123 - The Happy House

    A young couple goes away for the weekend to a bed & breakfast in the middle of nowhere.  The owner is a peculiar woman.
    Oy, this movie is a mess.  I’m not saying it’s bad, because I can imagine this playing really well.  But it’s almost as if the story and script are being played in the wrong medium.
    There are loads of problems.  The cast is mostly unremarkable.  No one does a notable job with their material.  The pacing is terrible.  The script is making an effort to be a bit campy and tongue-in-cheek.  But it never works.  The biggest problem is the ending.  There’s a lack of one.  It doesn’t feel cathartic, which I suppose is intentional.  It’s an effort to subvert the normal tropes of a horror movie, but instead, it just feels like there was no reason to watch it.
    However… I could imagine this working as a stage play.  With a strong cast, and some extra polish on the script, it could be a whole lot of fun in that context.
    I can’t say that I would ever bother to watch this again, or even suggest it to anyone to watch, but it’s an interesting curiosity.

122 - Jug Face

    A backwoods community lives in a relationship with a mysterious force called The Pit.  A girl in the community conceals the Pit’s message that it has chosen her as the next sacrifice, stirring up a variety of problems.
    The cover art for this movie, along with the summary, makes it a hard movie to get excited about.  Plus, it’s made worse by having a lower rating than it deserves.  I understand why, but those people are wrong.
    The story is remarkably simple, but the way it’s handled is what makes it special.  It would be easy to tell this story in a different style, like most religious cult stories, where there’s no reason to believe that the cult has valid beliefs.  In this story, we start off with that impression, but then the story incorporates plenty of evidence that the Pit is actually a legitimate force.  This changes everything.
    Suddenly, the lead’s desire for survival becomes understandable, but ultimately a selfish endeavor.  This doesn’t make her any less likable, either.  There does seem to be a certain unfairness to their situation.  She was born into this community, and she’s helpless against it.  She’s also fighting against the instinct for self-preservation.  If anything, she’s likable because she recognizes the role that she’s played in making things worse for everyone.
    That’s where the movie has made some people unhappy.  The ending is unsatisfying if you started the story with the impression that it should end with the destruction of the cult, or that she should somehow defeat The Pit.  But as the story develops, it becomes clear that that ending doesn’t make sense in this situation.  It’s a little sad, but it accomplishes two things.  First, it twists audience expectations in a different direction.  Second, it communicates an idea about community responsibility for the greater good.
    I’m not saying this is a great movie, but it’s interesting, and I would suggest it for anyone who liked things like The Wicker Man.  It’s an interesting variation on a classic idea.

121 - Dark Touch

    A young girl is moved to another family, and then another, as mysterious forces kill the families she stays with.
    I can’t tell if I should attempt to evaluate this movie.  It’s interesting enough that I was able to keep watching it.  But it’s a frustrating experience.  I was able to piece together the direction the story was going, but there are so many details that are left vague.  It’s hard to feel confident in understanding what the story actually was.
    This probably spoils things a little.  As the story develops, it becomes clear that the girl is telekinetic.  She is responsible for the death of her family, plus a second family.  It’s implied that she has a variety of issues because she was being molested by her original family.  Her killing of the second family is because specific things reminded her of her original family.
    Then we get to her relationship with a bunch of other kids.  I have no idea if she’s actually persuaded them to join her, or if she’s able to hypnotize them or something.  All of this leads to an evocative, but very strange ending.  I can sort of understand her interest in killing the third family, but I have no idea why the other children are involved.
    There are some interesting ideas mixed into the process, but I can’t help but feel like I missed some big, important material.

120 - Welcome to Me

    A woman with some personality disorder issues wins the lottery, and uses those winnings to produce a live talk show starring herself.
    I heard a review of this movie on the Movie Date podcast, and it was mildly interesting.  Netflix picked the movie up, and I decided to give it a try.
    It’s great.  It’s strange, and it’s not entirely predictable.  But it’s sort of beautiful.  The main character describes herself as being diagnosed as borderline personality disorder.  After reading about that, I don’t think she quite fits into that.  She has a variety of compulsive traits, but she doesn’t seem especially angry, except about things that seem reasonable to be angry about.  She’s impulsive in her relationships.
    What is much more compelling is the strange way that she manages to have short episodes of her life re-enacted on her show.  As hokey as the acting is, her reaction to these events shows a level of emotion that is hard to ignore.  It gets easier and easier to feel like she’s a really good person, she just doesn’t have it all together.
    There are comedic elements, but I don’t think I ever felt like it was intended to be a straight comedy.
     (According to some discussion on IMDB, this is actually a pretty good portrayal of borderline personality disorder.)

119 - The Dark Knight Rises

    After Bane takes over Gotham and isolates it from the rest of the country, Batman has to come out of retirement to save the city.
    I’m conflicted about this movie, and that might be what has made it more interesting.  The Dark Knight is generally pretty great, and it’s easy to remember a lot of what happens in it.  My memories of The Dark Knight Rises are more scattered.  I remember shots, certain scenes.  But I have a harder time remembering how the story fits together.  Combined with some of the weaknesses, I find myself much more drawn to watching it more often.
    I still can’t get past the things that bothered me the first time - most particularly, the logistics of a helicopter needing to fly about six miles away in a minute and a half.  It just doesn’t work!
    I think I like some of the quieter elements to the movie.  Catwoman (autocorrect just changed that to “cattleman”) has a fairly quiet arc, but it feels believable, and there’s a sense of dignity to it.  She doesn’t drastically change because of Batman’s actions; she’s more influenced by seeing the destruction that Bane brought.
    I know it’s technically inferior to The Dark Knight, but the flaws are part of what keeps me coming back to it.  Bane actually improves as a villain the more I see it.  He’s got a great balance between the comic book elements and the real-life elements.

118 - The Wrecking Crew

    A documentary about a variety of sessions musicians working during the late 50’s through the mid 70’s.
    I can’t remember when I first heard about the Wrecking Crew, but I’ve been pretty aware of Hal Blaine for some time.  Then I heard about Carol Kaye.
    It isn’t just Phil Spector’s production that made the sound of the era.  There was a quality to the performance that was going on.  These people played on nearly everything, and they did it perfectly.  There’s something unique going on in all of the hits, and they brought a certain amount of personality to the recording.
    As a documentary, it’s not especially good.  There isn’t too much to learn.  It’s interesting to a musician and a fan, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a deeper analysis going on.  Regardless, it’s good to see a more public acknowledgment of these musicians.

