Woofies

Want to see more movies with George Clooney and Brad Pitt just acting off against each other? Rather specific, but I got you fam!

When a hookup goes wrong you bring in a guy. But someone else also brings in a guy. So now you've got two guys who are just their own guys, who do what they do. Now they have to work together, all to just get the job done.

This is a fun movie. As mentioned you want George Clooney and Brad Pitt together? This is that. After the set up, it's all them playing off each other. Yes, we have Amy Ryan to start with, and Austin Adams for most of the movie, but it really it the two of them just having a fine time.

The plot isn't deep, and the action pieces feel like they are just there to have action pieces, but hey, that's not really why we are watching this.

Just put this on, and enjoy!

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Invading all those Snatching Bodies

Not just one, but two!

In 1956, a doctor returns to a small town, where some people have been reporting strangeness, but now everything is fine. Except some people are claiming that other people are not themselves. The doctor finds a friend with a strange growing duplicate, and starts to uncover strangeness. He gets his female friend out, but the pods are being distributed. The doctor has to run away, and is only believed at the end. Perhaps the world will react in time.

In 1978, a health inspector has some friends that randomly encounter strange people saying that people are not themselves. They take time to wander around, not doing much, but taking their damn time to go through the same set of motions that the previous movie did economically, but the big difference this time is that we are in a large city! The inspector destroys a greenhouse of pods, and hides away... and then comes back in a rather stilted fashion, encounters a friend, and .... screech!

The 80 minute movie is good. The 115 minute movie is padded out, just extends the scenes for no reason, just must take longer. And the ending is not a surprise that Donald Sutherland is a pod person at that point, it's plainly obvious, not even trying to be a twist.

At best, you can say the first movie is about small town life, and becoming unsettled as people become alienated. The second movie is about alienation in a big city, where there are lots of people, and connections dirft away. But the first movie has hope that this problem might be corrected, the second movie is just everyone gives into it.

See the first, don't bother with the second.

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Moore Boogeym'n

Yes, okay, I watched the two sequels.

Revenge of the Boogeyman is the second one. We return to Lacey, from the first movie, and she goes somewhere else, and accidentally has a piece of the mirror with her. After recapping events from the first movie (ie. replaying all the kills) we get more kills of the new people, in just as silly and stupid ways as the first. And even a really stupid moment at the end where the buried killer suddenly raises a fist from the ground, blows up a car, and then fist is back down... wut?

However, that is far more work than they did for number three.

Return of the Boogeyman features Annie, who is receiving psychic visions. Those visions? Repeat of footage from the first movie. Yes, again! So basically Annie is a device through which they replay the kills of the first movie, with added lore dumping from the psychiatrist, until the eventual boring sting at the end as they pretend it was more than just repeating the movie, and the killer is actually around.

I of course know why they bothered: someone though there was money in this. Not the directors, but even they want a paycheck at the end of the day.

I would say to rightfully ignore these, but you wouldn't be able to find them if you wanted to.

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Spooky observation

I played two games with the same concept, The Cabin Factory and Shift 87. You are tasked with going through repititions of environments and evaluating if they are weird or normal. You have to get a certain number in a row correct, and if you fail, you reset back to zero. The Cabin Factory also has the chance to kill you, also resetting you, but it also has more of a plot than Shift 87 has.

What can be considered weird is very different. In Shift 87, a lot of them are very obvious, but some of them are really hard to pick up. In Cabin Factory, weird is only if something is moving, and they mean that. Something strange, but not moving... not weird!

After playing them a little, I got really frustrated. My personal perception is low, so I was missing everything. For both, I looked up a list of what I was supposed to find... and while in a way that made it easier, it also made it more fun! I knew what I had to do, and then it was just me being stupid as opposed to completely ignorant.

Since then, yep, completed the games, and now appreciate them better. Cabin Factory has a little too much "uncanny asset" issue, and prefer Shift 87, but each loop of Shift 87 is a lot longer.

Not terrible, but definitely know if it is the kind of game you want to play.

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Immmersiom

More Japanese horror? Don't mind if I do!

On an island, a VR company is building a copy of the world, a copy so accurate it has ghosts from the real world in it! A new hire comes in, and immediately recognises that something odd is going on, and slowly the nature of the spirit is unveiled, and even more slowly we get the real story of what happened, although we don't get how the two worlds smear over outside of "it's Japanese horror, this happens".

