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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