117 - Mr. Mom

    After being laid off, a man stays at home while his wife gets a high-paying, demanding job, and he struggles to take care of their kids.
    This was released in 1983, too early for me to remember it if I saw it back then.  But I always remember the poster for it, since it was a pretty big hit, and it stayed at the video store for a long time.  I never wanted to see it.  It seemed like a comedy focusing on “look at this guy struggling to be a homemaker!”  It didn’t seem like that clever a premise.
    So now that I’ve seen it, I have no idea why it was a hit.  There are a few amusing bits, but most of it is pretty bland and predictable.  Michael Keaton doesn’t get much of an opportunity to shine.  The story is a little unbalanced.  It starts off like it will have a stronger focus on the wife’s time at work, then it abandons that for watching Keaton doing a bunch of chores.
    It was written by John Hughes, and his sense of humor shines through.  In particular, the sequence at the supermarket.  There was an unusual scene, which I liked for the creative elements.  The movie seamlessly moves into a fantasy sequence.  It reminded me of The Seven Year Itch.
    There was one joke I actually laughed at.  Keaton is on the phone talking about a soap opera to someone else, and there’s a line about “he had a vasectomy, but it didn’t take.”
    The real weakness of the movie is that it feels very dated, even for the 80s.  If this were a movie from the 50s or 60s, it would probably be pretty brilliantly handled.  It seems antiquated for the 80s.  The fun of flipping gender roles doesn’t seem all that remarkable for that time period.

116 - Ant-Man

    Recently-released convict Scott Lang is recruited by Dr. Henry Pym to help prevent the release of the doctor’s technology, a suit that allows the user to shrink down.
    Like most people, I’ve been a bit skeptical of the viability of Ant-Man as a hero capable of carrying a movie.  After seeing how well Marvel handled Guardians, I think I relaxed a bit.  If anything, I think I like the idea more than seeing another well-known property get a big-budget treatment.
    There’s something nice about this movie, and it’s that I didn’t feel like it needs a sequel.  I’d rather that it didn’t.  It’s fun, it adds more to the Marvel Cinematic mythos, and it’s an enjoyable movie.  It doesn’t have anything special to say, but it did tell an enjoyable story well.
    There is a strange aspect, something that will slip past most viewers, but it might be clear to anyone who has heard of the troubled history this movie had.  There’s a strange imbalance to the movie.  You can tell which aspects were added in at Marvel’s request.  You can tell what elements are Edgar Wrights’.  These tonal shifts are strange, but they actually help keep the movie interesting.  Instead of simply hitting all the beats you expect, it hits those beats in an accent pattern you didn’t expect.
    Despite being a mostly self-contained plot, I found the ties into the larger universe simultaneously a little awkward, but also very rewarding.  The Avengers mansion gets to be used, which makes the ending of Age of Ultron feel more meaningful.  It’s nice to see the Falcon get a little more attention.  Even the wedged-in reference to Spider-Man was pleasing.
    It’s good.  It hit the right spot, it was new enough, but it also did everything I expected it to do well enough.  Personally, I probably liked it a bit better than Guardians.  Probably better than Iron Man 3 and Thor 2.  Given the character, this is a really impressive job.
    On an unrelated note, there was the trailer for Fantastic Four.  It’s hard to express how little enthusiasm I have for that project.

115 - These Final Hours

    As the world is about to end, a guy finds some meaning in his life by helping a young girl locate her family.
    I’m struggling with what to think about this movie.  It held my attention.  There were a few decent ideas.  It’s hard to knock apocalyptic scenarios.  But this one wound up making me feel a little disappointed.  They did a good job with the setting.  There are lots of deserted areas, lots of fires.  Lots of general damage and mayhem.  I particularly liked a long shot of a suburban street where a hanged man is visible dangling from a streetlight.
    But where the movie fails is in making an emotional or philosophical point about the end of the world.  It’s hard to avoid comparing this to Last Night, which made a much more interesting point by showing a variety of reactions, including plenty of people who accepted the end of the world in a quiet resignation.  People who didn’t stop working.  With this one, most of the people fit into two camps - people who want to destroy and commit all the crimes they wanted to, and people who choose to die before being killed.  Then there’s everyone at a huge party.
    I’m not sure what I wanted, but this comes across as a louder, bigger version of Last Night, but also, much more shallow.
    One of the primary differences between them is that this is a violent end to mankind.  A meteorite has hit, and a wave of destruction is taking about twelve hours to make it around to Australia.  Last Night never explains anything about the end, but it does have a firm, specific end point.  We don’t know if it’s violent or just a blinking out, or what.

114 - Creep

    A freelance videographer goes to a job, meeting a peculiar man at an isolated location.  Things start weird, and get weirder.
    I thought that I had read some positive review of this somewhere, but I can’t remember where.  It enjoys a pretty positive reception on Netflix, at least.
    This is remarkably cheap.  I believe it’s mostly shot with a single camera.  There are two cast members, both credited as writers, one of them credited as director as well.  It’s an unusual movie, even as the story is pretty simple.
    I’m not sure what I think about it.  There aren’t many story developments until the second half, and even then, it spins in a circle until the last scene.  The last scene is an effective payoff.
    I guess there is an aspect that makes this movie work well.  We don’t have a clear picture of what one of the characters intends to do.  He’s got strange behavior, and it’s hard to tell what he intends to do.  It’s easy to spend your entire time trying to figure out what he will eventually do.

113 - Dark Summer

    A teenager under house arrest is haunted.  His friends help him try to help him.
    First, I’d like to say a little something about the title of this movie.  It sucks.  It’s a terrible title.  In another month, if you asked me if I’d ever seen a movie called Dark Summer, I would have to consult my records.  I poor title makes is harder to associate the story with it.
    The story is fairly simple.  The guy is haunted.  Weird stuff happens.  The friends help him investigate.  Everything ties up.  I do admire that the movie sticks to mostly a single location and keeps to a very limited cast.  But it also suffers from a few directorial problems.  Notably, the pacing is really slow.  There are lots of long shots that attempt to build tension, but instead just made me bored and allowed my mind to wander.
    There’s a decent twist to the story at the end, but the sluggish buildup made it harder to care about the unexpected reveal.

