Three Films Make A Post: A simple trip to Mars will become the journey of a lifetime

Kung Fu Elliot (2014): Depending on one’s position this film about Newfoundland’s very own self-made action hero and delusional dreamer turned manipulative asshole is either a pretty dull mockumentary (for once, I like the this term for a movie), or a documentary made by filmmakers who are either manipulative sociopaths themselves or completely incompetent. The filmmakers seem to insist on this being an actual documentary, which makes them look terrible: either, they begin a documentary with no research whatsoever on a subject, or they know things they only disclose to some of their subjects later own for maximum cinematic impact while egging on a guy who certainly is a manipulative liar but also psychologically not well at all, only to turn on him with the most hypocritical moral outrage imaginable.

If I had made this, I’d insist on it just being a very dull fake variant on American Movie, but if people insist on looking bad, who am I to disagree?

The Housemaid aka Hanyo (1960): I’m rather less happy I didn’t find much to connect with in Kim Ki-young’s classic of South Korean cinema. This is, after all a highly influential film on many of my favourite filmmakers from the country. Sometimes, I can appreciate the subversiveness of the film, and nod sagely at its social criticism, but for much of the running time, I found myself appalled at the melodramatic gyrations of plot and characters, none of which ever rang true to me even in the heightened realm of the emotional eleven this takes place in.

On an abstract level, Kim’s filmmaking is clearly stylistically very interesting indeed, but at this point in my movie watching career not in a way that works for me.

Cocaine Bear (2023): Then there’s this thing, a movie about a cocaine snorting serial killing bear that somehow manages to contain more continuity problems and gaffes than any film not shot in a backyard has any right to have. Also there and accounted for are gratingly unfunny humour, acting that’s all over the place and a script that’s trite, in love with an intelligence that’s never actually on display, and full of amateurish pacing problems.

From time to time, director Elizabeth Banks stumbles upon a cool gore gag or two, or manages to get a decent character note out of a cast – Keri Russell, Ray Liotta in his final role, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and so on – that could and should do so much more. Of course, as weirdly as this thing is edited, I’m not convinced coherent and great performances haven’t been left on the cutting room floor.

Three Films Make A Post: Shocking beyond belief

La revanche des mortes vivantes aka The Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1987): I do have a high tolerance for backyard-made horror nonsense, but this French attempt at a movie directed by Pierre B. Reinhard (who mostly had a career in porn, though you wouldn’t notice him actually having ten years of experience as a director of anything when this was shot if I didn’t tell you) does stretch my patience thin. Perhaps it’s the fault of its high concept of randomly mashing softcore porn and supposedly gory horror together, shifting genre codes badly and at the worst possible moment. Or it maybe the non-acting, or the usually static camera. Or how un-erotic the softcore sequences, and how bland and boring the horror bits are? Or maybe, it’s a combination of all these factors that turns the film into a joyless slog. In any case, this is so bad it’s bad.

El segundo nombre aka Second Name (2002): I have an equally high tolerance for slow movies, and do enjoy the investigative aspects of horror quite a bit, but Paco Plaza’s adaptation of one of the great Ramsey Campbell’s lesser novels does make a it desperately hard to connect to it. There’s slow movies, and then there’s needlessly static ones like this, seemingly hell-bent on slowing what is already a slow plot to a crawl for no good reason whatsoever. Certainly, there’s little mood-building going on in any of the many overlong scenes, and what’s of import for plot and characters could be much more economically told in about half the time. The characters have little dimension either, and – as if to make up for it – everyone insists on a particularly stiff and ponderous acting style, perhaps to slow things down even more. This does leave a viewer with copious time to find fault with the preposterous conspiracy theory at the film’s core; while there’s little here that carries any of the thematic dimensions of the novel.

Brightburn (2019): Director David Yarovesky’s Brightburn promises to tell an inversion of the origin story of Superman in which he doesn’t don a costume and becomes the best person on the planet, but where the onset of puberty awakens the evil psychopath in him. He does make himself a costume at least. The film keeps its promise admirably, featuring a good cast (Jackson A. Dunn does creepy very well indeed), good effects and a well-paced script, so it is an enjoyable film if you want a bit of evil kid supervillain action.


However, that’s really all there is to it, so if a viewer imagines the film to actually comment on superheroes or Superman in particular, or do anything at all but presenting its high concept with a high level of craftsmanship, they are a bit out of luck, for there’s really no ambition at all towards having any thoughts whatsoever in the film. In fact, most contemporary superhero movies have quite a bit more going on under their hoods than this riff on them.