The Invisible Man

Another Black History Month has come and gone, and while we did gain an extra day this year, that’s about all we got. We couldn’t even get five minutes into our 800th viewing of The Color Purple before the damn Coronavirus broke out and started grabbing everyone’s attention. It couldn’t have come out a month before when everyone was cooped up inside because of the cold weather? The breakout would’ve ended right then and there because we were all too busy ordering tacos from Uber Eats, watching hours upon hours of Netflix, and banging each other senseless; no one was going outside to spread germs!

But no, it had to reach its peak in February, so instead of hearing about Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver, we get to hear how the economy is going to hell because Becky and Daryl are too scared to go out to Whole Foods and get their kale salad for fear of getting sick; never mind the fact that Becky and Daryl just had unprotected sex the night before. The HPV vaccine doesn’t protect you from everything Becky, I’m just saying.

But enough complaining about a glorified flu (update - the Coronavirus turned out to be very real) and picking on poor Becky with the good hair. We did get one final treat before March hit and that was the release of The Invisible Man. Sadly no, this was not an adaptation of the book by Ralph Ellison, this was a horror movie starring one of the palest movie stars in the game today, Elisabeth Moss. Why was this a treat for Black people? Well it’s because Black people LOVE horror films, even though we are always the first ones to die in them. It gives us a chance to see someone else die and/or run for their lives for a change. It’s cathartic for us! Now I realize that we are way too loud in the movie theater and I know that we always sneak in food (possibly Popeye’s) and smell like weed but hey, it’s our one month to act up. This is our 28 day Get Out of Jail free card. Okay, bad example but you get my point. Just let us yell at people trying to escape from axe murderers for once, we only get so many pleasures in this life.

So naturally I go see The Invisible Man opening night and I of course wind up sitting next to a Black lady who legit sneaked in an entire meal. It smelled like I was at a family reunion BBQ. It was fantastic! But just before I could ask for a rib and a scoop of potato salad, the lights went down and the movie started. Blumhouse Studios have become the masters of making good low budget horror films. It forces the directors to rely on storytelling, camera angles, and good old fashion acting to make the movies work. They can’t just simply throw a bunch of money into terrible CGI to try and make the monsters scary, they actually have to be good at film making. And that’s exactly what we got in this film.

At first, I don’t think that even Elisabeth Moss thought that this was going to be a good film. You could tell that early on she was mailing it in but as the story kept unfolding and she realized that this was in fact a pretty decent story, she put her acting chops on full display and you could see why she’s quickly becoming an A-list star. For those who haven’t seen the trailer, the premise is her husband has died and left her quite a bit of money, however in order for her to be eligible to receive the money she must not be arrested for any criminal activity and she cannot be found to be mentally incompetent. Which, anyone who knows me, knows that those requirements immediately put me on the outside looking in.

But before he dies, you get a small glimpse into what their relationship was like. It’s full on Sleeping with the Enemy mode. They live in a phat home right on the beach and her husband controls her every move and thought as there are security cameras everywhere. We only know this because, like Julia Roberts, she’s trying to sneak out in the middle of the night without him knowing. Now at first, I thought this was going to fail because nothing can be scarier than some British dude with a Tom Selleck mustache sneaking up from behind you and forcing you to have sex to Berlioz’s haunting symphony. “Yo dude, can we at least get some Wham? Make me feel special!”

But the director establishes early on what kind of fright fest you’re in store for. The entire time she’s trying to escape, the camera slowly pans away to what appears to be empty and quiet parts of the house, but the longer the shot stays there, the longer you question if she’s really by herself. It perfectly captures the creepy feeling we have when we think we’re being watched or followed. And this continues throughout the entirety of the movie.

Now most people will pick up early on that it’s not in fact a ghost that is haunting her due to a pretty obvious giveaway in the film but the bolder this thing or being gets, the more you realize that it is in fact scarier than a British dude with a mustache. By the time this invisible thing decides to take on an entire police station, you’re convinced that it’s the ghost of Suge Knight trying to kidnap as many white women as he possibly can.

I will say that they spent so much time and effort on the first two acts of the film that by the time the final scene came around, it felt like everyone, including Moss, was exhausted and just kind of rushed through the final scene. So, in that sense, it kind of fell flat but thankfully it wasn’t enough to kill, no pun intended, everything that took place before it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film and I give it a rating of pretty FRESH!

Hereditary

I was recently at a Sunflower Bean and Broncho show this past Saturday night, which is inherently hipster within itself, but while there, I ran into a group of scrubs whose eye roll inducing conversation was so ridiculous that it made me wish that they could immediately be burned at the stake as I sat there and watched while joyously munching on my avocado toast. Why do they deserve such an awful fate, you ask? Well as one girl was knocking back her PBR and talking to some barista who just moved here from Portland, she casually adjusted the 1940’s bandana that she was wearing on her head and said "You know what, I should totally go to Voodoo Fest this year. I mean, I kind of have to since my great aunt is Anne Rice."

Anne Rice? Freaking Anne Rice?!?!? You’re not only bragging about being related to one of the worst horror/goth writers of the past century but you’re using it as justification to go to spend hundreds of dollars you supposedly don’t have because you choose to not sell out and work a 9 to 5? That’s like me saying "You know, I should totally celebrate Juneteenth this year! I mean, I am kind of down with that new Jaden Smith poem." No, me liking the worst Smith of the Smith family is not grounds for or gives me any rights to being a superior Black man. If anything, it should excommunicate me from the race.

But this is where horror is these days; someone like Anne Rice has somehow garnered legendary status. And films like It Follows (I always hear Bush’s Swallowed in my head when I talk about that movie), Cabin in the Woods, and The Witch are all hailed as being the next big thing in the genre when in reality they’re just films that were written by some coed who just recently went on a John Carpenter bender. Which on the surface sounds kind of tight, that is until you realize that there will only be one John Carpenter.

So naturally when I saw and heard all of the buzz around Hereditary, I was skeptical. I was just waiting for all of these lame references to the 80’s that no one remembers and possibly even a guest appearance by Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China). Which again, the more I write about this, the fresher it sounds. But thankfully none of this happened. Hereditary was actually a fairly fresh take on the genre even if it did run a little too long.

Everyone knows that horror films should not exceed 95-100 minutes even if they do include gratuitous nude scenes, which this one does not by the way. But this film clocks in right around 127 minutes which is something you normally expect to see when watching a Kevin Costner film about baseball or puking at the sight of a pudgy Russell Crowe wearing a super snug sailor costume while stumbling around drunk on a boat. Why don’t you lose some weight, fatty! You’re a movie star! Now I get that he was taking his time in letting both the story and the characters develop but you can only use so many camera angles to keep one interested as a mother cries for the fortieth time over her dead relatives.

And speaking of director Ari Aster’s filming style, his clever use of the camera did add another dimension to this film. In the place of relying on the lazy and distracting "shaky cam" to add suspense to some rather intense scenes, he instead chose the route of almost making the camera its own character in certain spots. It felt as though you were watching the story unfold through the eyes of an independent party who was at times freaking out over what was happening and at other times grieving alongside the seemingly cursed family. This was never more apparent than in the film’s most memorable scene; the night of the car accident which involved the two teenage children of Annie (Toni Collette) and Steve (Gabriel Byrne).

After the tragic and horrific accident, the camera just sits there and focuses on Peter for quite some time while you visibly see him internalize what just happened and how his life will never be the same again. He can either accept it and deal with it or he can just choose to move on, pretend that nothing really happened and hope for the best. He unfortunately chose the worst of the two. This is one of the realest and most honest moments I have seen in any genre of film in a long time and it is still messing with me today.

Sure there are some creepy scenes that involve séances, apparitions, witchcraft, and even temporary possession but that’s stuff you’ve already seen before. And trust me when I say that the film gets over the top with all of this in the story’s third act but what will stick with you the most is the acting and the storytelling that I was just spent so much time complaining about. While he could have cut out at least 20 minutes of it, Collette and Alex Wolff’s (Peter) ability to make you connect with and empathize with the characters in this sometimes ridiculous story is what makes this film so special. You hate, love, cheer for, and root against them all in the same two hour span and that’s why you feel as though you’ve been on such an exhausting journey by the film’s end. And I cannot tell you the last horror film that made me feel that way.

Hereditary is definitely flawed but boy was it good. I give it a rating of FRESH but I am on my way to Bible Study right now because I need some Jesus in my life after seeing this film!
 

A Quiet Place

If you’re looking for an actual quiet place to go, the last option on your list should be anywhere where Black people are. "Oh no, that’s so racist!" No that’s not racist, that’s just real talk. I’m Black, so trust me, I know. Everyone knows that you don’t go see a scary movie in a Black theater because all you’ll hear the entire time is Lakeisha yelling "Aww hell naw girl! You better get yo ass up outta there!" Black BBQ’s? We set up the sound system for our music well before we set up anything else. And once it gets going, you can Kendrick and Biggie blaring from the speakers from miles away.

I was at a party this weekend with a Black friend of mine where 95% of the people who were there just so happened to be Caucasian. And as my friend and I started talking and laughing, I felt so sorry for everyone else who was in attendance because there was no way in hell they could even hear themselves think, let alone carry on an actual conversation. Why are we so loud, you ask? Is it because we are so happy that we can freely sing and talk without having to worry about being cracked with a whip? Or is it just a natural reflex to let everyone know our whereabouts just in case a cop decides to get in some target practice before deer hunting season rolls arounds?

Who knows but what I do know is that we wouldn’t last two seconds in a horror film simply because we’d be the first person the killer finds. I used to get angry at the fact that Black people always died in horror flicks; I used to think it was just the filmmakers being racist, but after A Quiet Place came out, I was finally awaken to the truth; we are just too damn loud. If we could just learn to use our inside voices every now and then, we might actually stand a chance. Stay woke son, stay woke!

Well thankfully they spare us the gruesome death scenes of any minorities in this film but that certainly doesn’t mean that it’s short on terror. In A Quiet Place, The Office’s John Krasinski introduces us to a post-apocalyptic world where the only way you can survive is if you don’t make any noticeable sounds. There are apparently creatures nearby who can only detect sound and the second they do, they appear from seemingly nowhere and immediately pounce on and kill their prey. So if you snore or get caught watching the wrong porn flick, it’s a wrap for you.

Now while there does appear to be other survivors in this story, the filmmakers decide to put their attention solely on Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s family. And despite losing a young child to one of these creatures and having to deal with the grief and self-imposed blame that comes along with that, the couple decides to have another baby to go along with the two they currently have in an attempt to try and lead a somewhat normal life. Naturally this decision leads to some rather intense moments in the movie but more on that in a second.

What’s so cool and unique about this film is the fact that the family doesn’t do anything silly like whisper quietly to one another but they instead actually utilize sign language to communicate. Which not only means you’re reading subtitles for the majority of the film but it also means you’re experiencing the creepy silence along with them. So the second you hear any sound or simply suspect that a sound could be created with a footstep or a baby contraction, you’re freaking out because you know it’s just a matter of time before the creatures, or whatever they are, show up.

And that’s yet another thing I loved about this film, not everything was spelled out for you. As the plot develops, you not only learn more about the family and what actually happened to society but you also see more of and learn more about the beings that are wreaking havoc on this farm. To a certain extent it’s a bit predictable but that’s to be expected, it’s a horror film. It was just refreshing to see the story stray from most of the typical clichés that have plagued this genre for decades.

Now while I still do hate on Krasinski for stealing Emily Blunt from me, I do have to give him credit for making a decent film. And he certainly did owe us after that awful football movie he made with George Clooney. Do yourself a favor and go check out A Quiet Place as I give it a rating of very FRESH!

Mother!

Maybe I’m just officially a part of the older generation but I remember when Boyz in da Hood first came out in the theater and it reminding me, along with every other Black male out there, that if you had a kid before you graduated from high school that your life was basically over! It didn’t matter how smart or how talented you were, society would never fully accept you simply for the fact that you fell right into the stereotype that had slowly evolved over the previous decades. Look at Ricky from that movie, even though he was a badass football player who ended up getting a full ride at USC, he still wound up getting shot in an alley while holding some powdered sugar donuts and a lottery scratch-off ticket. And why was that you ask? Because he had a kid! At least that’s what I took away from it.

But now, in every hip hop song that’s come out the past five years or so, every male rapper out there and their female RnB counterpart talks about either planting seeds in someone or getting seeds planted in them! What in the world happened? When did it become so cool to not pull out? Granted I haven’t seen a porn in quite some time but this can’t be the latest hotness? "Oh, I’m gonna explode so hard inside of you!" I refuse to accept this! Somewhere out there Ron Jeremy is rolling in his fried chicken batter!

Well hip hop may have finally jumped the shark as Russian weirdo Darren Aronofsky seems to have been affected by its charms. In his latest film, he examines the May December marriage between Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence. And in it, you are immediately introduced to what’s at the core of their marital issues. Bardem is a poet who is going through the worst possible writer’s block imaginable meanwhile Lawrence’s entire life seems to be centered on supporting and appeasing him. It doesn’t matter how much patience or love she shows, nothing seems to inspire him, not even the fact that his wife is singlehandedly rebuilding his childhood home from the ground up after it burned to the nothing but ashes.

But one night a stranger in the form of Ed Harris shows up at their random house in the country mistaking it for a bed and breakfast. Bardem immediately takes a liking to him and invites him to stay the night given the fact that it’s so late and he’s obviously lost. The problem however, just to name one, is that he doesn’t ask his wife if it’s ok with her and it’s soon after this that Harris starts ignoring some of her rules for the house; like no smoking inside. Now I know that on the surface that sounds like small potatoes but things start to escalate the second his wife shows up the next day. Not only does she not respect Lawrence’s rules but she also seems to have little respect for her or her privacy. Imagine if your drunk mother in law showed up to your house and had no filter; well that’s Michelle Pfeiffer (Harris’s wife) to a tee.

Now again, at first these seem like they’re just slight annoyances but things soon get out of hand the second this weird couple’s sons randomly show up and someone gets murdered. And yet even after all of this, it still isn’t enough for Bardem to ask the couple to leave. It instead somehow oddly enough triggers a passion inside of him that was nonexistent to this point and he winds up impregnating Lawrence. And it’s at this point that he once again finds the inspiration to write and what he writes is apparently good. So naturally things will get better at this point, right? Well if you thought that then you clearly have never seen an Aronofsky film.

First let me say that the first two acts were tough for me to sit through as a Black man because anyone who has grown up in a household with a Black woman knows that this film would have been over within the first 20 minutes. The second Ed Harris disrespected her, she would’ve cussed him sideways and kicked him out along with Bardem. And if Bardem had the audacity to say anything back, he would’ve been met with a swift right to the jaw and a not so friendly reminder that he was a shitty writer! "I’m up in here cooking these biscuits every day and your sorry ass can’t even write a Jack be nimble, Jack be quick? I knew I should’ve married Jerome with the good benefits! "

But once I finally got past that, I settled into the third act only to be immediately taken out again. Now anyone who knows me knows that I love artsy flicks but I hate when people are artsy for the sake of being artsy. Look, if your weirdness naturally comes out (see Thom Yorke dancing during Radiohead shows) I’m all for it but when it’s forced, it’s obvious that you’re just trying to get laid by French models who are too dumb to truly understand what’s going on. I get the visual chaos that ensues in the third act, and to be honest with you, some of it worked, but ultimately there was just too much nonsense in it that played absolutely no role in telling the story or expressing the theme behind this visual and visceral experience.

The film’s crowning moment occurs when Lawrence finally has the baby and there’s a stare off between her and Bardem. So much is said about their relationship in this moment that it honestly stands out way more than the infamous and supposedly unforgettable scene that immediately follows it. Everyone talks about that scene but in my opinion, everything that follows the stare down is just filler at that point, but I guess you have to wrap the film up in some way.

In the end, the acting is on point and the overall theme of the film is a clever take on today’s society but you just have to sift through too much trash to get to the payoff. I give this film a rating of barely FRESH!
 