112 - Advantageous

    In the future, a woman struggles to make opportunity available to her daughter, partly by agreeing to participate in a new procedure, involving moving her consciousness into a new body.
    The is a very low-key, artful, and very interesting sci-fi movie.  It’s cheap, but it hides the budget well.  There are effects shots as needed, and the absence of extras just adds to the feeling of something we don’t quite understand about the future.
    There’s quiet, subtle world-building going on.  There are a lot of details we need to infer from the dialogue.
    The creepiest thing about the movie is that it portrays a pretty realistic scenario.  We are heading toward an existence where jobs - or at least, gainful jobs - will be scarce.  Especially in the US, we are stubborn about the idea of spreading job availability around.  The result is that we wind up with these jobs where even the lowest-skill jobs are going to be filled with wildly over-qualified people.
    While I can’t identify with one of the central relationships - the mother and her daughter - I can identify with the despair that is explored.
    Another really fascinating thing about this is the plethora of female characters.  There are very few male characters.  Most of the primary and secondary characters are female, and even the supporting parts.

111 - Conan the Barbarian

    After his family and village is destroyed as a child, Conan grows up and pursues revenge on the man that orphaned him.
    It’s remarkable that I’ve gone this long without seeing this.  Swordplay was pretty exciting for me as a kid.  I still enjoy a well-choreographed sword fight.  And Arnold is pretty famous for this role.
    It’s a pretty silly movie.  It takes itself seriously, and that’s pretty good.  Otherwise it might wind up like Masters of the Universe.  But it also doesn’t do a good job of making the characters likable.  Conan’s quest for revenge seems strange, partly because we don’t know why his village was raided, and partly because Conan doesn’t seem very likable.  This is made even more puzzling by the strange passivity that the villain has.  He runs a cult (or something) and it’s hard to say that they’re evil.  They seem to keep to themselves.
    The funniest thing is the amount of sexual content in the movie.  There’s a bit of nudity, but there are a few sex scenes, and they’re overly dramatic.
    At a certain point, I realized that this movie was almost exactly like a comic book… just a really shoddy comic.  No real development.  Plenty of action and sex.  Lots of women in weird, skimpy outfits.  It plays out as a male adolescent fantasy, with Arnold taking the women he wants as they purr over him, then using his sword to dispatch a variety of bad guys.
    I noticed one sex scene in particular, where the girl straddles Arnold.  He grasps one of her breasts.  She lays on top of him, he reaches down to grab her butt, they roll over.  The seduction is complete.
    It is what it is.  I think I might have liked it more if I saw it as a kid.  Now it seems laughably dated.  It’s under-written.
    But I do have to say that the set design and props are really well done.

110 - Bulworth

    A senator up for re-election suffers a peculiar breakdown, leading to him hiring a hitman to kill him, along with speaking his mind in public.
    I saw this back about ten years ago.  I liked it then, although not as much as some other political comedies of the period.  Now, this one doesn’t hold up nearly as well.
    The novelty of the story comes from seeing Warren Beatty playing an awkward white senator, deciding to rap things, as well as speak his mind in a blunt way about political issues.  There’s a humor to that.  But the movie has a serious problem with indulging in stereotypes.  Just about every black person in the movie is a stereotype.  There are a few rare moments where they break those molds, but they usually reinforce them.
    There is a strong core to the message, mostly about the negative role that money plays in politics.  This is fine, but it gets muddied by the focus on his behavior.
    This belongs in a family of other political movies - Bob Roberts, Wag the Dog, Primary Colors, all of which use some pretty bleak messages to make a point.  I’ve grown out of these movies, in a strange way.  I still enjoy them, but I don’t think they’re achieving much.  They draw attention to problems, but they don’t actually offer any solutions.  If anything, they reinforce how hopeless real political change is.

109 - Amber Alert

    A few friends are out filming a reality show audition tape, when they happen to notice a car identified in an Amber Alert.  They follow the car, hoping to help the abducted child.
    Ehhhhh… this is hard to explain.  It’s a found-footage, although the setup makes it much more reasonable.  And the nature of their efforts do figure into the story.  Mostly - the gear associated with their setup actually is used in moving the story forward.
    As a movie, this isn’t especially good.  There isn’t much plot, there’s a lot of cross-talk, and everyone is mostly annoying.  But this poor handling actually lends to the authenticity of the picture.  The characters mostly bicker and reiterate the same arguments back and forth for most of the movie.  In some ways, this feels a little like a poor improvisation effort.  In other ways, it seems roughly as bull-headed as people can be.
    While the male lead is fairly cautious and not as interested in getting directly involved in this adventure, the female lead is absurd in how gung-ho she is.  She isn’t just enthusiastic about getting involved… she’s cavalier about doing ridiculously dangerous things.  She grabs the steering wheel from her companion driver.  She exits the car without planning and runs into danger.  These don’t come across as brave or considered actions.  They aren’t urgent situations either.  They would probably have run smoother if she actually explained what she planned to do.
    The result is that the movie comes out feeling kind of sexist, which is an odd thing, since it was directed by a woman, and a man and woman share the writing credit (although the nature of the dialogue suggests that very little was scripted).  This isn’t something I should feel bad about, but I do.  It actually makes me a little uncomfortable when we see stereotypes adhered to, since I know I shouldn’t be thinking this female lead is an idiot.  But she is!  It’s made worse by me finding her a bit attractive - but that might just be the glasses.

108 - A Thousand Cuts

    A horror director is held hostage by a man whose daughter was killed by someone influenced by the director’s movies.
    For a low-budget horror movie, this is pretty well done.  It moves along quickly.  It’s a little shorter than most movies.  It’s mostly in one location (albeit both inside and outside).  Two primary characters, a variety of supporting character that have minimal participation.  Very little effects work.  It’s just a generally well-done cheapie.
    There’s one problem, and it’s a strange one.  There are a few script problems.  They aren’t obvious to most people, and they probably wouldn’t come out while reading it.  The problem is that the main characters repeat certain dialogue.  The lead re-uses a few phrases, and it has a strange effect of feeling like the story is re-treading the same ground it already covered.
    Given the shortness of the movie, it’s hard to feel like this is a big problem.

107 - Les Miserables

    Set against the French Revolution, a convict creates a new life for himself and tries to avoid the hand of the law catching him.
    Cathy’s been a fan of this.  She’s seen it on stage a few times, she listens to the soundtrack.  Getting the Blu-ray was for her.
    I’ve been exposed to a few of the songs.  None of them ever really stuck with me.  The hook for Master of the House is pretty strong, but I’ve always been disappointed with the whole thing.
    The movie is a weird experience.  It’s well shot.  It’s dramatic, great sets, great period look… but it’s hard to get past the singing.  For a story that takes place in the real world, it’s strangely hilarious to see people singing all over the place.
    As a musical, I hate it.  Very few good melodies.  It’s made even worse by the fact that everything is sung.  It isn’t a musical - it’s an opera.  The result is that the material that should be treated as dialogue is instead sung, using terrible, aimless phrases.  This is only drawn into focus more harshly when we get to a decent song.
    The story is, sadly, not much better.  The conflict between the leads seems strangely personal for something that shouldn’t be.  There are romances and minor characters fit into the story, and all of them seem to be given greater weight than they should have.  All of this is set against the revolution, which seems kind of silly.  It would help if the poor uprising seemed to have a reason for standing up, but they just talk.  It might be nice if there was a clearer example of oppression.
    But I think I can see what the appeal is.  It doesn’t work for me, but I think I see a romantic appeal to it.  It’s aimed at girls.  I also wonder how much my distaste for it is since I didn’t grow up with it.

