February 12, 2022 “Those Who Walk Away” (*1/2 out of four) was a maddening horror melodrama about a young man (Booboo Stewart) who meets a woman (Scarlett Sperduto) on a dating app and agrees to go back to her house but soon realizes all-too-late she is a nutjob who imprisons him in her house and he has to do everything he can to preserve his sanity while he tries to escape. It’s much easier to simply escape the film instead. Creepy at first but soon sputters to a halt and becomes unbearably tedious and pretentious. Viewers would best take a cue and “walk away” from this one. Continue reading →
February 10, 2022 “60 Seconds To Live” (0 stars out of four) was an unwatchable freak show for masochists and prospective serial-killers only which basically consists of a series of unrelated 60-second clips of people being killed in meaningless and gruesome ways. Don’t look for any more plot than that or anything else either. Brought to you by the same studio that made “60 Seconds To Die” and “60 Seconds To Sleep” but this literally looks like a collection of somebody’s bad cell-phone videos. A mind-numbing ripoff of “Faces Of Death” but at least that movie had some style and craft. Avoid like COVID. Continue reading →
February 10, 2022 “The Tiger Rising” (** out of four) was a saccharine adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s children story about a young outcast (Christian Convery) who forms a friendship with a new female student (Madalen Mills) and they both form a bond with a caged tiger in the middle of the woods who helps them to escape from the trouble of their own turbulent home lives. Best performance in the movie is by the tiger itself but he’s on screen for only a precious few minutes; Dennis Quaid and Queen Latifah are wasted in nondescript supporting roles. Only the ending achieves any genuine emotion. Young kids may like it anyway. Continue reading →
February 9, 2022 “Alone With You” (*1/2 out of four) was a tedious, talky horror psychodrama about a young woman (Emily Bennett) who starts to mentally unravel as she prepares for a visit from her girlfriend and starts to encounter voices and hallucinations but are they real or is she losing her mind? Umpteenth derivation of “The Shining” may make the viewers want to seek mental health treatment by the time this is over. Bennett is mostly the whole show here and also co-wrote and co-directed this but it’s awfully self-indulgent and unpleasant. Continue reading →
February 8, 2022 “The Long Night” (*1/2 out of four) was a grueling horror melodrama about a young couple (Scout Taylor Compton and Nolan Gerard Funk) off on a weekend getaway which takes a nightmarish turn when a maniacal cult and their satanical leader (Deborah Kara Unger) descend on their cabin. Result is such a brazen knockoff of “The Strangers” that it’s strange they didn’t just call this a remake or a sequel but either way it’s monotonous and dumb. Compton and Funk previously starred together in “Triple Dog” but this reunion for them is a real dog. Continue reading →
February 8, 2022 “Moonfall” (** out of four) was a half-baked sci/fi action thriller about a mysterious force which knocks the moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling forward at a relentless pace on a crash course towards Earth and only a group of astronauts (Patrick Murphy, Halle Berry, John Bradley) can stop it. Some spectacular visual effects and set pieces can’t stop this from ringing hollow as it seems like a reheated rehash of director Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” and “2012” and also “Armageddon.” Berry is unusually weak here and most of the characters are pretty one-note. Watch “Moonraker” again instead. Continue reading →
February 5, 2022 “Catwoman: Hunted” (** out of four) was an interchangeable animated feature about Catwoman (voiced by Elizabeth Gillies) and her attempts to steal a priceless jewel but this puts her in the crossfire of numerous villains (voiced by Jonathan Banks, Zehra Fazal, and others), interpol, and Batwoman (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) and she has to outsmart all of them to keep the jewel and stay alive. Lots of colorful animation and requisite amount of chases and action help to keep it watchable but still overall feels thirdhand and ordinary. Worth it for DC and comic die-hards but not worth “hunting” for to most audiences. Continue reading →
February 5, 2022 “Werewolf Castle” (** out of four) was a pretty generic medieval melodrama about a village boy (Peter Lofsgard) who goes along with a fearless group of knights (Greg Draven, Reece Connolly, and others) to end a werewolf invasion that threatens all of them but they find that it’s going to be a bloody fight to the death. Hardly the worst of its ilk but gory and one-note. At least it’s relatively brief at only an hour-and-a-half but it still runs out of energy pretty early. Continue reading →
February 5, 2022 “A Violent Man” (** out of four) was a grim and unaffecting melodrama about a violent prisoner (Craig Fairbrass) imprisoned for murder who struggles for personal redemption while acclimating with his new cell-mate (Stephen Odubola) and a new daughter (Zoe Tapper) who he never met. Doesn’t connect emotionally, despite good performances and production, and goes flat after a while simply because it doesn’t have much story to tell. Fairbrass does what he can with a one-note role but he was far more terrifying and vivid in 1993’s “Cliffhanger” nearly 30 years ago. Continue reading →
February 5, 2022 “Ghosts Of The Ozarks” (*1/2 out of four) was a drably done horror story set after the Civil War in which a young doctor (Thomas Hobson) is summoned to a remote town named Ozarks but he soon finds that this town is not all that it appears and is permeated with evil and supernatural forces that threaten them all. No suspense, scares, thrills, and while we’re talking about it no real entertainment value either; film finally starts to come alive towards the end but it’s too late by that point. Hobson’s sincere performance is wasted. Continue reading →
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