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HALLOWEEN HAVOC 2021


RIPPA

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8 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Imagine my delight to learn that JT couldn't spell Steven Kostanski's name correctly.

I figured you'd edit it for me.  Kostanski's last name always has a red line underneath it whether you spell it correctly or not. 

Edited by J.T.
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Speaking of which....

I am missing two reviews not counting my own but I am doing that and two bonus reviews at the same time (this wasn't the smartest strategy).

I am in New York for the weekend so most likely I will post tomorrow and then finish up early next week. I want to be done before heading back to work on Wednesday.

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I still haven't watched mine but I have a new baby and this petition for certiorari is killing me and my daughter just showed up cause her husband is getting deployed and my son is really trying to get me to help him on his next TWO novels that he apparently wants to write both at the same time and the Astros are in the motherfucking World Series and we just had covid for a month so I'm working on it

Lawful Jr. wrote his review!  Does that count for anything?

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Great review J.T.

One of the things that I really loved about this is how almost every single character is solidly an irredeemable bad person.  And their choices reflect that.  Like how Mimi never bothered to ask PG to change Alistair back.  Or ask that PG not destroy the world.  Even Pandora, the angel sent to stop PG kills a random human.  I'm gonna go play crazy ball with the kids.

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27 minutes ago, Lawful Metal said:

Great review J.T.

One of the things that I really loved about this is how almost every single character is solidly an irredeemable bad person.  And their choices reflect that.  Like how Mimi never bothered to ask PG to change Alistair back.  Or ask that PG not destroy the world.  Even Pandora, the angel sent to stop PG kills a random human. 

It is awesome that PG is still a violently psychotic world ender even after learning the value of friendship from Mimi...  which totally makes sense given that Mimi is an adorable child but a horrible human being.

But is Mimi really that bad?  If I had PG at my beck and call when I was a kid, there probably would've been just as many exploded kids in my neighborhood.  The punishment doled out by child who feels wronged is never proportionate to the offense.  Mimi's abuse of power is one of the most human things that happens in this movie.

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11 minutes ago, Lawful Metal said:

I mean, Mimi treated Luke pretty badly. 

If I judged Mimi harshly, I'd be a hypocrite.   I loved my brother and sister dearly when I was a kid, but I also attempted to kill them at least three times a week.

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SCREAM is on. The OG. I can't tell you how much I love this movie. Earnestly, unironically. It has everything I love about 90's teen movies;

 

Pretty people in their late 20's pretending to be high schoolers.

Slick, tight, well written script from the Tennessee Williams of the WB Network Kevin Williamson.

Wes Craven at the helm.

One of the great killer reveals of all time.

It also features one of the great opening scenes of all time, turning the genre on it's ear almost immediately. 

And it has Neve Campbell. 90's Drew LOVED Neve Campbell. 

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8 hours ago, just drew said:

SCREAM is on. The OG. I can't tell you how much I love this movie. Earnestly, unironically. It has everything I love about 90's teen movies;

 

Pretty people in their late 20's pretending to be high schoolers.

Slick, tight, well written script from the Tennessee Williams of the WB Network Kevin Williamson.

Wes Craven at the helm.

One of the great killer reveals of all time.

It also features one of the great opening scenes of all time, turning the genre on it's ear almost immediately. 

And it has Neve Campbell. 90's Drew LOVED Neve Campbell. 

My wife had never seen this one, so I decided to sign up for the trial of AMC+ and we watched it a couple of days ago.

The film was better than I remembered and my wife liked it also.

The only gripe I have is with the AMC+ service.

The film had the commercial break fadeouts like they would have on AMC.

It was jarring at times to have something happen onscreen and then a fadeout where the commercial would have been.

The print of the film didn't seem cut. (I can't truly remember as I haven't seen it in 25 years.)

Probably going to delve into the sequels to get caught up before the new one.

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17 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Fuck it, review it! We take extras. 

i passed out 5 minutes after making that post. ?  from memory:

if you think of it as not a horror movie, but as a western, it is much easier to appreciate. the plot is ridiculous. the special effects are atrocious. the giant bunnies look like the least threatening thing known to mankind. the acting is acceptable, but nothing resembling what i would call "great". i have no recollection of the music, which leads to be believe that it's virtually non-existent. All of that being said, this movie holds a special place in my heart and i love it. 

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Literally just finished mine and sending it now. Really sorry for the 11th hour deal. I get some work as an actor and this month I suddenly found myself reading for a very influential casting agent. Cue everything else going on the back burner while I alternated between preparing my lines and shitting myself in terror.

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BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (Peter Strickland, 2012)

SELECTED BY RIPPA

Berberian Sound Studio made the Best of the 2010s list and I remembered folks talking about then when I stumbled across it via Prime. It was different enough from the stuff folks were picking. Plus, Toby Jones.

REVIEWED BY LAWFUL JR.

“Listen to the sounds.” 

-The Fireman, Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) 

Berberian  Sound  Studio  is  a  2012  film  set  in  the  1970s  directed  by  Peter  Strickland  starring  Toby  Jones. 

It’s  about  a  British  sound  technician  brought  to  work  on  a  gruesome  horror  Satini  film.    His  nightmarish  task  slowly  takes  over  his  psyche,  driving him  to confront  his own  past. 

First  and  foremost  Berberian  Sound  Studio’s  sound  design  is  incredible  and  it’s  first  30  minutes  are  perfect.  Building  an  indescribable  atmosphere with  just sound  design  alone,  but  then  the  film  continued. 

I  was  very  excited  for  how  they  were  going  to  use  this  atmosphere  they  built  for  the  last  30  minutes,  or  even  build  upon  the  atmosphere  even more but,  neither  of  those  things  happened.  They  spent  another  30  minutes  doing  exactly  what  the  first  30  minutes  did,  and  in  doing  so  not  only did it lose  my  investment  but  even  the  sound  design  lost  it’s  magic.  The  first  30  minutes  built  the  groundwork  for  a  perfect  atmosphere  but  then, the  next  30 minutes  just  built  more  groundwork.

The  last  30  minutes  are  more  of  the  same  with  some  semblance  of  an  incredible plot  twist  in  there  somewhere,  it  keeps  on  showing  these  scenes that would  make  the  film  truly  great  if  it  lingered  on  them  instead  of  just  immediately  going  back  to  more  of  what  we’ve  seen  this  film  already  do,  or  if  they  felt  like  they  mattered,  or  if  I  was  INVESTED,  but  by  already  having  my  investment  lost  I  just  didn’t  care  that 

Spoiler

the  film  he  was  doing the  sound  for  was  all  of  his  regrets  in  life. 

And  that’s  not  even  my  main  problem  with  this  film,  my  main  problem  is  that  it  relies  too  heavily  on  atmosphere.  Now  don’t  get  me  wrong  I love me  a film  that  is  all  style  and  no  substance  but,  because  I  do  not  care  about  Gilderoy  at  all  AND  I  no  longer  was  interested  in  the  atmosphere because of reasons  I  have  already  discussed,  the [spoiler] plot  twist  and  the  ending  doesn't  matter  to  me  for  those  reasons.

Overall  Berberian  Sound  Studio  is  a  film  with  incredible  sound  design  and  an  masterpiece  of  a  first  30  minutes  but,  ultimately  fails  to  use  these  to make the  film  great  in  its  entirety.

I’d  give  a  5/10

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And the symmetry

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017)

SELECTED BY LAWFUL JR

Note from Rippa - I should explain here for the folks who haven't figure it out yet, Lawful Jr is @Lawful Metal's 15 year old son. 

REVIEWED BY RIPPA

What defines Horror is also a topic of conversation. For some (many?) – Horror needs to have some over the top Bogey Man like a Freddy or a Jason or thing that goes bump in the night. Maybe it is rivers of blood flowing down a hotel hallway. Or a shower. Or a staircase… a god damn set of stairs that I walked down FAR too often, sometimes in the snow. Yeah… that last one is Horror. Fuck those stairs.

However, if you narrow your definition that much you end up ignoring the things that really are Horror. The things that stick in your brain long after you finish watching the movie. The things you can’t unsee. @Ultimo Necrosomewhat assigned a decent way to describe these things. The things that make you “wince”.

This is my long-winded roundabout way of saying that concept of The Killing of a Sacred Deer (directed by Yorgos Lanthimos) falls deeply into this “second” definition. It isn’t a happy movie. I mean a Teenage Damien wannabe seeking revenge on a family because drunkey Husband/Dad Steven (Colin Farrell) kills Nise Damien’s – okay fine, his name is Martin – Dad during a botched surgery should have a lot of room to work with.

Okay – I guess I should hop in here to explain that movie’s title “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” comes from Greek mythology (naturally since we are talking a movie written and directed by Lanthimos) where depending on what version you stumble across Agamemnon killed a sacred deer and infuriated Artemis said, well the only way you are getting home is if you sacrifice your daughter Iphigenia. (There are some versions that say Artemis accepted the killing of a sacred deer instead of Iphigenia but for what this movie goes for – that doesn’t work.) So yes – it is one of those things that no one knows about without Googling and the three people who do get the reference act all smug about it. Oh sorry… started ranting.

Again, the concept really kinda works. So much should have made me "winch" but, for me, the performances really let things down.

There are no fucking likeable people in this movie and I tend to really dislike movies where I don’t want to back someone, anyone. This is why I was totally fine with the Witch doing her thing in Blair Witch Project.

Barry Keoghan as Martin has such a punchable face. God I was totally fine with Steven beating his ass. I am glad his Dad died. And TWO different Murphy family members wanted to bang him. I mean I understand it from Nicole Kidman but dammit I thought Raffey Cassidy had more sense. I mean it’s like you took Miles Teller and gave him a fat lip and stupider haircut. Stupid everything.

If you had just told about the character of Anna – someone who apparently wants to bone anything that moves while trying to always distance herself from the actions of her family – I would have definitely said Nicole Kidman was playing her. And what do you know. 

This is where I state the biggest reason I didn’t like this movie and how the board basically ruined it for me before it began. KoaSD snuck on the back end of the Best Movies of 2010s poll. In doing my post for it – I discovered a lot of people mocking Kidman’s attempt at an accent. So that was already perculating in my brain. Then I found this from @Contentious C

Quote

“Or maybe Nicole Kidman just kinda sucks. In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, she flubs a scientific term *SO BADLY*. Any enzyme often ends in -ase, pronounced "aze". She said "transaminases" (trans-am-in-azes) like 'trans-a-men-a-seas', because it was apparently too difficult to look it the fuck up first. I didn't even recognize it, except for the subtitling that made it quite obvious what the intent was.”

I COULDN’T FUCKING UNHEAR THIS.

I know I am probably in the minority, but I was too irritated to be disturbed when watching this. Maybe this should have had a Freddy or Jason in it.

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I am SO SO SO HAPPY that my 14+ years of scientific training and job time has meant that someone, somewhere, has learned infinitesimally more about science than they might have otherwise, even if totally by accident and totally outside the realm of the work I do, because Flying Spaghetti Monster knows everyone (besides my committee) who read my Ph.D. work did not understand a fucking thing I was saying to them. 

How's that for a horror movie idea: spend your whole life - or even 4.5 years - working on something and people interpret it the wrong way, forever? 

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