106 - Max Max: Fury Road

    Furiosa and Max team up to escape from a warlord and find another safe haven.
    I had heard great things about this for a long time, and I finally went to see it.  I knew it was going to be a certain way.  I had heard that it was mostly Furiosa as the main character.  I knew that the whole movie was mostly a long chase.
    It’s a remarkable movie.  There isn’t anything else like it.  It isn’t just that it’s almost non-stop action, but it’s almost a different form of storytelling.  It still follows a three-act structure, but it’s being told in a very different way.  We’re dropped into this world without much background.  We have to piece together the information we get, and we still don’t get a clear explanation on exactly what has happened, or why different customs have come to be.  It’s a bit confusing at first, but it I think this must be what it was like to see Star Wars back in ’77.  It’s a massive new world to explore.  There is so much new, and every little bit of detail is arranged to flesh it out.
    While much of the movie is a chase scene, there are a variety of other scenes sprinkled in that move the character development along.
    One of the strangest things I can say about the script is that it doesn’t have a main character.  Neither Max nor Furiosa get that much dialogue.  They both get developed roughly the same amount.  Both are heroic, although I think the argument can be made that Furiosa is more a hero than Max is.  The plot is the more important thing.
    The action is remarkable.  It’s a spectacular of choreography, and not even simple fight choreography.  It’s a multiple-car-and-truck spectacular.  Everything is moving around, there are loads of people on these cars, moving around, throwing things.  It’s a massively confusing battle.  Even more impressive is that it doesn’t get boring.  There are regular new developments, and the same situations rarely happen.  It’s endlessly creative.
    I have great admiration for this movie.  I don’t know how well it will play on repeat viewings, but it’s probably one of the more impressive movies I’ve seen this year.

105 - Dead End

    A family is driving in the wilderness on Christmas Eve.  Weird stuff happens, and just about everyone dies.
    I had a hard time watching this, but I still kept on returning to it.  The script is generally pretty bad, the characters are poorly drawn, the story is derivative of many Twilight Zone-type stories.  But somehow, I kept wanting to finish it, at least to make sure I was understanding the story correctly.  There was always hope that it might correct itself with a last-minute twist.
    First, we start off the story with some exposition.  The characters are ridiculous.  Everyone is remarkably annoying.  The spooky event is that they pick up a strange woman in a white dress, who carries a dead baby.  It’s obvious that this is not a normal thing.
    The story progresses, with a few characters getting killed off.  Strange things happen.  Most distinctly, they seem to be stuck on the same road.  They see the same landmarks.  And somehow, the reaction to this isn’t that they figure out that they’re stuck in a loop.  Their reaction is that “someone is playing a trick on us.”
    The ending - spoilers of course - is that they actually died in a car accident back at the beginning of the movie.  The car they hit has the woman in the white dress and her baby.  Yawn.
    There isn’t anything interesting about watching a bunch of dumb characters take an hour to figure out what the audience already knows.
    The general poor quality of this movie made me think that this actually could be a good movie… if it came out during the early 80s, and if it had a better cast, maybe some better direction.

    I have one thing to praise about this, and it's specific to my interests.  There's a visual of a guy trapped in a car that's being driven away.  He's struggling against the back window.  This reminds me of one of the first horror movies I can remember seeing, but I don't know what it was.  I remember a car being pushed into water with a woman in a white dress in the back of it.  I saw it on VHS during the mid-80s.

104 - Enter the Dangerous Mind (Snap)

    A guy struggles with psychological issues, and eventually his demons get the better of him.
    As I was watching this, I was reminded of the vaguely psychological horror movies made recently.  In particular, 2010’s Maniac.  There’s something a little disappointing about it.  As this story progressed, it kept my attention, but it was mostly because I was trying to piece together what the backstory was supposed to be.
    After looking up some information about it online, I found that there was a negative review that called attention to the problem that the movie perpetuates an idea that the mentally ill are violent.  It’s hard for me to feel like that’s a real problem; these are some insurmountable problems in storytelling.  The character is defined by being mentally ill.  There’s no story if the character doesn’t get violent.
    But at the end of the movie, I felt like this was a valid criticism.  His decent into violence seemed unearned.  His motivators were mostly trivial.  The worst part was the very end.
    After he is killed, his killer acquires a voice in her head, advising her to kill.
    This ending implies that mental illness is communicable, and that violent aspects are a part of it.
    At least there’s one notable thing about the movie.  This is the first time that I’ve seen a dubstep-centric movie.  It’s weird.  It did make me appreciate the ambient characteristics of the music.

103 - Here Comes the Devil

    After a pair of children return from being lost on a mountain overnight, they seem changed.  Their parents investigate.
    I was really impressed with this movie.  I’m not especially into movies focusing on the devil, as religious overtones tend to become a problem.  (Although I enjoy The Ninth Gate.  I’m not sure why.)  There isn’t much religious material in this, and instead of striving for an internal-logic solution, it keeps the audience trying to piece together what they’ve learned.
    The pace is a little slow, but just mysterious and deliberate enough to keep things interesting.  There’s a moderately long sex scene early on that is remarkably erotic.  It could have easily been trimmed for length, but there’s something kind of nice about it.  It’s not a type of scene you see in many movies.
    We never get many answers, and there’s no reveal explaining what the goal of the evil force is.  There’s a small hint.  Does it matter?  Not really.  It’s a collection of characters stumbling into something larger than they are, which they have no chance of understanding.
    This type of story might bother some people.  I liked it though.  It’s unlike any other horror movie I’ve seen, it does a good job, and it should stick in my memory nicely.
    The one little quibble - and it’s not something that bothered me, it’s just something unusual.  The direction is mostly really well done, except that there are a lot of instances where the camera will suddenly zoom in on a person’s face for dramatic tension.  It’s a little dated.  It’s kind of nice to see it brought back though.

