much of the movie seriously dull. I'm not sure if it was the language of the film or the sound mixing, but I repeatedly couldn't follow what people were saying. Even the big naval battle at the end was underwhelming because of all the smoke. I get that there probably would've really been a lot of smoke, but please find a more cinematic way to shoot it. I couldn't figure out what was happening for some much of it. I know, I know: "the fog of war" or whatever. I don't care. I pretty much came away with the same level of appreciation for the movie as I did in 2004. So, here's to no personal growth!

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend