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.