102 - A Deadly Adoption

    A couple bring a pregnant lady into their household, with plans to adopt her child.  Things get difficult as the woman has other motives.
    This is a Lifetime movie.  I’ve never watched a complete Lifetime movie, I’ve only seen tiny bits in passing.  But I’m well aware of what type of movie they are.  They’re the successor to the after-school specials and dramatic movie-of-the-week productions.  That said, there’s a lower threshold for quality than most productions.  You never watch these for the plotting, the script, the acting, or the direction.  Wow, that makes them sound terrible.  You watch them because they’re engrossing in the same way that soap operas are.  This has the same flavor.
    The remarkable thing about this movie is that it functions as a completely serious Lifetime movie.  It hits all the appropriate beats, and it never breaks out of that mold.  But at the same time, it functions as a pitch-perfect parody of Lifetime movies.  It’s made a little more obvious by Will Ferrell’s completely straight performance.
    The story itself is ridiculous.  Will Ferrell plays a writer.  He seems to be a financial advice writer.  And somehow, this makes him desirable to women.  When he goes on his book tours (in flashbacks) he drinks and makes out with loose women.  His agent refers to him having “groupies.”
    Somehow, the family agrees to take in this pregnant woman without much proof that she’s actually pregnant.  I would expect some sort of hospital records would be needed - like a doctor’s report saying that she’s in a healthy pregnancy.
    The trauma that the family is working through seems ludicrous as well.  He’s afraid of water because his wife broke a railing and fell into water, somehow resulting in her being unable to have children again.  Plus, she miscarries.  This seems like a stretch, especially since it didn’t seem that serious an accident.
    There are a bunch of side plots, none of which amount to being that important.  The wife has an organic food business, but she never seems to do anything other than sell the food.  Where does she get it from?  There’s no garden or anything.  She has a tacky gay friend/employee, who only exists to give the movie a body count.  Will Ferrell is a recovering alcoholic, which is admirable, but it would help if we saw him actually be a bad person at the beginning, then improve.  Instead, we only get a hint that he was a bad person during a flashback.
    Is it good?  Not really.  But it is what it is.  It’s very watchable, somehow.

101 - Before I Go to Sleep

    A woman survives a savage beating, after which she becomes an amnesiac, forgetting everything she learns when she goes to sleep each night.  With a few tools and some help, she tries to piece together what has happened with her life.
    There’s an obvious comparison to be made to Memento.  But this is much more straightforward.  Most of what makes Memento work is the unusual structure.  In this case, it runs in a pretty linear way.  And the memory reset points are much further apart.
    The story starts off well enough, as she starts to untangle what she can learn about her history.  The audience is kept in the dark, wondering about the reliability of all of the secondary characters, and waiting to see what revelations will reshape our expectations.  It’s still pretty slow moving though.
    The real problem comes with the last act.  Once we learn the truth, we start to question the validity of the solution.  That’s where it gets bad.  It’s hard to feel like the ending makes much sense.  The antagonist didn’t have much motivation to do what he did.
    Thinking about that made me realize how much I dislike the usage of amnesia as a story device.  Especially in this situation, resetting just pads out the length.  In fact, the story would probably work better if she had a single major memory loss.
    It’s still a reasonably well-made movie, and it kept my attention pretty well.  But after seeing it, I don’t think I’d ever want to revisit it.

100 - The Fog

    Ghosts invade an island town to get revenge on the descendants of the town’s founders.
    I think it was last year that I watched the original.  I remember that it was shot well, but that it wasn’t that great a movie.
    In this case, this movie is really bad.  It doesn’t have much going for it, except for the relatively unusual story.  There aren’t many “ghosts getting revenge” movies, especially nautical-themed ones.
    My first complaint is a small one, but it’s something that is a serious problem now.  I hate that so many horror movies use these soundtracks of no-name bands playing vaguely rock-like music.  The songs are terrible, they make the movie dated, and they reek of cross-promotion.
    The movie is shot competently, but that’s really all I can give it.  The script is slow and plodding.  There’s a lot of filler material.  It was difficult to pay attention to.  I found myself having a hard time finishing it off, since there wasn’t any material that was engaging.

99 - It's Such a Beautiful Day

    The animated story of Bill, a man who is losing his mind.
    Weird stuff.  It’s good, but it’s very strange.  It takes a little while to get into the sense of how this sort of story works.  There isn’t much of a narrative.  It’s more like a series of strange anecdotes centered around a person.  These anecdotes vary from very simple stories to completely absurd ones.
    The main point is that Bill is sick, but we don’t know what it is.  We hear a few potential side effects, but he seems to have lost a lot of his memory, but he can’t tell what has been lost, what has been retained, and what is just being made up.
    There are explorations of man’s role in the universe, life and death… it’s all there.  It’s just such a strange trip.
    Entirely worth the one-hour watch, at least for most people.

98 - The 'Burbs

    In a suburban neighborhood, a creepy family moves in, leading to other neighbors getting suspicious.
    Yes, this is the first time I’ve seen it.  I just don’t care for Tom Hanks, so it’s hard for me to take his presence as a selling point.  But I hadn’t noticed that this was directed by Joe Dante, and that really made it worthwhile.
    I think what makes this movie important is that there’s nothing quite like it.  There are a few movies that seem spiritually similar - like Rear Window.  But there’s a beauty to all of the action taking place in one neighborhood.  It creates a nice, tidy world, and there’s no larger perspective.  The ethical questions of spying on your neighbors aren’t addressed until very late in the movie, and even then, it seems more like a wink at the audience, acknowledging that they thought about that.  Dante knows how to strike a wonderful, unique balance between comedic tones and mild horror.
    What also makes this movie interesting is how nicely the script works.  We learn only as much as the main characters, leaving the mystery family just as mysterious as possible.  Our impression of them varies as we learn more and reasons are established for their behavior.
    It’s a much more likable movie than I expected, even though Tom Hanks seems pretty disposable in his role.

97 - The Warlords

    After his unit is destroyed, a soldier becomes a general in Japan, leading to reclaiming Nanking.
    I have no idea about Japanese history, so I only know what the movie taught me.  The lack of the cultural or historical context makes this a nearly impossible movie to evaluate.
    But it has some nice battle scenes.  Loads of extras.  Some clever action, but nothing too spectacular.