It gets rather weird in the end part of the movie. We have the VR stuff, but it morphs into "distressed spirit", but then it morphs into "one person's guilt infests the world" but then it's real (as ghosts get), which doesn't track, so there's a whole mash of different things that don't quite gel.

I was wondering if this would be like Pulse, with the disconnect of people in VR, but it isn't that introspective. And then, because I'd seen the Death Stranding 2 trailer, I was expecting more on the beach, but it wasn't that either.

Could have been better.

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THE Boogeym'n

Someone really liked Halloween, but this time using mirrors!

With an opening bells that makes you think Michael Myers, we start with a mother getting it on with a guy, and her two young kids are watching. The kids go on to kill the guy, but the evil of the moment is trapped in a mirror... it takes time, but that mirror eventually comes back into the movie, now the kids have grown up, and then the deaths start happening. Not entirely believable deaths, but some of them are really funny. Will the evil be defeated... or even survived, or will there be obvious sequel baiting?

It's amazing how much Halloween this is, although I don't know where the whole mirror aspect came from. It's used to excuse deaths in a way that gets around needing to have an actual killer, although we get plenty of deep breathing as if there is an actual spirit, so that's something.

Aside from a cameo from John Carradine, I can't say I recognised anyone. But considering the quality of this movie, the acting is fine.

Note this is THE Boogey Man, with its trilogy, not Boogeyman, with that trilogy. However, I can't find the actual sequels, just that other series.

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Mir rorriM ror

I find mirrors fascinating from a horror perspective, so I've been checking about a few, and want to talk about this one.

Mandy is 100% channelling Lydia from Beetlejuice, and moves into an old house with her mother after her father recently died. However, in her room is a neat mirror. Did I say neat? I meant evil, portal to demons, that grants Mandy's dark desires. Which leads the goth girl into causing lots of death and harm to people, in order to help out her friend, whether her friends wants it or not. Surely, nothing can go wrong there?

This movie is shot really weirdly. We have standard angles and such, but for some reason whenever the character Emelin is on screen, suddenly we get extreme close up of her face. And then other shots are in slowmo for... I think the movie is trying to emphasis it's creepy or something, but it's at the oddest moments and doesn't work. And then the movie goes pervert by showing a naked woman getting killed in the gym showers (the actress was around 21/22 fortunately, although I'm not sure the character was), while the movie intercuts with the other girls in the pool while it stares longingly at their asses underwater...

While this is a heavily female crew and cast, it says a lot that I recognise two male cameos (Stephen Tobolowsky and William Sanderson) over the others. Fine performances, but I do wonder if the directer wanted Winona Ryder.

Oh hey, there are three more of these? I don't know... but I'm going to, aren't I?

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Demos Time

We had the Steam Next Fest, which means demos. I tried some that were tagged with "Puzzles".

Dr Priori's Time Escape - more like the escape rooms you see elsewhere. There are some mechanics whereby you need to do "time" to get to parts of the room. Not a bad idea, pretty clear (even if I can't spot the thing for a long time). But it NEEDS a run button. But yeah, on the wishlist it goes.

3D Escape Room: Detective Story - standard point and click puzzles. This isn't doing anything too amazing, although I suspect it wants to be with a name like "3D Escape Room". Might pick up when it's cheap enough.

Post Trauma - action shooter with "puzzles". This was created by one person, so I shan't complain about the graphic gliches I saw. However, I can say that this was someone who really wants to create the next Silent Hill, and that's not for me.

Strand - sci-fi puzzle game. Looks very nice, some nice feeling things to click on... and then very annoying thing to drag. This is a game with loops, whereby you need to find the path through the loop to do everything you need to do, and will spend many loops trying things... and it was very annoying. Have to do so many things to get even the smallest of progress. Nope.

Arkham Mysteries: Chapter One - point and click puzzle game. This was made by two brothers and.. this really felt like this. This is the sort of game I would expect to play two years ago. It needs some basic understanding of how to handle UI (give me a back button tied to my mouse, not something I have to click on screen). Not for me.

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Wait... is that...?

Are we getting a new album????

...or is it just an ad for a magazine? (it could be both!)

