Tag Archives: quick reviews

Mar 9 2024

Mel’s 10 Things About… Dune part 2

Dune part 2 (2024)
Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Rampling
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Dune2

  1. There is a ridiculous amount of eye candy in this film, just to get that out of the way. Even Austin Butler, under all that Harkonnen makeup, is still beautiful.
  2. The film looks beautiful. The cinematography is insane. The makeup, the costumes, the visuals, all breathtaking.
  3. The acting is all great, as expected after seeing the first film. Zendaya does a surprisingly good job, and Austin Butler is great as the psychotic Feyd-Rautha.
  4. The fight choreographies are insane. I’m not sure how much the actors did themselves, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
  5. I heard from someone who’s read the books that there are some key things that are different, but as someone who has not read the whole book (I’ve only read about a fifth of it, then I pooped out), the story felt fluid and complete.
  6. The score was, to use an epic word, bombastic. Less so than the first film, but I think that’s a good thing. The score was a little overpowering in part 1 (but that’s literally the only thing that I have to say bad about it).
  7. The film ended a bit abruptly. Things were a bit long in the tooth (not in a bad way) for most of the film, then all of a sudden, it was over. The film is 2 hours and 46 minutes long, already a good chunk of time, but I really could have used a little extra time to flesh it out some more.
  8. Slight spoiler: I think I saw a small mistake near the end of the film. Paul gets stabbed in what I see as his side, but then he pulls the blade from his shoulder. Did I see it wrong, or was that an actual mistake?
  9. I liked Jessica’s character a lot less in this film, but I’m thinking that that’s how you’re supposed to feel.
  10. All in all, I did really love this film. It was a wonderful film. I saw it in a cinema with a screen that wrapped three quarters around the room, and I’d never experienced that before. It was great. Do I reccomend it? If you liked the first one, then definitely. If the first one left you cold, then you probably won’t like this one either.

This film is currently still only in cinemas, but I’m sure it’ll come to streaming soon. Enjoy! I certainly did!

M.

Jan 29 2024

Mel’s 5 Second Review: Talk to Me

Talk to Me (2022)
Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Miranda Otto, Joe Bird, Zoe Terakes, and Cookie the Dog
Directed by: Danny and Michael Philippou

Talk to Me

So I’ve been sitting here staring blankly at the screen for about half an hour. That’s never a good sign. I had heard such good things about this film from my Horror Movies Addicts Facebook page, so I decided to give it a go. I should have known better, I really should have.

Mia and Jade hear about a group of kids doing “possession parties” using an embalmed hand. They go and soon see that it’s very real. But soon Mia begins seeing things even when not in contact with the hand, and her life begins to spiral.

First the good, I suppose. It looked real nice. The sets, makeup, and cinematography were all on point. It had some good ideas, I’ve never seen a possession film quite like this one, so there’s that. The acting was mostly good, but that leads us into the not so good as well. The characters are mostly so thoroughly unlikable that it’s really hard to care if anything happens to them. I know they’re teenagers, and teens are hard to like anyways sometimes, but surely they’re not all the same? And the mom. As much as I like Miranda Otto, I could not like her here, nor get behind her parenting. I mean really.

I knew I was in for something I wouldn’t like as soon as I saw the second (of about a million, my goodness) production company logo: A24. That made movies like Hereditary, which I also hated. Such pretentious bullshit. But all in all, it had the worst sin any movie can have, not just horror: It was boring. I kept on fighting the urge to look at my phone the whole time, and that’s definitely not good.

I give it a 4/10. Watch only if you’re a big fan of A24 stuff. You’re allowed :-p

M.

Nov 17 2023

Mel’s 5 Second Review: The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Woody Norman, Chris Walley, Stefan Kapicic, Jon Jon Briones, Martin Furulund, Nikolai Nikolaeff, and Javier Botet
Directed by: André Øvredal

Demeter

Ok, so I went into this not knowing what to expect. I can tell you what I was hoping for though. A genuinely scary vampire film. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the various tame Dracula‘s, or even the Twilight‘s, but I wanted to be scared this time. And let me tell you, this film is almost there. Almost. The Nosferatu-esque makeup is genuinely creepy, and it moves with the creep factor that only Javier Botet (or Doug Jones, for that matter, but it’s Botet in this film) can bring. It does a good job of making the story feel claustrophobic and atmospheric. Having the whole film take place on a ship might’ve been risky, especially since it runs at 2 hours, but I was never bored. I was actually nervous for the characters, which is probably because they do a good job of setting them up, and the actors do an excellent job of portraying them.

Despite all this, the ultimate scare factor just wasn’t there. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, maybe I’ve just seen so many horror films that they leave me cold in the scares department. Or maybe it was that the kills were mostly done with cgi. The blood just doesn’t fall right when it’s not really there. I miss practical effects, but cgi can be a good companion to it when used sparingly. Unfortunately, it was not used sparingly in this film. I was still horrified at the burning scenes, but I think that has more to do with me being inherently afraid of fire than of it looking good. When makeup was really used, it was done very well, so why didn’t they… ah, never mind. Cgi is the thing now, I guess I should just get used to it.

In the end, though, I did quite enjoy the film, and would recommend it to anyone who loves vampire films like I do (Marilyn Manson’s If I Was Your Vampire popped up quite randomly on my Spotify as I write this, I’m amused). I give it a very respectable 7.5/10. 

M.

This film is available for rent or buy on YouTube and Amazon Prime.

Apr 30 2023

Mel’s 5 Second Review: Smile

Smile (2022)
Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner, Jessie T Usher, Robin Weigert, Gillian Zinser, Jack Sochet, Rob Morgan, Caitlin Stasey, and Kal Penn
Directed by: Parker Finn

smile

Have you seen It Follows? Have you seen The Ring? Then you’ve seen Smile.

Rose Cotter is a seemingly workaholic therapist in an emergency mental hospital. Once day she gets a severely disturbed young lady as a patient who tells Rose that something is following her, smiling at her, telling her she’s going to die. Then she kills herself right in front of Rose, while smiling. From that point on, Rose herself becomes convinced that whatever had been following her patient is now following her.

I can’t tell you the amount of times I almost turned this film off. After a long spell of nothing happening. After the 20th jump-scare. But I decided to go through to the end, and while it did slowly get a bit better, I still feel like I wasted my time. Speaking of time, the film was just shy of 2 hours long, but to me, it felt like I was watching it for 6 hours. 30 minutes could have easily been shaved off this thing to make it more palatable. 

SPOILERS INCOMING

My biggest problem with this was probably the acting. Most of it was ok, but the lead was atrocious. And if I’d played a drinking game for every time she licked her lips, I’d have gotten alcohol poisoning. There’s also the famous suspension of disbelief, which already needs to be high for a horror movie, but come on. A string 20 people long of person witnesses suicide-person commits suicide in front of someone-that person commits suicide in front of someone-that person commits… you get my point. And no one noticed? No cops, no doctors, no reporters, no one? I also knew what was going to happen in the end, way before it happened. I had a thought that maybe she was going to defeat it by killing herself while she was alone, but then I thought, nah, this is a “bad guy wins” kinda film. And what do you know, I was right. And as a metaphor for childhood trauma, btw, having the bad guy win just says you can’t ever get over trauma and it’ll destroy you.

So. I didn’t absolutely hate it, but I didn’t really like it either. Which is a shame, cause it had the beginnings of a good idea. I’ll give it a 4.5/10, that little extra going to Kyle Gallner, who I’ve liked in everything I’ve seen him in.

M.

This film is available for rent and purchase on YouTube and Amazon Prime.

Nov 8 2022

Mel’s 5 Second Review: Barbarian

Barbarian (2022)
Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Jaymes Butler, Richard Brake, and Matthew Patrick Davis
Directed by: Zach Cregger

Barbarian

So, I hadn’t really planned on watching this one. I’d heard of it, seen it mentioned a few times in my Facebook horror groups, but I didn’t really know what it was about, save the vague synopsis of the beginning of the film. But my mom started it last night (then walked away cause she doesn’t do horror), so I figured I may as well. And boy, what a ride.

Tess gets to the Airbnb she rented just to find out another person has also been booked for the same time. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night. She soon finds out that may not have been the best idea, since the house is not what it seems.