It

So I have this movie nerd friend who is getting a bit on the crusty side when it comes to age yet he still has a thing for younger girls and every now and then has these weird wet dreams about having sex with Helena Bonham Carter in a monkey suit. I’m not quite sure what exactly caused with the latter but hey, he lives in the country suburbs of Dallas and things get a bit boring out there, so I’ll give him a free pass. Well the other day he called me out of the blue to tell me that Kate Becksinsale’s daughter just posted some pics of herself online in a bathing suit. Beckinsale’s daughter is 18. Now I too am on the wrong side of crusty and I also happen to have an affinity for younger women but even that’s pushing it for me. But I am a dude so I had to at least pop in and see for myself, and just as I suspected, she looked like she was freaking twelve years old! I nearly vomited my Chuck-E-Cheese pizza!

After cussing my friend out for a bit, I came to the sad realization that I had just recently began following R. Kelly on Instagram. And it was in that moment that I began questioning some of my life’s decisions. Why was I talking to a dude who was drooling over a teen in swimwear and following #morningswithKellz on my phone? I know there’s not a law against that just yet but maybe there should be!

What’s the point of all this, you ask? I forgot how innocent we once were as kids. In the latest film adaptation of Stephen King’s creepy novel It, the story focuses on a group of outsider kids who crack funny sex jokes about each other’s moms with regularity while having to face their greatest fears through the eyes of an insane clown. I remember making similar jokes as a kid when I’d say something like "Oh, I have a black pen you can borrow but it only writes in white ink" but I had no idea what it really meant at the time. Or maybe I did and I’ve always been a twisted individual; either way, it was great reminiscing about the good ole days, when sexual harassment started at a young age even if you had no clue what you were really talking about. Okay clearly I’m joking, I would never condone that kind of behavior but in It, you do see how sex is always on the brain of boys even at a young age.

Now most people know the story of It at this point but for those who may have forgotten, it’s about this creepy clown who appears in this small town in northeast America to prey on little kids and their fears. He tricks them into getting close enough to him to eat them without leaving any trace of their existence behind. And apparently everyone in the town is so freaked out by these random occurrences that no one takes the initiative to figure out what’s really going on. Well one kid, Bill (St. Vincent, Midnight Special, and The Book of Henry’s Jaeden Lieberher) refuses to give up on his little brother who’s also gone missing, so he rallies his band of misfits who include his close friend Richie (Stranger Things’s Finn Wolfhard) and his secret crush Beverly to try and find the source of the town’s strange disappearances.

Well along the way, you see friendships tested as these kids are forced to grow up in a hurry in an attempt to survive this killer clown who apparently has no mercy. And you are also exposed to some pretty dark material like a sexually abusive father, a controlling mother who puts Kathy Bates in The Waterboy to shame, and a small child getting his arm bitten off in a pretty gruesome scene. But having said that, the film itself isn’t so much scary as it is creepy. Don’t get me wrong, every scene with the clown will stick in your mind for quite some time but any scene with zombies falls kind of flat due to the fact that we’ve been exposed to better makeup and gorier scenes on The Walking Dead on a weekly basis.

But this is by far the best Stephen King adaptation that has ever made it to the big screen. It’s fun, funny, and serves its purpose as a great appetizer to get you ready for the Halloween season. I definitely recommend popping in as I give it a rating of very FRESH!

The Mummy

Why is it that the very second men turn 40 years old, they either have a midlife crisis and start banging the nanny (see Ben Affleck) or they simply give up and turn into a fat blob (see Russell Crowe)? You would think that by being a star and having their pick of the litter, they could find someone worthwhile who could keep their attention until death does them part. Or since they don’t have real jobs, they could have their private chefs cook them some healthy meals and find 20 minutes out of the day to trip over a treadmill every now and then. But no, as it turns out, we are all the same. We are only as loyal as the options that are before us. If we have hundreds of perky 20 year old girls throwing themselves at us, we can’t help but slip into some HPV free strange even if it means destroying a perfectly good marriage. If we have a bottle of Jameson and a Fatburger sitting next to La Croix and a tuna wrap, we’re probably grabbing the Jamey and burger and running off to a dark corner somewhere so we don’t have to share it with anyone! That’s just who we are! It’s only a matter of time before Justin Timberlake cheats on Jessica Biel again when he and the rest of N’Sync go out on their Back to Basics tour. But don’t worry Jessica baby, you still have a fan here.

Well the alien Tom Cruise appears to be the one exception to this rule. This dude is 54 years old and still looks like he could be a professional soccer player in Europe somewhere (he’s way too short to play any American sports). I mean, sure it’s a bit of a stretch to see him as a young decorated soldier in the U.S. army but it’s not like you’re watching a 60 year old Roger Moore trying to play James Bond. That happened in real life by the way. Cruise has the acting chops, even though he never gets credit for it, to pull off almost any role. However the one role he does struggle with is one that requires comedic prowess. Yes, he got lucky in Tropic Thunder but overall he’s just a little too weird to make you believe that he’s actually funny. And this is where The Mummy fails.

We all remember how fun the Brenden Frazier films were in the 90’s but Frazier was the one weirdo, along with Pee Wee Herman, who was somehow able to pull off comedy. So why in the world they would try and recreate that magic with Cruise is beyond me! It seems as though the filmmakers tried to pull this off by teaming Cruise up with the normally entertaining Jake Johnson. But boy did that ever fall flat! Johnson was simply reduced to yelling at the top his lungs every time Cruise said something and in the process just wound up annoying you and instantly taking you out of the film. Keep in mind now that all of this takes place within the first 5 minutes of the movie and that’s typically a recipe for disaster.

Well thankfully they figure out early on that this pairing is not working at all and they slowly start to shift towards turning this into an action horror film. And for the most part it worked. You’re introduced to the ambitious to a fault Princess Ahmanet; played by the beautiful and talented Sofia Boutella. She was to be the heir to her father’s throne until one day he meets a skanky groupie, knocks her up, and has a son with her. Ahmanet is obviously distraught over this and decides to turn to the dark arts to get her revenge. Well in the process, she kills her father and her newborn stepbrother. And just as she’s about to bring this evil god back into the world to be her partner in crime and in life, these muscular Egyptian men come out of nowhere and stop her just in the nick of time. They wind up mummifying her while she’s still alive to punish her and it isn’t until the year 2017 that we discover her tomb.

Well once she’s unwittingly awaken by the opportunistic, greedy, and apparently selfish Cruise, she curses and chooses him to be the carrier of the god she tried to resurrect in her past life. And it’s at this point the film takes on a yet another weird persona; one that I particularly liked. There’s some odd but cool connection that develops between the two of them and Cruise must decide between his fate with Ahmanet or the burgeoning relationship that’s forming between him and the archaeologist Jenny Halsey.

Now if they had simply stuck to this storyline, the film could’ve been solid. But some reason they kept bringing back Jake Johnson to seemingly add some comic relief. And they also tried to incorporate a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde subplot, which again, could’ve been cool if executed properly. But no, they instead decided to cast the 400 lbs. and clearly uninterested in acting anymore Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll; and they also apparently ran out of money when it came to effects, so whenever he turned into Mr. Hyde, they just painted him green and he started grunting really loudly.

But even after that epic failure, it was still a fairly entertaining film until the ending that made absolutely no sense. I mean sure she was evil but why on Earth would you choose Jenny over Ahmanet? Damn that girl is sexy! It’s like Vin Diesel choosing Michelle Rodriguez over Charlize Theron or the hot Brazilian woman who became his baby momma. Even after giving her dumb looking cornrows, it doesn’t make any sense. And don’t worry, I didn’t give away what really happened at the end because trust me when I say it gets wilder than that!

In the end this films was simply way too flawed for me to recommend it to anyone, but I think it’s definitely worth a watch on Netflix in a few weeks. I give it a rating of pretty WEAK!

Get Out

I used to think that Donald J. Trump aka Donald T Rump Shaker was a complete moron, but now I finally see the error of my ways! I now realize that the man is an utter and complete genius! Sure he has spent the majority of his presidency literally trying to divide us with his travel sanctions and his plan to build a giant wall, but all the while we’ve been so focused on our Muslims and our Mexicans brothers, we have completely missed T Rump Shaker’s true Piece De Resistance; his plan to once again purify the White race. Rereleasing the O.J. Simpson story to the American public in the form of an incredible documentary and a cheesy but fun television show didn’t do it. And neither did a year and a half of gratuitous police killings of Black folk in the neighborhood streets and highways. But it looks as though with the release of Get Out, T Rump Shaker has finally found a way to get Black men to stick to Black poonanny, and that’s to threaten them with a return to slavery.

Oh, now I know that any modern day Black person out there will say there’s no way in hell they’ll ever let slavery happen again, but that’s only if they see it coming! If you blind a black man with some white she devil (I don’t really talk like this) poon, he is PRIME for the sneak attack! And this is why the movie Get Out works so well, Jordon Peele, who is clearly on the T Rump Shaker’s payroll, has hit Black men where it hurts the most; right in the superior but tender genital area.

I knew deep down inside that something was amiss with Allison Williams the entire film but I kept getting distracted by those big beautiful blue eyes as well as that big beautiful rack of hers! "Oh, you want me to go up to the wooded suburbs to meet your 1 percenter parents who I know without a doubt to be racist? Sure, just let me hit it one more time and I’m sold!" Come on man, I’ve seen Mississippi Burning with Gene Hackman, and if I’m going somewhere where there’s a lot of white people and a lot of trees, I’m for sure packing some heat and bringing my boys with me! That is of course, unless my beautiful white girlfriend with boobs the size of watermelons convinces me otherwise.

In Get Out, Rose Armitage (even the name sounds shady) convinces her very Black boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to go up to the suburbs to meet her parents. He’s initially hesitant but eventually agrees to do so for the very reasons I stated earlier. And from the very first moment he steps on her parent’s property, he notices how odd everyone is acting. All of the white people are acting as if they have never seen or been around a real Black man before and the few Black people he does run into appear to be robots who say and do things in a manner that would make you believe they were ordered straight from an L.L. Bean collection catalog. Every fiber in your being would normally tell you to run for the flat lands; not the hills because more white people are up in the hills, the brothers are going to be down in the flat lands! But every time that thought enters Chris’s head, there’s bright eyed Allison, always there to calm him down. So he decides to stay, and that’s when things really got weird.

I have to say that when I first saw the preview for this film, I thought there was no way in hell I’d ever go see it because it looked like the worst movie ever. Plus, everyone knows that any movie that comes out during Oscar weekend is a sure fire flop that just got a courtesy release from the studios. But that’s where the genius of T Rump Shaker comes into play again. This was his ingenious way of pleading to Black people to avoid all of the liberal artists who would surely be bashing him for 4 hours on national television and to go see a film that featured their people instead. Well guess what, it worked! And he even went an extra step by paying off the easily bribed film critics to give it a rating of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes! Coincidence? I think not!

I went in thinking that there was no way this had any chance of being a good film but I am happy to say that it wound up being rather enjoyable. It was funny, creepy, and totally relevant for our times. There are so many subtle messages that are spread throughout this entire film that it had to take Peele his entire life to write this screenplay. He tackles everything from the differences in police interactions with Black and White people to the 1 percenters resistance to the subversion of Black culture, all the while avoiding the death sentence of being too preachy.

And while I am not yet ready to give up White poonanny at this point in my life, I do have to say that I am looking at Janelle Monae in a different light today. After seeing this film, I can’t help but give it a rating of very very FRESH!

Split

I was going to start this review with my usual jokes about M. Night and the terrible movies he’s made over the past ten years, but that always ends with me calling him something ridiculous like M. Night Shemamalikesmydong, and that’s the last thing this world needs more of right now. So I’ll put my focus on my creepy idiot friend instead. For months he kept saying that there was no way he’d ever give M. Night his money again after his latest string of movies, and honestly, who could blame him? His downfall started with men in plastic suits dressed as aliens in Signs, continued with clairvoyant cereal boxes in Lady in the Water, and reached its pinnacle with Marky Mark outrunning evil wind in The Crappening (Happening).

But there’s one sure fire thing in this world that will get men to forget recent terrible events and that’s the wonderful presence of boobs! Boobs are the only reason why my friend decided to pop in on Split. And thankfully no, I’m not talking about my man boobs, I’m talking about the ones that belong to Anya Taylor-Joy, the co-star of this film. Granted she is 21 years old but that’s way too young for my idiot friend. At some point you would think he’d start to develop crushes on the crustier women in film, women like Annette Benning or the collagen filled Goldie Hawn; but no they get younger and younger and he stays the same age mentally (in Matthew McConaughey voice). Well the good thing is, Taylor-Joy is a talented and rising young star in Hollywood as she’s been in The Witch and the forgettable Morgan; two pretty big releases for a relative newcomer.

And she definitely holds her own as she stars opposite of the now unbelievably respectable James McAvoy. When he first burst on the scene, I thought that he was at best going to be the next Colin Ferrell; and I’m talking lame Ferrell (SWAT), not the now good Ferrell (In Bruges). But he has won me over with his approach to the usually dull Professor X character, as well as with his brilliant performance in Filth. Well after you witness his performance in Split, you’ll see the kind of range he has as an artist.

McAvoy plays the troubled villain in this film; a man who has 23 personalities, all of whom could take the spotlight at any given time. He effortlessly and seamlessly transitions from one character to the next; which is amazing when you consider the fact that every time he does so, it never comes off as cheesy or comical. He kidnaps three teenage girls who are leaving a birthday party and holds them captive in his unbelievably clean but still creepy basement. And it’s at this point where you begin to meet all of his unique personalities.

Now the natural questions is, why can’t three girls jump and overtake this one guy? I’ve seen pics of McAvoy and he’s not that big! Well this is where M. Night’s storytelling actually saves the day (no pun intended). Split is easily his most well thought out script in decades. All of his films, for the most part, have an underlying theme behind the main storyline and the one that exists in Split may be his most important and challenging one to date (Signs would’ve been number one if his delivery wasn’t such an epic failure). I’m not going to give anything away but the story more than adequately answers that all important question.

This isn’t a jump out at you scary film but there are a few creepy scenes in the film’s final act when McAvoy releases his 24th personality. And in case you were wondering, yes M. Night does supply us with his usual big reveal at the end, but unlike Split’s predecessors, the viewer’s experience doesn’t hinge on the final few scenes; this entire film was entertaining. There’s even a nice little nugget for loyal M. Night fans in the movies final shot. I was so dumbfounded by it that I couldn’t even fully enjoy it until I walked out of the theater and I honestly don’t know the last time I could say that about a Shyamalan film! Split gets a rating of FRESH!
 

Blair Witch

I remember when the original Blair Witch Project first came out and how excited my roommates and I were to see this supposedly true story of witchcraft and the boning of young underachievers in the woods. I’ve always been really creeped out by witches mainly due to the fact that every rich girl I ever hooked up with in college could have easily qualified to be burned at the stake during the Winston Salem witch hunts. So naturally when I saw that this movie had been made, I couldn’t wait to do as much research as humanly possible on it to see if Blair Witch was in fact the matriarch to every girl who stepped foot on SMU’s campus back in the late 90’s. Ok ok, so the girls weren’t all that bad but you should just know going in that driving a Chevy S-10 pickup on that campus will definitely lead to some pretty lonely Saturday nights for a young skinny scrub like me! Dammit, I knew I should’ve jacked someone’s convertible Mustang when I had the chance; that would’ve bumped by street cred up big time and would have at least given me some sort of edge!

Well once everyone learned that the three hacks who came up with the idea for the Blair Witch Project made up the entire story, the movie quickly lost its appeal. We all came to the sad realization that we had not only been duped but had also unwittingly set in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to the death of good film making as we knew it in the horror genre. And ever since this steaming pile of dog poop made those guys multi-millionaires, we’ve been inundated by a constant stream of shaky cam found footage "thrillers". I’m sorry but shaking a camera as hard as you can and having people scream into a mic is not scary.