Hang on... is that Teardrop I hear?

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Presents

This movie tipped a potential warning for me as it was under 90 minutes. But...

We are in a house, going around, looking at the rooms. A family moves in, and we follow them around, caring a lot about what happens with the sister Chloe. The brother brings in a douche-bag friend, and he is a real scumbag. We don't like him.

And that's what I'm going to say about the plot. Is this a second-person film? It definitely can be read that way. There's a mixture of oners, but then this is underdone with short cuts that don't quite work in that framework. The set up was enough to keep me watching, and we get definite hints about what is going on...

Lucy Lui is in this, but despite that name, she isn't the lead. Instead it is Callina Liang and Eddy Maday who lead the movie, and they are quite believable. There are very few effects (and the few are well done) but the key trick is how well the camera moves, barely getting past some of the actors, and you don't hear any footsteps. Good production there.

Frankly, this was a far better movie that I was expecting.

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Campagnion

I keep thinking that is Anna Taylor-Joy in the poster.

Josh is a shitty person, and this movie is entirely dedicated to showing that in every frame of this. Terrible person, terrible friend, terrible morals, just all out and out terrible.

Oh, and this is about companions and such.

I knew the trick of this movie from early trailers, but then it seemed to be a twist to not reveal? And yet, the "twist" is revealed in the first half of the movie, so it's not the big reveal? Indeed, there isn't much of a big reveal, it's just Josh being a shit, and we find out the degrees to which that is true.

The performances are fine. Sophie Thatcher is indeed the lead role in this movie, and Jack Quaid is the piece of shit. Others are also in this movie, including it's Harvey Guillén!

This movie doesn't have that much to say, so on one hand keeps it clean, on the other... it just doesn't have much to say.

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The Georg

He's just an assassin boy, she's just an assassin girl, can I be any more obvious?

There's a Gorge in the middle of nowhere, and it might contain some epic nastiness. Anyway, aside from that, we have an American man on one side, and a Russian woman on the other... can these two would be enemies find common ground, and come together in love? (Like, they aren't really enemies, just not supposed to contact each other.) And then a monster movie happens.

Half this movie is build up, then the bulk of the next part is them dealing with what is in the Gorge... and then like the last five minutes is wrap up? Seriously, they go from "we barely made it out of Act Two" before they are suddenly able to set off the last act and then the credits roll. How will they deal with it? Super easy, barely an inconvenience!

Miles Teller is our lead, and he's fine. Anna Taylor-Joy is the female lead, but she is definitely treated as the supporting artist here. Sigourney Weaver gets to cameo, so that's something. The monsters are... fine. Nothing particular spectacular about them, and the colour pallete is "mono", so they don't really have anything out standing about them.

If you want to see this, I'm not going to say "no", but there are better things to put on.

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Maona 2

I can see how this was abbreviated...

Moana is out looking for other islands/people, and after being struck by lightning, she gets the idea for the plot of the movie of going looking for a particular island. After grabbing a handful of other people who will not matter in this movie version, she heads out, bumps into someone who shortcircuits a lot of the adventure, finds Maui, and then goes to the island. There are many, many songs to fill in the space to make this over ninety minutes.

This definitely has the feel of "we could make this a television series" feeling, with lots of potential plot points expanding over an episode, with the focus on different characters. See, for example, how Prodigy did this. But here we just get maybe a song covering a lot of it, then on to the next one. Speedrunning as a movie!

Auli'i Cravalho and Dwayne Jackson are back, and perfectly fine. There are a scattering of other actors, and now I can easily recognise Rose Matafeo's voice, so huzzah for her!

This is fine, although would have been better as the full series. But at least there's the teaser for more movies... yay?

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Capitan Ameraci

aka The Falcon And The Angry Soldier.

There's a Celestial out in the ocean. Remember that? 'cos the movies haven't for a while, but now it's all anyone is talking about. It's vitally important for... reasons, and it forms the main backbone against which the events of this movie play out. Captain America is uncovering things while President Ross is involved, and then...

Actually, if you've seen the trailers or heard lots of old commentary, you know a lot about the 'who's that are involved, but they aren't nearly as prevalent as you might think. Anthony Mackie is great as Sam Wilson, and Harrison Ford is... often on screen. There are numerous other characters, and various cameos, and Giancarlo Esposito is wasted as Sidewinder.

