We watched Vampire’s Kiss on Vudu and it was a delightful window into the soul of one of the most impressive, interesting, and entertaining actors of our age, Nic Cage. * (1:45) - Intro* (7:00) -Synopsis* (7:40) -Review* (13:50) -Score* (25:57) -Spoilers* (1:13:30) -Bad Reviews for Good Movies https://youtu.be/PnoSxO_2ghQ Synopsis Publishing executive Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage) is bitten by a woman and starts acting erratically. Believing that he is being controlled by his vampire mistress puts a great deal of stress and pressure on Peter. As he deals with the stress of this new vampire relationship, Peter leans more and more heavily on his poor secretary, Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso). As Peter’s madness evolves, it becomes questionable to the audience exactly what is real and what is Peter’s rapidly devolving mental state. Everyone gets more Nicolas Cage than they bargained for. Review Vampire’s Kiss is an anomaly of a movie. It’s not exactly a terrifying horror movie due to the strong overtones of comedy within Cage’s performance. On the other hand it’s not exactly a feel good romp due to the very serious mental decline of Peter, our protagonist turned antagonist and extremely unreliable narrator. It’s a dark comedy that will delight those who want to be taken on a crazy ride. Vampire’s Kiss strongest feature is the insane performance given by Nic Cage. He creates such a believably crazy character that you can’t help but remember bumping into people just like him on public transportation and wondering, what is their life like. Watch Vampire's KissWatch on AmazonClick here to Rent or Buy The best part is, you get to see what his life is like. It’s touched, tragic, and totally bonkers. I can’t help but feel like writer Joseph Minion spent some time on the New York subway watching mentally disturbed people and began posing the question to himself, “what brought that person to this unfortunate place? What was their life like before and during their transition into madness?” This is pretty much the only notable directing credit that director Robert Bierman has, and that astonishes me. It’s such a weirdly enjoyable movie and shares so much in common with one of my favorite movies of all time, American Psycho that I can't help but see all the inspiration that Vampire’s Kiss has given to more recent dark comedy movies. Score 8/10
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Before Sarah Michele Gellar, Kristy Swanson brought Joss Whedon's iconic vampire slaying heroine to the silver screen. Does this 90s relic hold up to scrutiny sans nostalgia? listen to our latest episode to find out. Artwork by Dusting Goebel (@dgoebel00 on Instagram) Synopsis Buffy the Vampire Slayer, before she was an iconic television heroine was first found on the silver screen starring Kristy Swanson. Considering this movie is 30 years old, I’m not sure many people remember it, let alone the WB television show. However, Joss Whedon, it’s writer is well known, having written and directed some of the highest grossing films of all time in the last decade. Buffy in this film is the stereotypical Valley Girl of the 90s. The type that opened Sir Mix a Lot’s hit single of the same year “I Like Big Butts”. She is vapid, dumb, and flaky. When an infestation of vampires begin to invade LA and her high schools Hawthorne High, a mysterious man in a trench coat named Merrick shows up. Merrick informs Buffy that she has been chosen to be the latest in a long line of vampire hunters throughout history. Buffy has no interest, but she finds she has a natural knack for Slaying. She decides to team up with Merrick and train so that she can defeat Lothos, the ancient vampire that is the leader of the cause of the recent uptick in vampire activity. https://youtu.be/pnZkV_aR_9w Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) I have a lot of nostalgia for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched it several times in the 90s as a prepubescent little fat kid. I remember it having some iconic performances and moments, but upon checking the Rotten Tomatoes critics score, it sits at 36%. Was I so out of touch? No, it’s the critics who are wrong. Watching it yesterday, I tried to put off nostalgia and be unbiased. It has some good bones. There are some great performances and Joss Whedon’s writing does shine through, but it is bogged down by poor direction. Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Rubens, Rutger Hauer, and Luke Perry all bring the appropriate amount of gravitas and goofiness that the high concept screenplay demands. The dialogue is top notch, creating compelling characters while placing it squarely in 90s LA. Where it has problems is when it comes to establishing stakes (no pun intended) and establishing the lore in a compelling way. This is often blamed on changes made to Joss Whedon’s original script, which resulted in him walking away from the set halfway through production. In a comic book series called Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Origin, you can read the original vision Joss Whedon had for the film. It really is nearly identical except for a few key scenes. Where the film starts to fall apart is the choppy and sometimes confusing editing and direction. It’s clear that the studio and/or director wanted to de-emphasize the darker elements of the story and focus more on the light hearted comedic aspects. What they didn’t understand is that those dark moments help to sell the comedy and make it a much more compelling film if executed right. The stakes are never truly established, because we’re never shown that Buffy particularly cares about her school or any of her other similarly vapid friends. We are given scant details of the main villain, and when the main confrontations occur, they seem arbitrary and rushed. In the end, while it still holds a special place in my heart, I can see the flaws in the movie, and it’s just aight. Score