I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this film. Don’t get me wrong, it was very well done. Everything was great. Acting, atmosphere, makeup, all pretty stellar. But it was off-the-wall bonkers. And pretty gory, which I’m not a huge fan of. It’s a little slow in the beginning, but definitely not a slog. The characters are engaging, so even when they’re not doing much of anything, it’s still at least mildly interesting to watch them. At least until they do truly idiotic things, which, unfortunately, is a lot of the time. I was watching with my sister and dad, and the main thing that kept coming out of our mouths is “Why would you do that…?” There was also one laugh-out-loud moment that I won’t spoil, but if you’ve seen it, you’ll probably know what I’m talking about (it comes near the end). Now I’m not sure if it was intentionally funny, or if they were trying to be scary. If they were, it didn’t work. There was also the ENORMOUS suspension of disbelief that had to happen to get this story to happen at all. All I’ll say is: all those years. How?? It just doesn’t make sense. All in all, I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. It gets a 7/10 from me.

M.

This film is currently streaming on Disney+

Oct 25 2022

Mel’s 5 Second Review: Grave Encounters

Grave Encounters (2011)
Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Merwin Mondesir, Juan Riedinger, Mackenzie Gray, Ben Wilkinson, and Bob Rathie
Directed by: The Vicious Brothers

Grave-Encounters

So, I generally don’t like found footage films. The blurry, bouncy camera work does nothing for me, except maybe make me slightly nauseous. But every so often I’ll get drawn into watching one, either because I’ve heard nothing but good things, or someone I generally agree with in movie tastes says it’s good. Which is what happened with this one. Darren from Flick Connection recommended it in one of his videos, and I mostly trust his judgement, so I decided to watch it.

For their ghost hunting reality show, a crew lock themselves in an abandoned asylum over night. They’re used to having to make up their own scares. This time they won’t have to.

SPOILERS INCOMING

First the not-so-good. The camera work was bouncy, just the way I don’t like it. They had a few static cams set up around the place, but it was mostly all hand-held. But I knew that going in, so I tried to ignore it and move on. Another down point was one of the characters, TC, was so thoroughly unlikable that it actually took me out of the moment in some places. He was so stereotypical that I just had to cringe sometimes.

Now the good. The rest, really. The story, while nothing new, was good. The acting was mostly good, the characters, save one, were engaging. I like the ambiguity of what happens to the characters. Are they dead? Are they now “patients”? Obviously Matt died, having jumped to his death, but the others? Lance is alive, in a sense, at the end. But we really don’t know what happened to the others, and I kinda like that.

All in all, I liked it. I might even look up the second one to see if it’s as good. I’d definitely recommend this film to anyone who likes found footage films, and/or ghost stories. I give it a solid 8/10.

M.

This film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Aug 5 2022

Mel’s 5 Second Review: The Cursed

The Cursed (2022)
Boyd Holbrook, Kelly Reilly, Alistair Petrie, Amelia Crouch, Max Macintosh, Roxane Duran, Nigel Betts, Stuart Bowman, Tommy Rodger, Aine Rose Daly
Directed by: Sean Ellis

the cursed

First, let me say that the trailer for this film is incredibly misleading. I thought this film was a ghost story. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was nothing of the sort.

After a horrible slaughter of Gypsies, a small late-19th century town in France is plagued by what seems to be animal attacks. A pathologist comes to town to try help, but he seems to have an agenda of his own.

First the good. The film is beautiful. They take full advantage of the French countryside, the costuming is gorgeous, and most of the effects are great. The story is interesting, even if it’s a little basic. (I paused for a long time here, deciding whether I should include spoilers in this review or not. I decided against it.) The acting is quite good. And there were a few things that I’d never seen before in a film of this type, so that was surprising, and nice. The bad? Well, there’s not much, to be honest. The film is a little slow at times, but it never feels like a slog. The creature effects are a little janky at times, but whenever there’s practical effects, they’re great. The beginning was a little gory for my tastes, but they eased up for the rest of the film.

All in all, it was a pretty good film. Probably not one that I’d line up for a rewatch, but still quite good. 7.5/10

M.

This film is currently on Amazon Prime, and available for purchase on YouTube.

Mar 10 2022

Mel’s 5 Second Review: The Conjuring, The Devil Made Me Do It

Conjuring 3The Conjuring, The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ruairi O’Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook, Julian Hilliard, John Noble, Shannon Kook, and Eugenie Bondurant
Directed by: Michael Chaves

This is the third instalment in the wildly popular The Conjuring films. And honestly, it has not lost any of its steam. Or thrills.