All because the plot just isn't that exciting. The common thing people are saying about this movie is "it's fine" and...

It's fine.

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Trans1former1s Un

Before they met the eye, they were not more.

Orion Pax and D-16 are just dudes who want to help out and be more than they are. They do this by doing extremely stupid things that turn out to be helpful for them, until they find out the obvious secret of betrayal and their whole lives are built on lies. And then they are on track to becoming the battling bots we know and play with.

This is a lot better than I was expecting. It's not exactly deep, but it's a story well told, and even the obvious moments are still executed well. It's a decent origin story, and although the twist from D-16 is a little forced, you can see how it plays out. Although the actual eventual name of Autobot and Deception is a lot of a stretch.

Good vocal performances too. Chris Hemsworth is doing his "big speech" voice, and Scarlett Johansson is also in this. Brian Tyree Henry is a great D-16, and Keegan-Michael Key is suitably annoyingly as B-127. (If there is more to their names than just random numbers, I have no idea.)

I don't know Transformers deep lore, but this works fine for me.

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Nosfaeratau

This is the 2024 remake, and if it is a faithful remake... yeah, I just watched Dracula again.

Blah blach not Harker goes to not Dracula and sells him a place in England yadda yadda not Mina is entranced with not Dracula skibibi toilet not Van Helsing is on board to explain everything and cause some kind of ending.

No wonder copyright law was all over this back in the day. It's such a rip off you would think it was originally a Kylo/Ren fanfic! I will allow that the performances are good, Nicholas Hault is fine, Willem Defoe is having fun, Bill Skarsgaard is creepy, and Lily-Rose Depp is... on screen. Women don't fare well in Dracula stories, and she isn't exactly playing up a strong woman stereotype, and I just couldn't care when she was on screen.

All I can say now that this is at least a movie I've now seen.

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Glaadiiaatoor 2

The movie of the farther will be revisited upon the son.

Hanno is a young man with a wife, and she may as well be named "Dead soon, gonna bite it" as she lives up to that name almost immediately. He is captured, and taken to be a gladiator, and we get several fights as Hanno proves he is the Main Character of the movie. The man who killed the wife turns out to be Hanno's mother's new husband, so he is actually not a terrible person (and indeed, is played by Pedro Pascal, so of course we are on this side), but unfortunately Roman politics happen. Which also leads to the two lead mad emperors trying to lead (having character be mad mean you don't need to justify the plot - they are mad, they just do things!), but are outdone by one person who takes advantage of them never having guards around, and then we finally get to the final combat, in which everyone watches so they don't need to shoot a huge army fighting scene.

I was surprised by the collection of English actors here, Derek Jacobi, Tim McInnery, and Matt Lucas. But they, and everyone, is overwhelmed by Denzel Washington's acting all over the place. The effects are fine, and the battles look impressive enough.

All in all, I was somewhat entertained.

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Hoos of Leves

So I read the book. Or did I blue the book? I considered doing House in blue, but now can't be bothered.

As you may have heard, this is a book of layers.

Level 0: There is a movie, called the Navidson Record, about a guy documenting a strange door in his house that goes into an infinite depth of darkness and corridors. Which is definitely my shit. Indeed, I've done an RPG module based on that (although I didn't know it at the time)!

Level 1: A book about the movie, written by Zampanò. This is an indepth analysis of the movie, detailed notes, and a bajillion footnotes to academic papers. [One conceit of this book is that it is written around four years after the documentary, but there are just so many academic papers referenced that I am severly doubting that any media could generate so much discussion in such a short time frame.]

Level 2: Johnny Truant had the notes Zampanò wrote, and put it together into this book we are reading, and has added notes of his own. He is affected by the book of the documentary, adversely, and has to get it out to get it out of his head. Here the most interested aspect to me are the appendix of the mother's letters, which I will come back to a moment.

Level 3: This whole thing is a book written by the actual author of all, Mark Z. Damielewski.

This is certainly a piece of work, where Mark has put a lot of effort into it. Many of the chapters are formatted to give a sense of what the text is about, eg the labyrinth chapter is cramped and confusing (this is the chapter most people reference when pointing out what the book is doing), another chapter is spacing things out, only a few words per page, so you get the rushing sense of action as you speed through the pages. That's nice and all, but I'm not convinced it's really needed. Like if this was an actual film, you would get that naturally that translating it to text doesn't quite capture. Frankly, aside from the labyrinth chapter, this could easily be any normal book, or even an audiobook, but with that chapter...

