Burt and a bunch of older character actors (including, briefly, Paul Bartel!) bring their A-games to a basic-cable paycheck gig, and thus what should be a bloated episode of Silk Stalkings gains a strange level of gravity. Screenplay is still pretty stupid, though.
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Things 1989
Does to cinema what Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives does to rock music: smashes it down to the foundation, then covers the rubble in blood and shit and substance abuse. Took about half the film, but I found my way onto its impossible wavelength, and to float along with it is pretty satisfying.
Why do I feel like I'm gonna watch this a few more times, am I about to get Things-pilled
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Amityville Toybox 2016
Starts out fairly promising, and I give it credit for being one of the very few latter-day Amityville things to take influence from Amityville II: The Possession. But while the build works, the release is a real blase wet fart, just a hangdog dude wandering around with a rifle shooting various characters so that most of the carnage can be offscreen/after-the-fact. Then, after it hits its natural endpoint, there's still somehow ten more minutes of footage tacked on that appears…
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Righting Wrongs 1986
Relentless, exhausting and bleak as fuck... also, a really good time at the movies. Both things can be true!
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Fear of Fiction 2000
Big fat no to this obnoxious, tic-ridden road dramedy filled with cheap quirk and cheaper drama.
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Nabonga 1944
"It's briefly interesting that erstwhile Tarzan Crabbe finds himself on the other side of the white-jungle-master equation this time, the macho Jane to Doreen's nature girl. It's also briefly interesting that Doreen is played, in her screen debut, by June London, looking her for all the world like a budget Jane Russell. (Everyone has to start somewhere.) The gorilla - named not Nabonga but Samson - gets shunted into the role of protector, a faux father figure replacing the scoundrel…
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The Pledge 1981
look at my corpse / my corpse is amazing / give it a lick / mmm, it tastes just like pagan!
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Sign of Aquarius 1970
"They had to have known. Ghetto Freaks was shot and initially released under the title Sign of Aquarius, an obvious reference to the meteorically successful Hair - indeed, producer/co-writer John Pappas openly referenced Hair and Woodstock as key works that opened the door for his film when interviewed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in January of 1970. He also name-drops Easy Rider, which given how Ghetto Freaks ends seems instructive in more than just proof of the youth box office.…