And for a while it looked as though Hollywood had caught on to this little fact by releasing fewer and fewer of these films, but for whatever reason, they chose to come out with a sequel that no one was asking for in Blair Witch and they also decided to try and kill the career or a promising director in Adam WIngard. Wingard is known for You’re Next and The Guest, two of the better horror films to come out this decade. It took a while for me to fully appreciate You’re Next but I eventually understood what he was trying to do with his off kilter style. WIngard isn’t exactly a trend setter in the game but he certainly is good at what he does as you can see him paying homage to the 80’s horror flicks he grew up loving when you watch his films.

Well in spite of the fact that I knew the studio was trying to pull yet another fast one on us when they announced that Wingard had another movie coming out called The Woods but then later admitted that they lied about that and the movie was just another Blair Witch; I still held out hope that he would at least be able to bring his own style to it. I was wrong. Witch wound up being the perfect collection of every shitty found footage film that has ever been made. It follows the formula to a tee.

There’s 30 minutes of a plodding set up where you’re introduced to all of these boring and unlikeable characters who think they’re funnier and cooler than they actually are. There’s boring camp fire stories that wouldn’t even be considered scary if you were actually out in the woods by a real camp fire. And then there’s the inclusion of cheesy prerecorded howls and scratches that you can hear in the distance which remind you of the lame junior high school Halloween parties you used to attend when you were a kid. When you never actually get to see the awful being that’s wreaking havoc or any of the actual havoc they’re wreaking, the storyteller should at least master the psychological component of the story in order to make the movie goer feel as though they’re in it with the characters and that they could at some level be in danger themselves. I mean, I don’t remember Jack Nicholson ever killing anyone in The Shining but every time I see a closed bathroom door, a Big Wheel, or twin girls, I immediately curl up in the fetal position.

Well Blair With also made me curl up in the fetal position but that was only after I realized that I had wasted $11 dollars and 90 minutes on my life on this useless waste of perfectly good film stock. Just when I thought 2016 couldn’t produce a film worse than Ghostbusters, they come in and save Melissa McCarthy by releasing Blair Witch. I rate this movie as unbelievably WACK!

Don't Breathe

Back when I was a kid, we use to play this stupid game called N word knocking. Now I didn’t think much of it at the time because I was a dumb pre-teen but now that I’ve had the opportunity to look back, I realize how unbelievably racist of a name that was for a kid’s game! I mean seriously, what kind of a jerk comes up with that title? It was such a common thing though that I didn’t even get mad when my white friends would call me up and ask if I wanted to play it; it was just something that we did for fun. Now if you’re not familiar with it, it’s when you go up to someone’s house, ring the doorbell, and run off somewhere to go hide. Thankfully we never put a bag of burning crap on their doorstep like in Billy Madison, because in Texas that’s legal grounds to get shot, but we would be in the dark somewhere laughing our butts off as some old person cursed us and shook their fists in the air.

Well because we played this game with regularity, we always knew whose houses we were better off skipping. It was either the grumpy old man who owned a shotgun and had nothing else to do but dream about hunting season all year long or it was the lonely old lady who had a bad heart condition. Now every now and then someone would hit up the old lady’s house anyway just to be a jerk but no one was ever dumb enough to hit up the house of the old hick. We all knew that if we did there was a good chance we’d be dead before we even had the chance to hit puberty!

Well all of this is what was running through my mind as I watched the latest thriller in Don’t Breathe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about doing whatever it takes to get out of Detroit; hell I would’ve held up an entire Klan meeting by myself if it meant I could get out of Victoria, but robbing a blind old army vet??? Even I know not to mess with a military man who has nothing to lose. Or so I thought he had nothing to lose.

In Breathe we meet Rocky (Jane Levy of Evil Dead), her boyfriend Money (yes that’s really his name), and her best friend Alex (Dylan Minnette of Goosebumps). They are burglars who use Alex’s dad’s security business to rob homes. Alex has access to the security codes of all of his dad’s clients so they use that information to gain access, stage a break in and walk out with less than 10k worth of goods so it doesn’t count as grand larceny. They do this with the hopes of one day saving enough money so they can eventually move out of awful Detroit. Well one day they come across the old army vet I mentioned earlier and they realize that not only does he have over 300k in his house but he also happens to be one of Alex’s father’s clients. The Blind Man got the money from a settlement after his daughter was killed in a drunk driving accident a few years ago. He has become a total recluse and lives in a neighborhood that is basically deserted.

The kids all believe that this will be an easy job and one that can bring an end their robbery days forever but they soon realize that they are in for quite a surprise when they actually do break in. Not only is this old man more than capable when it comes to defending himself and his home but he also has a dark secret; and it’s a pretty messed up secret if I should say so myself. And once he gets a hold of their gun and barricades them in, these kids are in for the fight of their lives.

One of the many things I loved about this film is that the director was obviously a fan of The Silence of the Lambs. He took the film’s second best scene, the one where Buffalo Bill is creepily tracking down Clarice with his night vision goggles in his blacked out basement, and basically recreated it with a blind man and extended it by about 10 minutes. This scene caused quite a few moments where you wanted to shout out to the screen to help them, but thankfully I wasn’t in south Dallas, so no one actually did. Oh and by the way, Lambs’ best scene is where Buffalo Bill does his little tuck dance in the mirror to Goodbye Horses but that’s another story for another time.

Another thing I liked is that the director kept you on your toes; just when you think everything is about to be alright, something else pops up and you’re right back to being freaked out. The film is only 90 minutes long but it literally feels like you’re in the house with these kids all night long. And trust me when I say that’s a good thing. Now looking back there are quite a few plot holes that had me questioning the reality of certain situations but the film is so intense, there’s no way you have time to break down what’s happening; you’re just hoping that these kids escape this crazy old vet. As a matte =r of fact, I’m never going around another blind man as long as I live! I’d rather take my chances sleeping on the streets of Chi-Raq!

Don’t Breathe had me cursing out loud more times than I’d to admit and it’s because of this that I give it a rating of very FRESH!

The Purge: Election Year

I love it when horror movie franchises actually get better with each sequel. The first Purge with Ethan Hawke was watchable but for the most part was also completely forgettable. The only things I really remember from it are a few black and white shots from the camera of a remote control car and the Reaganite frat boys who showed up to Hawke’s doorstep rocking H&M sweaters and casual shoes normally reserved for yachting. But thankfully with the second one they realized what a cool concept they had at their disposal and actually decided to take us outside of the house so that we could see the mayhem that was taking place on the streets.

And after seeing previews for The Purge: Election Year, it looked as though the writers were going to take it up yet another notch by having Frank Grillo protect the life of the future President of the United States. As I saw this I thought to myself "What a wonderful idea! Can you imagine how many people would go after Trump if this was something that was actually legal and available to them?" But then I started to wonder how many crazy redhead exes of mine would come after me on purge night for not brushing their hair while they watched Curly Sue in the mornings (just one of those weird things redheads do). Or how many former customers of mine would shoot at me for making them buy warranties on printer cartridges? Or how many former students would knife me for making them do the Pythagorean Theorem simply because I was bored and I wanted to watch their heads explode in frustration? Heck, maybe I need to board my place up now!

Well that’s basically what the Purge is, you save up all of your hatred for this one night to get revenge on someone you feel has wronged you throughout the year; or at least that’s what the government has sold the people on. The reality of it is, is that they use this night to rid society of its lower class; the homeless, the poor, the sick, etc., so they no longer have to spend money to help support them. But apparently the lower class wasn’t killing itself off fast enough for their liking so the government started sending out their own murder squads to the projects and lower income areas to help expedite the process.

Well President hopeful, Senator Charlie Roan, is determined to put a stop to all of this, especially after she had to see her entire family murdered before her very eyes as a child. And as rumors confirming this conspiracy theory starts to spread throughout the nation, thanks to the help of radical leader Dante Bishop, she finds herself getting closer and closer to victory. Well as you can imagine, the people in charge (the New Founding Fathers) are desperate to put an end to this, so they lift the ban on killing government officials on purge night, essentially making it open season on Roan. And now it is up to the head of her security team Grillo to help her make it through the night alive.