And then there is the deep reading of the text. The meaning of the various layers, why is the word house in blue, what happened that no-one apart from Zampanò is aware of the documentary, that this book itself appears in the text as a book, but... the problem is this entire book is predicated on the concept of an unreliable narrator. Every level is suffused with "are they telling the truth, or just writing down anything," with Level 2 explicitly calling out some of the times he is doing that. So... I noticed a few weird typos and such, but I can't trust "is this a key to unravelling the whole thing?" or is it just "whoops, didn't mean that?" Let alone "I wrote this because it was just what occured to me at the time" (at Level 3). I'm definitely doing to watch some video essays that deconstruct this book, but I can't trust they understand it either.

So definitely a book I read. Or, at least, turned the pages while seeing words with my eyes.

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Karven

It's the end of the SPUMC, or whatever acronym that is up to.

It's Kraven, and he's hunting people! Unless he has to get someone else to hunt people! But we start with him killing people, and just as well we are on board with the "hero"es of movies killing people, because he will do that a lot. In a flashback origin we get extreme coincidence giving him powers, but that is extremely comics, so I'm actually okay with that. Then his brother is kidnapped, so Kraven hunts down a bunch of people that other people have hunted for him, and then there is a fight between a tough guy and another tough guy, woo!

For all that, it's fine. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is fine. But... that's just it. This movie is fine, nothing more. On the scale of Sony movies, it's... fine, which still puts it above other movies, but it's all only just fine.

BTW, what's the deal with the Foreigner? No idea who is was during the movie, and the Marvel version has nothing to do with this (and certainly has no powers). Just this random guy.

So... Fine?

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Sanic 3

According to how the titles present themselves on screen, this is Sonic 3 The Hedgehog.

Another piece of Sonic lore character turns up, and now the movie begins! The story is largely straight forward, they need to get the MacGuffin, and then have a big fight, and they expand that final fight into a third of the movie. Because this movie feels like different scenes they had together, with feature either Eggnik and/or the Voice Cast, and then they scatter in other characters into the different scenes like random events. This one involves Tom and Maddie! This one involves Kristen Ritter! This one has both! And we can even squeeze in Rachel and Randall from... I vaguely remember them from being in the other half of the second movie, and Wade... who is a character I guess?

Jim Carrey isn't terrible, clearly he is having fun by himselves, but a lot of scenes involve him doing things twice and/or interacting with... I don't know how they did the digital characters, either a ball on a stick or a large plush or something? Certainly they don't physically interact, because that is not good (there is a moment where James Marsden is supposed to touch Sonic's chest, but there is no evidence at all of any contact happening).

Which isn't say this is bad. Just that they wanted to tell a story and decided on the Sonic story first and then inserted other things as actors were available. The voice cast is doing their thing, Ben is the only one who seems to be emoting (over emoting!) and Idris and Keanu are just one note for their performances (seem to be enjoying the one note, but one note nonetheless). And Tails is there...

But yeah, decent enough, but nothing amazing. Next time, pink Sonic lady!

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Sûîto hômu

Someone else was interested in this Japanese horror movie, so I had to watch it.

There's a mansion in the woods that is said to contain a lost fresco, so a documentary team go in to find out. However, the reason the fresco was lost was because the artist's wife and child died there under terrible circumstances, and wouldn't you know it, the wife ends up haunting the place.

This is from 1989, so before the current spate of horror movies. This is very 80s in some of the effects, and tries to do more with some character beats than what we get nowadays (which is no character beats). There were odd beats to the plot where the movie should have ended after an hour... and then another 20 minutes later... but it found (not entirely believably) ways to extend it out to keep the characters in trouble.

While the ultimate creepy horror creature effect was... ambitious if not brilliant, I will give big props to the death scene of Mr Yamamura, which is full on impressive, comparable to the end of Raiders.

Decent enough movie.

Oh, this is related to a Famicom game. Huh.

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Alls Terrifier Eves

Anthology time, with clowns!