96 - Don't Think About It

    An unhappy teen girl inadvertently summons a monster, which kidnaps her brother.  She teams up with a boy to rescue her brother and defeat the monster.
    This is a spin-off of the R.L. Stein TV series The Haunting Hour.  I love the show.  It’s aimed at kids, but it treats them with a good amount of respect.  There’s a huge amount of diversity, and the show is careful to not always give happy endings and not always cast white males in protagonist roles.
    This movie continues that tradition.  A female protagonist isn’t entirely unique - there are movies like Halloween that also qualify.  But this is an instance where she isn’t actually in peril.  She’s in the rescuing position, saving her bratty little brother from the monster.  The other male character is someone that they paint as sort of an idiot.
    As a movie, it does feel a little disjointed.  The setup is way too long.  It feel like they reach about the hour mark before the primary problem is reached.  It isn’t a bad watch though.  It’s not about to gather a regular audience, but it’s still great to see more horror aimed at kids without pandering.

95 - It Follows

    A sexually-transmitted haunting follows a girl, who has to pass the haunting along before she is killed.
    While this is a provocative, and very interesting movie, I can’t say it’s entirely original.  It feels like a bit of a spin on The Ring.  This isn’t a terrible thing though, since this provokes more interesting thoughts.
    The sexual element of the story is just one subtext, but the real strength of the movie comes from a specific rule that it puts in place.  Once the haunting is passed along, that isn’t the end of it.  If that person fails to pass it along, the haunting will work back down the chain, killing all those who fail to pass it along.  It’s more like a chain letter in a certain way.  With this rule in place, it’s clear that there’s really no winning this situation.  It becomes a game of survival by delaying death, not by eliminating the possibility of death.
    This makes it a very bleak movie.
    The direction is very nicely done.  Well framed.  Lots of nice outdoor shot that are effective in evoking the location; as well as a sense of despair.  There are very few extras in this movie, and normally I feel like that’s a sign of a cheap movie, but in this case, it’s an effective tool for showing a certain blight.
    The ending is ambiguous.  We aren’t given enough information to make a decision about the meaning.
    I like it.  The slow dread is an effective way to handle horror.  I have one minor complaint - they do a few jump scares.  I felt like this was a bit predictable.

94 - Sex Ed

    A young teacher gets a job handling a detention class, and uses the opportunity to teach them sex ed.
    I don’t know what I expected when I got into this one.  It’s a real pain for me to try to evaluate it, since the general message of the movie is one I’m passionate about.  I’m very much in favor of sex ed.  I have a lot of contempt for groups that try to stifle sexual information, or those that try to turn it into a religious education process.  The problem is that this movie just isn’t that good.  It’s not terrible, but there are so many problems with it that it’s hard to ignore them to get to the positive core.
    First, the movie stars Haley Joel Osment.  He does fine with the material he has, but he projects a decent, but entirely milquetoast personality.  It doesn’t help that the story has him taking constant missteps for most of the movie, and being completely delusional about them.
    There’s a supporting cast of wacky characters.  Most of these scenes are written to have casual talk between them with comic material.  This sort of thing reminds me of Clerks, where there’s no real content, but it’s about entertaining the audience with something vaguely crude.
    Man, I sound like some sort of codger.
    I didn’t find this offensive or distasteful.  It just seemed like it would have helped if these bits contributed to the plot in some way.  When they exist to give a colorful supporting character some comic moments, even that’s acceptable.  But it happens with all of the supporting cast.  It feels like more than half of the movie is taken up with conversations that don’t move the plot forward, and just seem like a spotlight for “look at these wacky characters!”

93 - A Trip to the Moon

    A silent film covering a trip to the moon.
    This is mostly interesting for historical purposes.  The production is interesting, especially for the time period.  There are plenty of effects, and most of them are interesting.  The iconic image of the moon with a rocket in the eye is a peculiar one.
    I don’t feel like I can say much about this movie, since the historical context, and even the ability to interpret silent films, is very different now.

92 - Leon: The Professional

    A hitman takes in a young girl whose family has been killed.  She decides that she wants to follow in his footsteps.
    The first thing that I’ve noticed about this movie is the title.  Many sources seem to call it Leon: The Professional.  IMDB says that the original title was Leon.  The title card of the movie calls it The Professional.
    Anyway, it’s an interesting movie, but I somehow felt unsatisfied at the end.  There’s a moodiness to it, which is engrossing, but there’s also mix of other elements that feel like it’s a bit of a hack movie.
    A good comparison would be The Boondock Saints, which was released five years later.  Both of these movies revel in a degree of violence, they use some colorful characters, the protagonist is strangely captivating.  But this movie also borrows little bits from Taxi Driver.
    What drives the movie is a curiosity.  You want to know how things are going to turn out.  That can usually make a pretty good movie.  But here, I just felt like the ending didn’t accomplish anything.  I saw most of the ending coming, and I felt like the movie avoided one of more interesting possible directions by making Mathilda not kill anyone.  Even the action isn’t all that interesting.  It doesn’t live up to the promise established at the start of the movie.
    I know this sounds like I didn’t like it.  I did enjoy it, and it’s certainly a worthwhile viewing.  But it just isn’t as good as I thought it would be.

91 - Troll 2

    A family vacations at the small town of Nilbog, unaware that it is populated by goblins.
    I’ve intended to watch this for a long time, but somehow it never seemed to be important enough to bump it up to the top of my queue.  Sure, it’s a bad movie, but I can’t really say that it’s the Best Worst Movie.
    The Room is far more notable, far more interesting, and worse on more levels.  This is bad, silly, cheap, but also more technically competent.  It’s also a foreign production, even if it was made in the US.  It brought Italian sensibilities to the direction.  This is pretty obvious for anyone who has seen Italian horror.
    It’s hard to pick on the acting, since everyone involved seems to be at roughly the same level.  No one stands out as being too good for the production.  And since I’ve seen Best Worst Movie, I know that most of the cast was pretty new to acting.
    What crowns the weird badness of this movie is the story.  It starts off with a certain ridiculousness, then it just gets worse from there.  Nearly every step on the way gets progressively worse.  We’ve got goblins that are vegetarians.  They want to eat people, so they get the people to eat weird, green-tainted food, which turns the people into plant matter.  Then the goblins eat them.  This has so many problems with it, it’s hard to ignore.  Why do the goblins want to eat people?  It seems like more effort than just eating vegetables.  The food is obviously tainted.  Cake with green icing makes sense.  The weird green spread on every other food is so bizarre that it makes you question why the actors aren’t reacting to it.
    There’s a plot point later in the movie where someone makes himself inedible to the goblins by eating a “double decker bologna sandwich.”  Was everyone else a vegetarian before they came to town?
    There are a handful of sequences that are wonderful in their badness.  Most of them are up on youtube.  My personal favorite was the weird corn-on-the-cob seduction.  I’m a sucker for a terrible soundalike recording of “You Can Keep Your Hat On.”

