This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo 1995
Not one, but *two* songs about chili. A real monster mash with an eclectic soundtrack that threatens to overtake the movie (literally, it's mixed to a level where it's often competing with the dialogue).
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Guided By Voices: Watch Me Jumpstart 1998
The footage of GBV in Austin being banished from Emo's for heckling their own opening act is kayfabe right?
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Fear No Evil 1981
My promise to you, dear reader, is that if I ever own a ruined castle in upstate New York, you are free to shoot your gay little punk rock Christian horror movies there.
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Skin Deep 1995
There's a lot going on under the skin (yuck yuck) of this movie that plays like a 90s indie drama in slasher drag. Hits many beats of a typical slasher (some sort of childhood trauma shown in stylized flashbacks and the ensuiung isolation and violence that create a damaged adult who forms parasocial relationships and has no ability to manage their emotions)... but it's not a slasher (or even a horror movie for that matter).
It is haunted by death,…
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Haunt 2019
Approaches being great, but insists on having a domestic abuse backstory that you could literally edit completely out of the movie without losing a thing (but you gotta have overcoming trauma as a secondary character conflict/motivator these days for some reason? It's not enough to be trapped in a deadly haunt!?). I like that it (minor spoiler I guess) never really explains what's going on with the antagonist, so I wish it showed that restraint and economy with the protagonist too. But it was a fun watch that used sudden loud sound effects the way carnival dark rides use air horns and flashing lights. Cheap thrills!
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Dr. Caligari 1989
"Juice me, I'm a shiver boy!"
Love to imagine Jerry Stahl was writing this while taking uh smoke breaks while working on ALF. m.imdb.com/name/nm0821466/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
I'd avoided watching the 4K restoration so I could see it on the big screen. I was worried it might make the production design look cheap, but if anything it makes it even more impressive. The detail in that giant tongue!
I felt more receptive to the stylized acting this time around. It accomplishes something! What that is? Blank blank blank.
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The Devil's Advocate 1997
Keanu and Charlize Theron's Southern accents are *atrocious,* (as a Southerner, the characterization of Gainesville, Florida as some rural podunk town stuck in the 1950s was especially hilarious). Al Pacino is playing a villain in a Joel Schumacher Batman movie (wait til you hear how he pronounces "cyber"). The whole thing is premium schlock with its billion dollar budget and heavy handed everything. The characters (even the "good ones") are all so unlikeable, except for maybe Pacino's John Milton (I…