In the first one, we have Art... and it's a compilation of the Ninth Circle short, the Terrifier short, and another one (which has acting and aliens so bad that even if it was a parody, it would be a bad one). There is a framing device of a babysister and two kids watching a tape, and we watch them watch it, with the VHS on a small screen, and close ups of their faces, and just sometimes there is the actual shorts to watch.

Techinally this is the first full film with Art, but as it is just the previous shorts (his face is badly put into the other short to link it in), it doesn't really count. But hey, they were trying to make him a thing.

In the second movie, we get another three shorts, but this isn't Art, it's Pumpkin-Face! The first short has a mother thinking it is a good idea to cut into her son. The second short shows that trick or treaters are little shits. The third I'm sure I've seen elsewhere... frankly this is all just highly unconnected shorts stuck together. Like a lot of anthology movies are, but this is worse than most. Not even the Pumpkin-Face killer is constant, he's just in the framing device! I'm guessing the company just had some shorts to compile.

Clearly Pumpkin-Face didn't take off like Art did.

Frankly, the Art ones are the best of the lot, but that isn't saying much.

You know, the most amazing thing about this movie is not that people find VHS tapes, but that they still have VHS players!

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Terrifiered

It seems the budget went up again for this one.

This movie cares a lot more about continuity than some horror franchises! Aside from Art, Victoria (a victim from the first movie, and just as much associated with these movies as Art is) is more in this, and is just as paranormal as Art is now. That could be interesting as to how that happens, but that's not this movie. Although Art imparting paranormality to his victims would explain how they survive so long after he disfigures them. [And apparently Art is called Clowny now.]

Sienna and brother is also back, dealing with surviving the previous movie. And her plot goes on for a while before finally intersecting with Art's. Showing trauma is one thing, but this movie doesn't respect that when they cut to show what Art is getting up to. Although the join is weird, like there's a scene missing, making you wonder if it is a dream. Although everyone gets supernatural now!

This marks the move of a Halloween killer to a Christmas killer. Although that it is just costuming, it shows that there really isn't that much in it.

This is definitely the low budget horror series that is both under the radar and punching above its weight. We'll see you for Terrifier 4...

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Terrifiering?

This is series of movies that kinda snuck up and produced a "highly acclaimed" third movie... only it's been more than three movies.

The key figure is one Art the Clown, who mimes things, and stalks people, and just cannot be stopped (although doesn't become full paranormal until the end of the "first" movie... although becoming paranormal does take a lot of fearsomeness from him. It's not a person doing this, it's just a random creature).

But we start with The 9th Circle, in which Art scares a young woman at a train station, and drugs her... and then she takes part in a completely different movie about people with facial prosthetics and cult worship and whatever.

We then have the actual short Terrifier, in which Art murders someone (we are surprised), a woman sees this, so he goes after her. As it is short, it doesn't waste a lot of time, and reflects what the longer movies will be.

After a side appearance in another series (another post later), we get the full movie Terrifier, in which Art stalks young ladies and gruesomely plays with and then kills them.

Next is Terrifier 2, where we get the "heroine" of Sienna, who, as an essential part of the story, dresses up as a fetish angel. Art is rather casually wandering around, being cruel, and not at all a Freddy knockoff (there's a dream sequence). And much like Freddy, there is more complicated stuff happening than just Art being creepy... but mostly it's Art being creepy.

One noted feature of this series is the use of effects for the gruesome stuff... fine, call me jaded, but I wasn't that impressed. The movies are late 2010s, but the effects feel like stuff I've seen from the 80s (Evil Dead lives on). T2 is better, clearly it got a large money upgrade. 

But will the third movie finally get to me?

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Jiggy Sawm'n

A spy thriller from '83 with Michael Caine? Sure!

Kimberley dies in Russia, but comes back as Kuzminsky. He has a [MacGuffin] document hiding in Britian, and is sent back there with Russian handlers to get it... but he escapes them, and tries to trade secrets with British Intelligence. But there are moles there and coincidentally one of them is sleeping with his daugher and...

I have to admit, I couldn't quite keep everything clear. I think the bad guys got done over, but I'm not 100% positive. Yes, I watch at high speed, so some of this is on me, but we also swap around a lot of subplots, and don't follow key players for a while, so although we do get some elements of "innocent people get caught up in troubles that have nothing to do with them," there is also elements of "stuff is going on, good luck keeping track".