The writers do an excellent job of actually providing you a decent story to go along with all of the bloody action that takes place in this film and they do so without ever taking themselves too seriously. They provide you with a ton of funny jokes that mainly come from the mouth of the seen it all and done it all convenience store owner Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson), who is forced to stay out and protect his store on purge night from the cartoonishly evil school girls who are in desperate need of chocolate bars. Yes you read that last part correctly. This film, like its predecessors, is still over the top at times but that makes it all the more fun when these same crazy characters die in horrific ways. There are also countless one liners in this film that will have you laughing all throughout and there are enough shots of the older hottiie president hopeful that will have you dreaming (if you know what I mean) afterwards.

When it comes down to it, The Purge has everything you want in a horror film and it’s because of this that I give it a rating of very FRESH!

The Conjuring 2

Remember back in the day when your crazy aunt or uncle would always tell you these wild ghost stories from the past? There'd always be some kooky old lady who lived by herself called Grandma Death whose house was so cursed that every time you tried to roller skate by it, you'd fall flat on your face. Or there'd be a horny ghost woman who would only appear at night to hover over your bed and give you the best head of your life! Man those were the days. Ok ok, so Grandma Death is from Donnie Darko, the tripping in front of some mean old lady's house is from the Cosby Show, and the ghost of Blow Job Betty is from Ghostbusters 1 but you get the point.

No one tells cool ghost stories anymore and I am 100% certain that this is why the horror movie genre will soon fade away like NFL football. It's all the same story now; every horror film has some house that's haunted by a ghost whose family was brutally murdered 30 years earlier or there's some creepy doll in the house that's wreaking havoc. Why don't these families simply move or just ship the doll off to some cousin of theirs that they hate? Movie over.

Well having said that, it's a little weird to me that the best horror film to come out in the past 5 years just so happened to center around a demon possessed doll called Annabelle in the original Conjuring. But I guess if you only have stale material to work with, you may as well make the best film you can make with it. James Wan (Insidious, Furious 7) is clearly a horror movie buff as he utilizes all of the tricks from the genre's past to help bring back the feelings of genuine fear and suspense that's sorely lacking from the modern day horror experience. Most films today strictly rely on gore or uninspired 80's nostalgia to stand out amongst their peers, and while I am a fan of gore, there should still be a somewhat intriguing storyline to accompany it.

Well in The Conjuring 2, Wan thankfully gives us a break from the norm as we once again follow the dangerous expeditions of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now of course they are still dealing with demon possession but what else do you expect from a movie called The Conjuring. This time we follow them all the way to England just after they have sworn off taking another case due to the brutality of the Amityville Murders. Lorraine saw something in her visions there that led her to believe her family would soon be affected by their timely interventions of the diabolical schemes of these demons.

But once they see this desperate and down on their luck family of five, they can't help but get involved in spite of all the doubt that surrounds their particular circumstance. Young Janet (a Natalie Portman lookalike in this film) has been possessed by the spirit of an old man who used to live in their house and apparently wants it back. So he terrifies the entire family by moving objects or people in ways they shouldn't in an attempt to scare them away. But what's different about this spirit is he doesn't just wait until nightfall to cause chaos, he does it during the daytime as well. And things seem to get worse as more and more attention is brought to his presence; he not only speaks through Janet but also begins to control her actions. But in spite of all of this, there were still skeptics who believed that this was simply a hoax. Is this just a highly imaginative girl who is seeking out attention because her father left or is there something more sinister going on than we can actually see?

Through the use of mood music, dark enclosed spaces, and the dreariness of England's weather, Wan is able to keep you on the edge of your seat without resorting to the use of tired tricks like jump out gags or silly CGI. There are a few scenes where he has to rely on it to help bring The Crooked Man to life, in a spot where things could have gone horribly wrong and completely killed the movie, but his directing prowess helps him get through the challenges of making the supernatural not look cheesy.

And it's this combined with his ability to get the most out of his actors that makes this film rather enjoyable. Conjuring 2 isn't the scariest film I've ever seen but it did have me saying a prayer or two during the middle of it. And any film that makes me do that gets a rating of FRESH from me.

Green Room

Whenever you put punk bands and skinheads in the same room, you’re typically setting yourself up for a night full of trouble. It will always end with banjo music and squealing of some kind coming from a dark room in the back when you mix aggressive music about hating your parents and angry white bald dudes who think that the big chested girl from The Waterboy is hot (that’s an American History X reference btw). Why do you think I left country Texas as quickly as I did? The second some of my short haired Caucasian friends realized that I liked the Stone Temple Pilots, they started giving me the eye after having a few beers. Ok, so that last part isn’t true but after spending 18 years of my life in a small town, I figured it was just a matter of time before someone tried to attack me A Time to Kill style. You can only outrun the odds for so long!

Anyway, I love movies with fake bands! I would totally go see Sex Bob-Omb from Scott Pilgrim and Soronpffbs from Frank (the movie with the guy that wears a big fake head) mainly because that kind of weird music is right up my alley. And even though the punk band in Green Room sucks, they were just good enough for me to risk hiding in the back of a skinhead bar to check them out too, which goes to show that my affinity for obscure music knows no bounds!

So Green Room is about this young punk band who’s on the tail end of their tour. The tour itself hasn’t gone all that well as they find themselves having to siphon gas from other cars just to make it from gig to gig. But they remain undeterred as they generally enjoy each other’s company while drinking, camping in the woods, and discussing classic rock bands. Well one of their last shows and interviews gets cancelled because their hookup no longer works for the promotion company that originally set it up, so in an attempt to make it up to them he hooks them with up with a show playing a dive bar that just so happens to be full of skinheads. They know the deal going in but decide to do it anyway because it’s a halfway decent payday.

However from the very second they pull up to the venue they’re completely uncomfortable with the situation as everyone just has this look of total disdain on their face. And it doesn’t help matters that they’re all looking at their female bass player sideways because she looks like she could be Jewish. They press on however and make it through their set, even after playing a sort of "F you" song to the crowd at the onset. And everything seems to be going ok until they witness a murder in the green room just as they’re about to leave.

From that moment on, they are held hostage by the bar’s manager until he and the owner can figure out how to properly handle the situation. Well as you can imagine, their eventual solution doesn’t work in the favor of the band and they are forced to fight for their lives as they try and escape. Now keep in mind that this all takes place in the woods of Oregon so the chances of them getting help from anyone remotely normal is fairly low.

On the surface this sounds like your run of the mill "fighting off weird hicks" horror flick but trust me when I say that this film gets a little darker than what you’re accustomed to. The director pulls no punches when it comes to the brutality of the situation. He by no means resorts to gore porn or anything like that but just know that attack dogs mauling people to death, shotgun blasts to the head, and the carving up of body parts via knives or any sharp object for that matter are all fair game.

The trapped band members handle the situation like any normal person with above average intelligence would and that’s what’s refreshing about this film. It never succumbs to the cliché’s that have almost killed, no pun intended, this genre. Oh and just know that they take the George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) route in that no one is safe, so don’t think that this film will have the usual Hollywood ending. You want to trust Sir Patrick Stewart because he’s the captain on the Starship Enterprise but in the end all he is, is another evil manipulative and parasitic skinhead leader. He’s great in his role but you could totally tell that this was the first time he’s ever said the word nigger in his life.

I rate this movie as FRESH and suggest you pop in.

The Invitation

I recently dated a girl who was crazy. Now I realize that every guy or girl says that about their ex whenever the relationship doesn’t work out but in this case it’s actually not hyperbole. She was in fact clinically diagnosed as crazy! I had known her for a while and sure, she was always a bit of an oddball who had this crazy look in her eye from time to time; but I’m an oddball too, so I just figured that this was yet another thing that we could say we had in common as we started our adventure together. Well as it turns out I was wrong, almost dead wrong (I know, I know. I couldn’t help myself)!