90 - Grabbers

    On a sparsely populated Irish island, squid-like creatures invade.  It turns out that they can’t handle eating people who have enough alcohol in their systems.
    I’ve had this on my queue for a long time, and as enjoyable as the premise sounds, I just wasn’t able to push myself to watch it.  I finally gave in, partly because I noticed the fairly high rating on Netflix.
    It’s good.  It’s refreshing.  There aren’t many legitimate monster movies being made now.  There are still things like Cloverfield, but this is less derivative of Godzilla than that was.  If I had to say there was a direct influence, it might be Shaun of the Dead.  Nothing in particular, but just the overall tone.  A good amount of comedy, with that sprinkling of horror.
    They did a really good job of hiding the monster for long enough, while still showing enough to keep us excited.  Once there’s a reveal of the mature monster, it’s really spectacular.  It’s easy to expect some cheap effects work, but there are some great shots where the whole monster is in the frame.
    The script is pretty well done, except for one point, and it’s enough that it made me cringe near the end.  There’s a romantic subplot.  It’s invented about halfway through the movie, and it still comes full circle near the end.  Given that the whole story takes place over two days, the romance is far too rushed, and it’s hard to take seriously since the characters are drunk most of the time.
    Still, I’m really happy to see a new spin on a traditional type of story.  This is inventive, and we need more of that.

89 - The Mirror

    A trio of roommates buy a haunted mirror off Ebay, hoping to win James Randi’s million dollar prize for proof of the supernatural.  Weird stuff starts happening.
    Another found-footage movie.  I was willing to stick with this one, since it was at least well-lit, and wasn’t focusing on breathing in the dark.
    It’s not really worth the time.  The mirror idea is perfectly fine.  I was pretty happy with how they handled the idea in Oculus.  But in this, the mirror seems mostly irrelevant.  For a big stretch of time, the characters seem to forget about it.  I suppose that actually makes it more believable, in a way.  I’m glad to see they didn’t immediately suspect that the mirror was responsible for the strange things happening.
    Where the movie makes the biggest mistake is in giving a lack of explanation for the mirror, or for what’s happening to the characters.  Once the horror starts (the last 20 minutes or so) it doesn’t seem to matter much.  Their actions seem kind of randomly chosen.  “Here’s something horrible that someone could do to themselves.”  Is it in service of the mirror?  Does it matter?
    None of the characters are likable.  The tiny cast (three people, plus one or two extras) becomes very obvious once there are injuries.  Even after sustaining some pretty serious cuts, they just patch it up at home and try to forget it.  No visit to a doctor.  We don’t hear any of their neighbors, even though they’re living in an apartment.
    While the movie is competently made, which is an achievement for a low-budget found-footage story, that’s really all it has going for it.

88 - Love Sick Love

    A businessman goes away for a weekend with a girl who turns out to be crazy.  He’s held captive by her as part of her search for an ideal man.
    I was pretty well entertained by this.  I watched it in one sitting, and it kept me wondering what was going to happen next.  In spite of this, there are plenty of problems with this movie, mostly from a script standpoint.
    Both the protagonist and antagonist are entirely unlikable.  The one person who seems slightly moral is an idiot.  Normally this isn’t a problem for me, especially if the story is strong.  But there’s a lot of space in this story to stretch things, to make every perspective reasonable and easy to empathize with.  It also creates a problem because the protagonist is in danger, and we know that there are two ways the story can end.  He’ll either win or lose - live or die.  There’s no chance they’ll go for an ending where the two of them manage to work things out and fall in love.  Even if they did, that might make it more of a disturbing movie.
    The thing that seems off to me is the rest of the family being in on this method of finding a husband.  Everyone plays being disturbed pretty well, but it isn’t the same as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where the whole family has a benefit that comes from their craziness.  Here, the craziness is centralized on benefiting one person.  This doesn’t ring true.
    The script does do a nice job in one scene in particular.  The protagonist has an opportunity to escape, and his reason for sabotaging himself makes perfect sense.  Of course, this is in contrast to the ending, where he chooses to make a ridiculous mistake.

87 - Dawn of the Dead

    After a zombie epidemic sweeps the country, a group of survivors hole up in a mall.
    I’ve enjoyed the Dawn of the Dead remake since I saw it in theaters.  It’s got a punchier sense of excitement to it that the original doesn’t have.  The fast-moving dead suggest a more insurmountable threat, something much more urgently deadly than the slow burn of the slow-moving dead.  The situation isn’t just bleak - it’s hopeless.
    I noticed a few other things this time through.  First, the direction was a bit worse than I remember.  There are a few memorable shots mixed into the movie, but I realized that Snyder pads out the running time with a lot of slow-motion shots.  He likes inserting shots of bullet casings falling to the floor at the feet of the shooter.  In the past, these shots were exactly the kind of filler that they are, and I didn’t pay much attention to them.  Now that I’ve noticed them, I probably won’t be able to stop noticing it.
    The other thing is that the original played on a sense of isolation.  The larger cast in this one stops that from being an issue.  But there’s a tighter pacing to this one, and that changes the sense of the passage of time.  Sometimes I was convinced it was taking place over the space of a week or two.  There’s only a brief sequence of boredom, and even that is played pretty tightly.

86 - Thor: The Dark World

    Jane Foster is infected with the Aether, a substance that an evil villain wants to reclaim in order to take over Asgard.  Thor devises a plan to save Jane and defeat the villain.
    I have this weird affinity for the lesser movies in a series.  One of the reasons I like Iron Man 2 is that I forget sequences in it, and that makes them more effective when I see it again.  I’ve never felt like watching the first Thor a second time, mostly because I remember it being kind of boring.  But this one has a strong ending battle, some really clever plotting between Thor and Loki, and it feels like the plot seems to bring Asgard and Earth closer together.  By making the worlds co-exist more cleanly, that helps things feel reasonable.  I remember when I saw Thor, I felt like the grounding of the stuff happening on Earth was too stark a contrast to the Asgardian stuff.
    I still really like the opening battle sequence.  It’s nice to see Thor doing work around Asgard.
    The one thing I really don’t like is the way that the funeral scene starts.  The overhead shot is way to close to the shot of Padme’s funeral in Episode 3.