Parts of this felt very Bond, and once I looked up what else director Terrance Young had done, that explained a lot. We get various performances from Micheal Caine, which is good, and also I see Charles Gray and Robert Powell in there, and I failed to recognise Laurence Olivier.

Decent spy movie, although I could have had it spelt out a little more simply to me.

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Canclove

Do I really want to watch a movie about the political maneouvering of old men?

The old pope dies, and Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with setting up the Conclave to come up with who will be the new pope. As expected, there is a lot of political goings-on as various cardinals jockey for position. Sins are uncovered, cardinals are pushed aside, and... in many ways, this could be any political movie of new leader rising. (I would have been amused for a Death of Stalin approach to this.)

But I will give the ending, I did not see coming. At first, I thought "oh, that was a bit easy, for them to get out and say that everything is fine" but then there is that further moment and "okay, let's see them roll with that!" I doubt the real church would ever go with that, but this is fiction after all.

Great performances all around from Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and others. The sets are decent, and even the bed chambers look a lot nicer than what most of us will have.

But is there god? There is if you think there is, I supposed, but I didn't spot one (just the hand of the writers).

Very watchable.

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88 Pulse

From back in the day... I went to see this with my dad! It was some treat or another, I think.

David is a kid of divorced parents (and his dad's remarried), and has come out to visit his dad. The neighbour had some weird things happen in his house, but surely that's unrelated. Unrelated, the electricity in his house is now sparking, rewiring tvs, and behaving kinda intelligent. The new wife is taken out, the dad tries to deal with it, then it's down to David and his dad to just survive.

This does have some neat effects, especially when the insides of the tv is rewiring itself. Solder gets heated up, flows, and rejoins circuits. Could that ever happen? Who cares! It looks cool. (My dad was an electrician, so I can only assume he treated this very incredulously.)

This movie is a stance against electrifying and connecting (with electricity) everything in the home. The heater, the gas pipes, the window bars, all controlled by electricity, and all prone to "accidents". I can only assume there's a version of this that is this exact movie with just AI controlling everything.

This has a wee Joey Lawrence as David, and playing the hard put upon father is.. Cliff De Young, who is playing every character Cliff De Young always plays. Roxanne Hart is the wife, and I'm sure I've see her in lots of things. Charles Tyner has a great turn as the Crazy Old Man Who Knows. And Joey's brother Matthew plays the kid that no-one else wants to play with.

This ain't a deep movie, but clearly I have an emotional connection with it. And the end credits ask you to ponder how the streets of the city are like the traces of the circuits board... I mean, they aren't really, but it almost makes you think.

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Kure

Another Japanese horror movie... that I'm sure I've seen before.

Mamiya doesn't remember anything, but as people talk to him, help him, he talks with them... and they go off and kill their spouse, work partner, whomstever. Chasing him down is Detective Takabe, but even capturing Mamiya doesn't stop the latter from doing horror. Indeed, in many ways, just makes it that much easier...

This reminds me of the later Exorcist movies. Mamiya definitely could be otherwise cast as the devil, talking to people and getting them to commit murder, while not doing so himself. Just out there, corrupting people. And eventually drives Takabe to the ultimate end, but corrupting him totally as he does so. From that perspective, this could easily fit into that series. Just humans coming up against something that exposes their "true selves"(*), and goes "you be like that."

(*) Given this is a horror movie, you can guess what is their "true selves" is.

Good movie, but it's not a happy one.

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Imageniry

Let end the year with some anime!

I recall at least one other movie about imaginary friends, but I think there were two, but I don't recall them being good... this one is better. Not great, but better. Rather than focus on the person imagining, this follows the imaginee, and the world they are in where they see other imaginary friends and help kids and such. However, how Rudger gets here is because his imanginer is in an accident due to a person eating imaginaries, so he must find a way back, if he can, and if he can avoid being eaten.

Fun is nearly the word, what with child in danger and such, but this isn't downbeat. It's intended to get at the heartstrings and is effective at that. That said, be prepared to be in the right mood to see this, as I can see people bouncing off this hard if they aren't.

It is on Netflix, but be careful of how much you enjoy subtitles with everything subs including "wind noises" and "exciting music."

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