We watched Resolution on Tubi and were treated to something so meta that Facebook might have a case against them. @dgoebel00on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out hiswebsite. https://youtu.be/6-5uBCIA94c Synopsis Mike (Peter Cilella) heads out into the country to force his friend Chris (Vinny Curran) to quit his stimulant abuse after receiving a video of him deep in the depths of psychosis. Upon arriving at Chris’ domicile, Mike starts noticing lots of weird doings transpiring. After chaining Chris to the wall, the two close friends hunker down and start reliving their relationship to everyone’s chagrin. As Mike begins to delve deeper into Chris’ world and the rural area around the house, he keeps noticing strange occurrences that indicate they are being watched. What is watching Mike and Chris, and how will this movie end? Review A couple months ago I watched The Endless - another movie that was written and directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. It blew me away. I heard that Resolution was the first movie that they made, and it tied in to The Endless. Having watched The Endless before Resolution made the experience a lot more enjoyable and interesting. As a stand alone film, Resolution is fairly interesting and compelling. It’s essentially a drama with a lot of sinister mystery thrown in for good measure. Watch Resolution (2013)Buy or Rent on AmazonClick here to Buy or Rent Being a fairly paranoid person, a lot of the feelings conveyed in this movie are familiar to me. Most of what Resolution explores is the complexities of addiction, and what it means to find meaning in life. Sometimes meaning is what we make of it, and sometimes the world provides us with the bump we needed to wish we had done more with what we had. Alone, it’s not a groundbreaking movie, but it does do a lot in terms of meta winking and suggestions. While not as in-your-face with the meta as Scream, the narrative in this is so meta that it’s a little daunting to fully appreciate. It’s a perfect movie to follow up The Endless which is one of my favorite horror movies in years. Score 7/10
If you want to feel stranger danger, look no further than Scott Derrickson's new film The Black Phone in theaters now. This well constructed and acted supernatural thriller is well worth your time. Artwork by Dusting Goebel (@dgoebel00 on Instagram) Synopsis Pretty much all you need to know is in the trailer. In the late 70s in North Denver, there is a spate of missing children. Rumors abound of a predator named “the Grabber”. Finney, the protagonist, is either a popular baseball pitcher, or a shy weakling who is picked on by bullies. He is soon grabbed by the grabber, played by Ethan Hawk in a mask channeling Pennywise the clown. His sister Gwen has a touch of the shinning, and has dreams about where the Grabber takes his victims. While Finney is locked in the Grabbers basement, the disconnected BLACK PHONE in the room receives calls from the previous victims of the grabber from beyond the grave. Finney must work to free himself using the knowledge given to him from the phone and...
We watched Constantine on HBO Max and I realized that I had a bunch of unfounded ill-will toward this movie, which is pretty good. @dgoebel00on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out hiswebsite. https://youtu.be/DEa508Xmmio Synopsis Constantine is about John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), a DC character whose job is essentially to send demons back to hell. Or at least he made it his job when he realized that he was heading there. He is approached by Angela (Rachel Weisz) and asked to help her prove that her twin sister didn’t commit suicide. As a devout Catholic, Angela realizes that if her sister did actually commit suicide she damned herself to hell. With the help of his plucky sidekick, Chas (Shia LaBeouf) and some of his friends, John is on the case. He finds himself in the middle of a war where the Devil’s son, Mammon, is trying to unleash himself into the world of the living. Everyone gets more holy hand grenades than they bargained for. Review Constantine is a pretty impressive movie in a couple different ways. Firstly, it had a large budget and was able to spend a lot of it on CGI monsters and backdrops, which wouldn’t normally be a plus. But this CGI from 2005 actually holds up quite well. It also has enough action and interesting characters to keep you involved in the movie from beginning to end. In fact, the Angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) and Satan (Peter Stormare) are some of the best depictions of well-known Bible characters that I’ve ever seen on screen. Constantine doesn’t dwell on the origin story, while still acknowledging it, which is a breath of fresh air in today’s hyper-cookie-cutter style comic book movie world. By the end of Constantine, if you are bought in on the story the payoff will be pretty impressive.It’s not without fault, however. This movie came out two years after The Matrix trilogy concluded, and it feels like a direct port of that series in a lot of ways. From the stylized world to the monotone color pallet to starring Keanu as the savior of mankind - it’s uh, kind of obvious. Also, it was originally touted as a horror movie and I can see where it threw in scary imagery and concepts to try and please the horror crowd. Make no mistake, this is not what I would call a “hard-horror movie”. This is an action-thriller that dealt with some of the scarier elements of religion, and the studio figured they could get a bigger audience if they could draw the horror crowd. This was my issue with the movie when I originally watched it on the bigscreen. Overall, it’s a pretty fun movie that I would watch again after a few years. It was a much better Catholic horror movie than The Nun, so there's that. Score 7/10