After the intense exorcism of young David, Arne invites the demon into himself instead of the boy. Just when things look like they’ve gone back to normal, Arne starts seeing things, which escalates into him killing a man. Enter demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, who convince the defence lawyer to plead innocent due to demonic possession.

“Based on a true story”, and yes, I’m using giant quotations for that. I don’t believe a word of it, but I can’t deny that I love pretty much everything about this film. The love story between Ed and Lorraine is wonderful, even if in real life they were nothing but scam artists. Fans of the other two Conjuring films might find this one a little different, a little slower, but I found it great. All of the acting and effects were stellar, as expected. They did a good job making Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga 50-ish. I couldn’t tell if it was done digitally or with makeup, so job well done. The story was more detective-like, with Ed and Lorraine trying to figure out what happened. My dad actually found the film too slow, enjoying only the beginning and end, but I thought the pacing was just fine. But it’s true that if you don’t like slower films, then I would not reccomend to watch this. All in all, I thought it was bomb, and it gets an almost perfect 9/10 from me.

This film is currently available for rental and buying on YouTube (which is where I buy my films) and Amazon Prime. Enjoy!

M.

Jan 30 2022

Mel’s 5 Second Review: The Seventh Day

The Seventh Day (2021)
Guy Pearce, Vadhir Derbez, Brady Jenness, Stephen Lang, Robin Bartlett, Keith David, and Chris Galust
Directed by: Justin P Lange

A young priest fresh out of seminary school gets paired up with a hardened exorcist to take on the case of a young boy who killed his entire family with an axe.

First, let me say that the acting was all around sketchy, even from Guy Pearce, who looked like he gave no fucks (but that could just be the character), but especially the possessed boy, who was downright cringe-worthy at times. I don’t like to be too hard on child actors, cause it’s a tough gig, but possession films are a hard enough sell without the possessed writhing around like bacon. The younger priest, played by Vadhir Derbez (who I’ve never heard of before), was, to quote another reviewer, “seemingly in a frozen, detached mode of vacancy”. I had a good laugh at that, since it’s pretty true.

What I can say good about it, is it had some good ideas. I was expecting a bland, “just an exorcism movie” kind of film, and while a lot of it is that, there’s just enough different to make it interesting. The makeup effects were pretty well done, I have to admit, all except the “smiles”, which you’ll know what I mean by that if you see it. But I don’t think those were done with makeup anyways, pretty sure those were done with (rather mediocre) CGI. And the end twist (cause every movie’s gotta have a twist!) was actually pretty good, even if I did see it coming. So I give it a 6/10, and would recommend cautiously.

This film is currently streaming on Netflix Canada.
M.

Feb 5 2016

Mel’s 5 Second First Impression: The Shannara Chronicles

The Shannara Chronicles (2016-present)
(Season 1 cast) Austin Butler, Poppy Drayton, Ivana Baquero, Manu Bennett, John Rhys-Davies, Aaron Jakubenko, Daniel MacPherson, Marcus Vanco, Emilia Burns, Brooke Williams, James Remar, Jed Brophy

the-shannara-chronicles

I read about half of the first book in the series more than 12 years ago. I don’t remember much about it, nor do I know why I stopped reading it, since I was really enjoying it. I do remember enough, however, to know that this series takes place in the second generation of books. Wil, our hero, is the son of Shea, the youngster in the first books (of which there are 3, I think). I’ve recently re-bought The Sword of Shannara, and plan to read it soon, which has me wondering how much more of this show I want to watch before I do so. But for now, let’s talk about the first episode, the two-hour pilot, called Chosen.

They certainly packed a lot of info into that 2 hours (or hour and a half, once commercials are removed). There are no less than 5 characters that seem like they’re going to be important, although with already one unexpected death under their belts, it may be that this show is going to be more surprising than anticipated. Which is good. The acting is pretty good all round, if a little melodramatic at times. The effects look pretty stellar so far, the makeups on the demons are great. The only thing I’d have to say about it is that it seems to be the same old story again. There wasn’t much that happened in the show that wasn’t in The Lord of the Rings and other such titles. But, this was only the first episode. I’ll definitely continue watching, and hopefully it’ll grow it’s own two legs to stand on.

M.