Letterboxd — Your life in film

The specs on Orange County are pretty promising: Jack Black and Colin Hanks fronting a stacked cast of seasoned professional funny people, script from Mike White, and directed by Zero Effect's Jake Kasdan.

It ends up being fairly diverting comedy, but it never quite builds up enough momentum to be anything more. It also brings diminishing returns, getting less and less clever and more and more predictable as time passes.

Mama could have been a much better film than it is. It has an interesting story, it's just executed in a way that belittles the impact it could have had. And, because this is a horror movie made recently, of course it completely falls apart at the end.

Reminded me a little bit of Sinister, in that way.

I didn't hate The Great Gatsby, and I didn't really like it either. It didn't need to be in 3D - though it looks nice enough - and it features a lot of actors I very much enjoy putting in solid work. I felt like the early scenes didn't fit together the way they should have, and that the over-the-top Baz-ness of it all betrayed the depth of the source material. I also found the anachronistic use of music to be off-kilter in a few scenes.

The Great Gatsby was basically a thing that happened in front of me for two and a half hours.

Puns galore in this early 90s Universal slasher effort that benefits from a go-for-broke performance in the titular role and just the right amount of cartoonish direction - dig that "from the mouth" shot. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a lot more fun than it has any right to be.

I had some minor issues with Iron Man 3 - mostly that the story is treated as fairly featherweight while still feeling overcrowded, leaving little to really 'latch on' to at times. I also had a few problems with The Mandarin. Otherwise the action was top-notch and exhilarating - every major action scene had me wondering how they would top it with the next... and then Shane Black would do just that.

What a ridiculously terrible and hilarious movie. Featuring Pauly Shore in one of his earlier roles.

Ted Nicolaou directs this silly and entertaining creature feature goof for Charles Band's Empire Pictures. Gerrit Graham, Diane Franklin, Jon Gries and Jennifer Richards all put in gloriously unhinged cartoon-inspired performances, spitting out intentionally cheese-ball dialogue and one-liners.

Terrorvision seems to work solely because of how committed everyone - Ted Nicolaou included - is to the material. It also has a pretty wicked sense of humour. There's a fair amount of sincerity and love of the genre beneath all the lame gags and neon-lighting. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Terrorvision held up over the years.

Ouch - punishment flick for the See You Next Wednesday podcast.

This movie was the fucking worst. Horribly unfunny, stuffed to the gills with useless plotting devices, tired comedy tropes, not-so-subtle racism, terrible messages, and stupid-as-fuck gross-out humor. Worst of all, it pretends like it has some sort of emotional depth, despite not having earned a single iota of it.

Ouch, indeed.

Toronto screening with Paul Schrader in attendance. Great to see on the big screen, unsurprisingly still an incredible film experience. Albert Brooks kills me every time in this, he's so great even when he is just hiding behind a pillar in the background.

I don't really know how to put Upstream Color into words, but I know that I've been thinking about it a lot since I saw it - and that I'm looking forward to watching it again and seeing how it holds up upon repeat viewing.

The definitive counterculture / road trip / motorcycle classic.