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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