Mad God is the new Phil Tippett stop motion animation movie available exclusively on Shudder. In this Patreon only review, we talk a lot about this movie and what we loved and hated about it. To support our show and gain access to the following Patreon only Pretentious reviews, support us on Patreon! Movies you can only hear us review on Patreon: * Mad God (2022)* The Vanishing* Cat People (1942)* Zombie (1979)* Cemetery Man (1994)* Psycho* The Last House on the Left (1972)* Don't Look Now* The Void* Hausu (House)* Ghoulies* Greenland* Army of the Dead* Cabin in the Woods* Dead Alive / Braindead* Basket Case
For Pride month this year, we decided to review a great LGBTQ+ horror movie. Saying Stranger By The Lake is a horror movie, is pretty generous, since it is more on the light end of thriller. But what it lacks in horror, it makes up in homoeroticism. Artwork by Dusting Goebel (@dgoebel00 on Instagram) Synopsis At a French lake, Franke spends his summer days cruising for gay sex. Along the way he befriends the pudgy middle-aged depressive Henri who is ostensibly bisexual, but has no interest in sex, but provides good conversation. Franke sees a gay French Tom Selleck-type at the lake named Michel and is instantly attracted to him. Michel seems to be involved with someone else, but when Franke spies Michel drowning his presumed boyfriend, Franke decides to shoot his shot. https://youtu.be/kG4py4khTEM Review of Strange By The Lake (L'inconnu du lac) This is an understated erotic thriller that could also be considered a black comedy. It explores themes of lust, relationships, commitment,...
We went and saw Crimes of the Future and witnessed David Cronenberg's return to body horror in one of the most upsetting films of the year. @dgoebel00on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out hiswebsite https://youtu.be/xyCI741MqPY Synopsis Crimes of the Future is a story about the far flung future, where the earth has succumb to environmental havoc wreaked on it by the human race. Humanity has been treated with pain-killers for so long that the concept of physical pain is novel. Our protagonists are Saul Tensor (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux), who’s art is performative surgery that seems to be extremely sexual in nature. Saul Tensor is like a portion of humanity who finds himself growing auxiliary organs that make his life extremely uncomfortable. From eating to sleeping, Saul never finds himself far from discomfort, which is strange, given how much of humanity seems to experience so little in terms of feeling that they intentionally mutilate themselves to feel anything at all. A young child named Brecken is murdered by his mother for eating a plastic trash can in the opening scene of this movie. A complicated game of cat and mouse between a shady government agency and a splinter cell of candybar aficionados takes place surrounding Brecken’s death. Does art imitate life? Will humanity embrace their inevitable evolution? Review Crimes of the Future is the result of 50 years of doom and gloom reporting on humanities shaping of our environment. This future is one that you’ve had visions of every time you hear a news report of the trash island in the Pacific. A humanity made perverse by its own inability to react to itself. More than that, this is a return to intense body horror for renowned writer, director David Cronenburg. I have to admit, Crimes of the Future hones in on my most intense personal terror - surgical imagery. I first found this personal weakness in the fourth grade when my teacher went into vivid detail in describing how doctors removed her brain tumor. I felt sweaty and weak, and soon passed out on my desk. Watch Crimes of the FutureWatch on AmazonClick Here to Buy or Rent Since then, I’ve come a long way in my ability to deal with thoughts and descriptions of surgery. Crimes of the Future cracked me by fusing surgery with sexuality and kink. There is something so perverse in the concept of sexualizing voluntary surgery that i found myself sweating and my vision blurring like I was back in the fourth grade. The world that Crimes of the Future takes place in is so bleak and sad, I found myself wishing that the movie would end. The concepts within are terribly interesting and well-presented. Questions like, “What is natural?” and “How do you deal with admiration if the thing that people admire about you is what you most hate about yourself?” crop up all over this masterpiece.
This film is the epitome of body horror, done by the master of body horror: David Cronenberg. If you have never seen The Fly, you'll definitely be saying to yourself "Ew, David". Artwork by Dusting Goebel (@dgoebel00 on Instagram) Synopsis Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a brilliant scientist that has successfully developed a working transporter. When he shows it to Geena Davis’ Veronica Quaife there are still a few kinks to work out with transporting living tissue. Vis-à-vis keeping the insides in. In an impulsive moment, after he corrects the issue, he decided to transport himself as the first human subject. However, he was so preoccupied with whether he could, and didn’t stop to think if he should. As time goes on, he slowly realizes that something went wrong and his body experiences a terrifying metamorphosis. https://youtu.be/bdB02IufaW0 Review of The Fly (1986) The Fly still works. David Cronenberg, the director, has made his career off of pushing the limits, and in this ...