I didn’t find out about this illness until a few weeks in after she kept saying these off the wall things and started freaking out over me not putting ketchup on my hot dog. Now again, I had known her for years before this but I guess having sex truly brought out the crazy in her! Things got so bad in fact that I honestly started to fear for my life. I broke things off as quickly as I could as I figured it was just a matter of time before she started cutting herself in front of me or decided to poison one of my drinks simply because it was the new moon. I had no desire to be the first black man involved in a murder/suicide. People are still upset over the whole OJ thing; they would’ve blamed it all on me, resuscitated me, and then killed me all over again just for sort of looking like him!

Anyway, when I saw the trailer for The Invitation, alarm bells started going off in my head again! I was yelling "Get out! Get out!" the entire time as the set up for the movie looked all too familiar to me! In it, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira get invited to this dinner party in the hills of Los Angeles. His ex-wife Eden and her current husband David (Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman) are the hosts and they’ve apparently decided to invite all of the old crew together again for a reunion of sorts. No one has seen or heard from Eden for nearly two years after some tragic event occurred while she was still married to Will but one day out of the blue she just randomly resurfaces and has a new lease on life.

Will is obviously skeptical seeing as how he is still struggling with their loss and can’t understand how she apparently is able to let go of her grief after nearly killing herself just a few years prior to this night. He however seems to be the only one concerned as everyone else has made a conscious decision to overlook the creepiness of her clownish smile and her overall nonsensical joy. They’ve also decided to overlook the fact that her and her husband have joined this new grief counseling group called The Invitation, two of whose members just so happen to be at this party. They too seem to be a bit off but again, not too off considering the fact that they are also getting over something tragic as well. Everyone at the party just writes it off as it simply being LA and that this is typical for this part of the world. They just want their friends back.

Well in spite of all the evidence that points to the contrary, you never think that Will is simply being paranoid. There’s always a weird private conversation that takes place in a corner or an odd glance from one of the guests that keeps you on your toes. But as the movie goes on, you realize that in spite of the quirky behavior of the hosts, this really does just have the feel of being another weird dinner party with nothing sinister on the menu (again I couldn’t help myself).

Is Will just being paranoid? Are the writers of this film simply playing with your emotions and your overall sense of distrust? Or are we so overly concerned with being polite and not offending anyone that we’ll do so even if it means putting our own lives in danger. This is a mind twisting psychological thriller that has a jaw dropping ending! And after seeing this film I will never date anyone that looks like the crazy version of Liv Tyler again! Ok maybe I would!

This is the most uncomfortable I’ve been in the theater in a while and it’s because of that, that I give The Invitation a rating of TIGHT!

10 Cloverfield Lane

I don’t know how J.J. Abrams is able to develop, film, and produce a movie in this day and time without anyone knowing about it. With nearly everyone and their cousin being linked to social media it’s virtually impossible to get away with anything these days! Hell I can’t even have a random hookup anymore without my mom knowing about it ‘Kelly, so what’s this I hear about you going to Seattle to see some girl?" Dammit mom, let me motorboat in peace!

Anyway at some point someone will always sneak in a pic or a short video and leak it on to Twitter, Facebook, or Perez Hilton; so the fact that he was basically able to secretly put out a sequel to the blockbuster Cloverfield is astonishing to me. Now I did like Cloverfield but the whole stupid found footage shaky cam method of filming is so annoying that I never want to see it again. But thankfully for all of us, director Dan Trachtenberg chooses to film this pseudo sequel fairly straight.

Now this movie does mess with you from the very beginning, and by beginning I mean the trailers. It looks as though they pretty much give everything away in the preview. You see that Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who is just going to be mentioned as MEW from here on out because that’s way too much to type) is being held captive by the creepy John Goodman in his basement because it’s apparently not safe to go above ground anymore. Well MEW does eventually break free and presumably runs into a similar monster from the first movie and that’s apparently where the real story begins. So you walk away thinking to yourself, well what’s the point of me actually seeing this since I already know the major plot twist?

Well as you’re watching the film and you see her wake up in a basement, the overall creepiness of the film is initially negatively affected because you think that Goodman is really just a good guy who is simply there to help her. But as the story unravels and it takes longer and longer for her to actually escape, you begin to wonder if there is in fact a monster upstairs or if the true monster is in the basement shelter with her in the form of Goodman.

She at least appears to have someone to suffer through this odd and terrifying experience with her in John Gallagher Jr., who claims that he fought his way into the shelter because he saw what was happening outside. But it’s not clear if she can fully trust him either because he for the most part tends to agree with Goodman and his crazy ideas.

So why don’t they just attack this old man and get out? Well Trachtenberg relies heavily on Goodman’s physically imposing presence and his deep and surly voice to help you identify with the characters’ feeling of being trapped. By simply looking at him you can’t help but fear crossing him as he naturally has the look and feel of a violent predator, especially when he gets angry. There are a number of intense scenes that take place during normal innocuous situations like eating dinner or playing family board games like Clue that will have you ready to run out of the theater yourself for safety. But at the same time, there is just enough proof to make you believe what Goodman is saying. So you find yourself trying to justify his weirdness as him simply being an overly protective father figure.

Now just like in the TV show The Walking Dead, you do have to suffer through some moments where there is simply way too much talking about feelings and whatnot but by the time you reach the film’s jaw dropping conclusion, you see that it was all worth it. I went into this movie with some pretty low expectations but left in awe of the performances of everyone involved, well everyone but Bradley Cooper’s that is. He somehow still managed to suck even though he didn’t appear on screen. But everything else in this movie was on point and it’s because of that, that I give this film a rating of TIGHT!

The Witch

Every few years or so there's a movie that comes out that, if you allow it to, will affect you in such a way emotionally that it will wind up sticking with you for the rest of your life. I, for better or worse, have had quite a few of these moments in my lifetime as there was the embarrassing instance where I cried in the theater for the first time after seeing Ricky get shot in Boyz in the Hood. That was then followed up by the time I hooked up in a theater while watching Clair Danes fall in love in Romeo and Juliet (looking back I realize how gross that was but hey I was a teenager), and then there was the time I swore I'd never have children after seeing Chloe Sevigney get infected with HIV in the movie Kids.

Now I could honestly write an entire book on the number of moments I've had like this but I think you get the point by now. Well after seeing the movie The Witch, I think I'm going to have to add it to the list as well. I didn't cry and I certainly didn't feel like having sex after seeing it but this dark and terrifying film will definitely haunt me for weeks to come. First of all, I have talked ad nauseam about my fear of the woods and this movie does absolutely nothing to dispel that emotion. Second, the entire time I was watching this wickedness and depravity unfold on screen I felt as though my soul was going to light on fire at any second! Why on Earth was I subjecting myself to this? And why didn't someone tell me that these white people were going to be so pale?!?! That just adds to the overall creepiness of the experience; it's like watching a family of Powders fight against evil.

Now The Witch isn't your traditional jump from out the shadows scary movie, it instead puts its focus more on its sinister material. And as more and more of the plot is revealed and the gloomy mood is firmly established, you realize that you are about to encounter something that is truly evil.  In this film you first meet the family's head William as he is on trial in the township's courthouse for apparently ignoring some of their community's codes for living. He however remains steadfast in his belief that he is upholding the Christian standards they all agreed upon when leaving England to go to the New World and he happily accepts his banishment from their society. So he and his family move out to the woods to make a new life for themselves.

At first things appear to be normal as the family has settled in to their new surroundings and William and his wife Katherine have brought a newborn baby into to the world to join their little twins and the story's main focus Thomasin. But one day when Thomasin is playing peek-a-boo with the baby, he suddenly disappears and is apparently taken into the woods by something supernatural. Katherine is understandably inconsolable once this happens but she has no idea that the baby's disappearance was only the beginning of what will tear their family apart in the coming days. A series of strange events occur and the family slowly starts to turn on one another as they struggle to understand what's happening to them.

This film pulls no punches when it comes to depicting the horror this family is put through and I give the filmmakers credit for not succumbing to the pressure of the studio heads and actually challenging the audience for a change. When the final credits started rolling everyone got up in the theater with a disgusted look on their face which basically said "I guess I liked that film but I feel awful for saying so". And any movie that has that kind of effect on people has to get a rating of FRESH! Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to bathe myself in holy water!