85 - Soapdish

    The cast of a soap opera is thrown into a soap opera of their own as an effort is underway to eliminate a main character.
    I used to see the box for this at the video store, and it never called to me.  But it seemed so ridiculous looking that I’ve always had this mild curiosity about it.  It has a terrible title.  I don’t know what a better title would be, but this seems like one of the least interesting choices.
    This is… a work of genius.  But it is seriously flawed.  It’s a fantastic idea.  The story comes together really well.  The cast is exceptional.  But there’s something wrong.  I can’t tell what it is.  It’s almost like the direction was aiming to straddle a line between straight drama and straight comedy.  I can’t point to anything specific.
    What’s remarkable about this story is how gradually it weaves everything together.  You don’t see the big twist coming until it lands, and then you realize that the players are living in their own unintentional soap opera.
    It’s a hard movie to recommend, because it requires a particular sense of humor.  A lot of the jokes are just going to slip past most viewers.  But once you get it, there’s a very classic-comedy feeling it creates.

84 - Regarding Henry

    A hard-nosed lawyer suffers a brain injury, and has to re-learn to function.  He develops into a very different person.
    The premise of this story has been appropriated a few times.  It’s a pretty simple idea, and the variety of ways that it has been handled has tainted my perception of what this story should be like.  I expected something more manipulative.  Something that really pulled at the heartstrings and made it entirely clear that he is now a better man.  While there are touching moments, the direction and the acting is handled with class, and it doesn’t feel like the audience is being shepherded into a tearjerker of a movie.
    Harrison Ford does a very good job of handling a variety of mannerisms.  He stutters slightly.  He looks uncomfortable and vaguely confused.  But he doesn’t look like someone who is desperately trying to communicate those ideas.  He handles these situations realistically.  He can pick up that he’s supposed to know someone, and he knows he’s able to play along, just not very well.
    His relationships with his wife and daughter are at the core of the story.  In particular, his daughter winds up teaching him a variety of skills that he forgot.  His wife…
    His wife is the weak link in the movie.  She’s played perfectly fine, but it’s difficult to like her.  She lies to herself and to others, and she seems more concerned with keeping up appearances than a good person would.
    I have a hard time buying the idea that the firm would be willing to keep him even after he’s lost all of his legal knowledge.  I have no idea what he’s doing there, and I can’t imagine that goodwill would keep him there for very long.
    There’s a message to be understood from this movie… about the nature of identity, possibly how we can be shaped by events far in our past.  But that’s only hinted at after thinking for a long time.  As interesting as this movie is, I left it feeling like it had nothing to say.

83 - Kingsman: The Secret Service

    A clandestine British spy organization recruits the son of a deceased agent.  The agency deals with a villain intent on destroying mankind.
    I had heard some conflicted thoughts about this, but it sounded like it was fun.  The trailer was a little hit-and-miss.  I’m glad that I watched it though.  This is some really serious fun.
    First, the story simultaneously embraces and avoids cliche story beats.  We know that the main character is going to get into the service.  But it doesn’t come together the way you expect it to, and the movie does a great job of adjusting expectations as things develop.
    Second, there’s a very tricky thing to explain about the balance that the movie has.  It has a campy, almost Spy Kids-like atmosphere to things, which is occasionally obliterated by some very extreme violence.  That violence treads a line between laughable and shocking.  And it switches back and forth.  This can be confusing to some people, making people feel uncomfortable about how the movie makes them feel.  This is a signature of Mark Millar’s work.  Some people love it, some people hate it.  Personally, I lean toward liking it, but I always feel like Millar tends to shy away from making  concrete decisions about morality or messages.
    About halfway through the movie, I was sold on it.  I’m adding it to my wish list.  I looked up to see if a sequel is being made.
    The one choice that I didn’t care for was the lisp that Samuel L. Jackson used.  I understand why it was used, but somehow it just didn’t work for me.

82 - The Fly

    After a woman admits to killing her husband in an industrial press, the police investigate.  She recounts the story of his scientific experiments.
    The most striking thing about the original version of The Fly is how much the movie focuses on the romance between the scientist and his wife.  Their happiness is a major point, and it has a separate theme.  There’s surprisingly little horror for much of the running time.
    Almost the entire story is framed as a flashback.  This allows them to set up the mystery that keeps the audience curious, but it also feels strangely dated.  Maybe I’m just getting accustomed to the idea that flashbacks are a bit of a cheat.
    There was one misstep that bothered me, and it’s a thematic one.  There’s a message about there being certain things man isn’t supposed to mess with, and that somehow this experiment crossed some ethical line.  But it doesn’t feel like that.  It’s not like The Island of Dr. Moreau, where you can easily regard the experiments as a crime against nature.  This is simply an experiment with the goal of instantaneous transportation.  Really, no real ethical problems to consider.  You can make the argument that the human/fly hybrid is an abomination, but that seems to frame the problem in religious terms.  It’s just a mistake, and more of tragedy than anything else.
    There are a few affecting moments in the story.  The reveal of the fly-head on his body is really wonderfully done.  I love the mask, and the movements that the mouth makes.  The fly-arm isn’t as big a deal, but it’s still kind of nicely done.  The ending, with the human head on the fly crying out as the spider comes for him is surprisingly chilling.  I didn’t expect it to be as powerful as it was.

81 - Ghoulies Go to College (Ghoulies III)

    Two frats are in a prank war, and a professor winds up summoning a trio of strange demons that are under his control.
    I haven’t seen any of the other Ghoulies movies.  I’ve seen the covers for the first two, but I just never cared to see them.  I don’t think I’m missing anything I need to see to appreciate this.
    The first thing I noticed is that it’s weird.  The tone is mostly cartoonish, with only the slightest amount of horror mixed in.  There’s a sitcom-like feel to a lot of the jokes - particularly the stuff with the campus security guard.  The music is cheap and dated.  I think there was an effort to sound like Danny Elfman, but instead, it sounds more like a cartoon.
    The plot is the biggest problem.  Kevin McCarthy is a real pleasure to watch, but I always felt kind of confused about his motivation.  The fight between the frats isn’t that interesting.  The ghoulies are dumb.  It’s a collection of dumb punchlines, and crass behavior.  Where Gremlins did a good job of making their evil creatures compelling and dangerous, in this… they’re annoying and not especially dangerous.  This is made more obvious by the few deaths they’re involved in.  None of them have any blood.  They involve cartoonish - literally cartoonish - methods of death.  Pulling a tongue out like a rubber band.
    The one area that I didn’t feel like I understood was the role that the toilet plays in this mythos.  Do these creatures come from the sewer?  Or are they supposed to be somehow summoned from hell?  The inclusion of the toilet as a source of horror seems especially childish.  I don’t mind this, but I wonder if that’s the target audience.  Maybe this is supposed to be like a beginner horror movie.
     I wonder if this started out as a straight college comedy, and the ghoulies were inserted later.