The Old Dark House (1932) was on Svengoolie the other night, I only half-watched it while doing other things, but it was interesting. This is a classic Universal Horror film that had been lost for an extremely long time and only recently restored. Looks incredible in the way movies from this studio do, the sets and cinematography are classic, big recommend if you like other Universal Horror movies from the era, it’s slow-paced by modern standards for sure. Karloff doesn’t have any lines, which sucks because he’s amazing at delivering lines, but he’s still serving up terrifying looks.
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Primal (2019)
Ah man, it’s been way too long since I treated myself to a proper Nic Cage movie, and here he is at his cigar-chomping, beer-swinging, dad bod-rocking best. We find Nic transporting his collection of exotic predatory CGI animals overseas when an escaped federal convict gets loose on the boat. Of course my boy Nic knows how to handle a classic Con-Boat situation, of course he’s not going to hurt any of the animals running lose on the ship, of course the cook who has an inexplicable hatred of monkeys is going to get eaten alive by monkeys. This movie whips, it got kind of lost in the whirlwind of excellent recent Cage movies, but it’s a return to form for Cage and a throwback to the kind of dumb low-concept action movies I grew up watching. I take it back about the dad bod, Nic Cage does some legit physical performances here, he’s putting work in.
I’ve reconsidered: Primal is 5/5 Cages, on par with Mandy or Faceoff. It’s got a romantic subplot with a chemistry that actually kinda works, it’s got a legitimately clever bit where a talking parrot tips off Nic Cage. There’s a legit tense Mexican standoff. There’s so smuch in this movie. It seems to cram Con-Air, Under Siege, Alien and Dr. Dolittle together seamlessly. I will defend this as an S-tier Nic Cage movie.
FD Signifier is an essential Atlanta-based voice for justice and abolition in general, but his recent episode with Waving the Red Flag touches on assault allegations involving Jonathan Majors.
Y’all in this sub forum are some of the only guys I feel safe being around, but these guys talking things through shows me there are some good fellas elsewhere too.
His recent ad for Dunkin Donuts is as funny as that Paul Rudd bit in Role Models.
I like how he somehow does this delicate balancing act between acknowledging that you can’t help but experience “Ben Affleck” as pretty cool but also kinda LOL.
John Cazale is often pointed to as the actor with the best hit rate, but I think I have give that award to Peter Ostrum. His role as Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is his ONLY acting role. That’s it. 1.000 batting average.
He’s a veterinarian now.
(ok, I guess all five of Cazale’s feature films were nominated for Best Picture, so maybe he wins on OPS)
What I really want is a movie about the vampire council in WWDITS, with Tilda Swinton, Wesley Snipes, and Danny Trejo reprising their roles. What a movie that would be.
A smultzy feel good movie, but still a good movie. The actors are good but the script means that those great performances are in service of a middle of the line movie. Still I enjoyed it.
Tour de Pharmacy
9/10
A mockmentary of the 1982 Tour de France. It’s basically a Comedy Central skit show though, and a pretty good one.
Infinity Pool gets a ehhh from me, 6/10 or so I guess. It has a lot of similar surreal, trippy Possessor shots but it falls flat towards the end while Possessor did the opposite. I’ll still watch any new Cronenberg Jr film because I did his style.
We used to be a proper country. A country where Roger Ebert wrote quasi-pornographic movie scripts about topless chicks smoking grass and grooving out to Strawberry Alarm Clock. I mean, what happened. You just can’t make a movie like that anymore.