The Top Ten Movies of 2015

As we get ready for the award season, who doesn’t like to sit there and argue over all of the crazy top ten lists that come out at the end of the year? I never write this article in December because well, we’re already inundated with countdowns at that point, so there’s no need for me to add yet another one to the pile. You have snooty movie reviewers hemming and hawing over movies that you’ve never heard of because they haven’t even been released in your city at that point (sorry but not everyone lives in NY or LA), you have the best albums or songs of the year lists, and then of course you have my personal favorite, the top ten newcomers in the porn industry list.

I’m just kidding, I don’t watch porn mainly because I can’t afford it and because they never came out with a genre that I can identify with. I mean seriously, where is the movie reviewer threesome porn? I want to see Siskel and Ebert and Betty! Actually, I don’t want to see that but you know what I mean! The only girls I get to see are on a 100 foot screen in a large dark room; and sadly I’m surrounded by other movie nerds who have also never seen a real life girl naked unless they’ve paid money to do so. So forgive me if I’m begging a bit here but just give me some hope Hollywood! But until then, here’s my breakdown of the ten best movies of the 2015 Oscar season.

Honorable mention:

I’ll start with the documentaries as there were three solid ones.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/05/kurt-cobain-montage-of-heck.html

Amy
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/07/amy.html

The Look of Silence
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-look-of-silence.html

And now the movies that didn’t quite make it

Chappie
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/03/chappie.html

Brooklyn
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/12/brooklyn.html

The Big Short
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-big-short.html

The Martian
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-martian.html

Spotlight
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/11/spotlight.html

Star Wars
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/12/star-wars-force-awakens.html

Ant Man
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/07/ant-man.html

Creed
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/11/creed.html

Diary of a Teenage Girl
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-diary-ofa-teenage-girl.html

Now I know a few of the films that only made my honorable mention list will probably be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy but they are all old and near their death beds; I take into account entertainment value and rewatchability (and yes I just called that word into existence). So having said that, here’s my top ten:

10. Straight Outta Compton

This movie somehow survived all of the stupid memes that came out around its release date and it also miraculously didn’t start any gun fights in the theaters. Angry Black men shouting Fuck the Police over and over again typically leads to trouble but not in this case. This movie gave you some great insight into one of music’s most influential groups while managing to also be entertaining and funny. This was definitely the surprise of the year.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/08/straight-outta-compton.html

9. Dope

If Straight Outta Compton was the surprise of the year, then this coming of age story was a close second. Wannabe 90’s hip hop nerds turned drug dealers on bikes made for one the year’s funniest and coolest films. And I have to say that this movie will make you fall in love with pound cake and hot Asian girls on Molly all over again.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/06/dope.html

8. Goodnight Mommy

This could be wrong but I think the last time the Academy nominated a scary movie for Best Picture it involved Jodi Foster, Hannibal Lecter, and Goodbye Horses. Well if they had any balls that still worked, they would nominate this movie for best pic as this horror flick took me back to the days of Children of the Corn and Misery.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/09/goodnight-mommy.html

7. Room

Brie Larson is a revelation is this film and her performance alone makes this a must see. And even though the second half of it kind of fizzles, the first hour of the film provides some of the most moving art you will ever see.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/11/room.html

6. The Hateful Eight

Tarantino, Westerns, and Samuel L. Jackson yelling; what else do you need to know?
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-hateful-eight.html

5. Inside Out

Pixar made a comeback in a major way this year when they gave us a smart, touching, and emotional film that everyone could identify with. For the longest time, this was my number one film of the year; that was until…
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/06/inside-out.html

4. Sicario

I saw this movie. I am a sucker for Emily Blunt, so I will see and pretty much love anything she’s in. But she takes a back seat to one of Hollywood’s best directors Dennis Villanueva. This dark and intense look into the Mexican cartels is one for the ages.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/10/sicario.html

3. The Revenant

Alejandro G. Inarritu once again gives us an up close look at a man reaching his absolute lowest point in life before finding a new reason to live; and thankfully for us that reason is revenge. He provides us with so many classic scenes in this film that he could retire today and go down as a legend.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-revenant.html

2. Ex Machina

Easily the best science fiction film I’ve seen in over a decade. Oscar Isaac continues to prove that he’s one of Hollywood’s best and Alicia Vikander will have you willingly abandoning real women for robot sex in a heartbeat!
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/04/ex-machina.html

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

This is the best chase film of all time! Not every movie has to be deep; sometimes they just have to have the ability to make you literally stand up and cheer in the theater. I did that at least five times during this film.
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2015/05/mad-max-fury-road.html

Crimson Peak

Every now and then I get the chance to work with this moody but funny guy that we call the Honey Badger. We gave him this awesome nickname because his life goal is to one day be one of the old men in The Muppets, so he can sit up in a balcony somewhere and freely hate on everyone that crosses his path. He is known for coming out of nowhere to purposely sabotage our deep conversations with random negative takes, simply to throw us off our game; and the best part about it is, he has this crazed look in his eye as he's doing it.

Well one day as I was writing my review for The Walk, Honey Badger started going off on one of his rants again. And as I was listening to him, I found that all of his hate started to infiltrate my brain, so much so that I myself started hating on random actors in Hollywood for no apparent reason in my review. Before I knew it, half of my review was just a giant diatribe against every actor that has ever worked in the past 20 years. It actually wound up being pretty funny but ultimately it had absolutely nothing to do with the movie itself (I might publish it one day).

The point is, after staying up super late Thursday night to watch Guillermo del Toro's latest offering in Crimson Peak, I kind of wish that Honey Badger was here right now to help give me the proper motivation to write the review that this movie so deserves. Hollywood pitched this movie as a film that would get you in the spirit of Halloween. It was supposed to have ghosts and a ton of chilling scenes that would have you checking under your bed at night. Well as it turned out, this was a cheesy love story that just so happened to have a ghost or two in it.

Del Toro has always been a storyteller who focuses more on the innovative visuals than anything else. And for the most part the spectacular images are still there, it's just that there's 120 minutes of the most boring love story ever told that also accompanies them.

Peak is the story of Edith Cushing's (Mia Wasikowska) marriage to the mysterious Baron Thomas Sharpe. She moves to England with him and his rigid sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) after the violent death of her father. She has a history of seeing ghosts ever since her mother appeared to her shortly after her death to give her a warning. Well from the very second she enters her new husband's house, she hears and sees odd things that no one else can. And within weeks of being there she starts to become deathly ill. So in order to save her life, she must figure out what's causing all of this before it's too late.

Now trust me when I say that I made the plot sound way more interesting than it actually is. The first half of the film is the lame courting period where Sharpe is trying to woo and win over the heart of Edith despite her father's obvious disapproval. There's ballroom dancing and jockeying of positions among the available young ladies in town, and it's all set to the backdrop of the late 1800's. It's basically the perfect movie for women who have a desire to see a live action version of Cinderella. And that's fine if this movie was released on Valentine's Day, not Halloween. I want to see ghosts scare people to death, not hear a five minute speech about how the Waltz is the perfect union between two souls.

And by the time they actually try and turn it into a thriller, half of the audience has already fallen asleep (hand raised) and could care less about what's happening on screen. Del Toro never took the time to properly set the tone for the third act, so once it arrived it felt completely out of place and as a result was ultimately ineffective.

If you're having trouble sleeping at night, might I suggest you save yourself some money and tape a round of golf instead of watching this boring mess. I rate this movie as really WEAK.

Goodnight Mommy

It’s always really interesting to me to see how each race reacts differently to what’s happening on screen in horror movies. Caucasians typically just sit there and appropriately gasp silently to themselves while clutching their significant other. While Asians, girls in particular, quite literally jump up and start screaming in their chairs; once again living up to everything you’ve seen in those hilarious YouTube videos online. And then there’s the Blacks and the Latinos, who you can always rely on to yell as loudly as they possibly can "Aw hell naw! Girl, get yo ass out the house now! All of whom, quickly reaffirm everything what you’ve come to expect from their demographics at this point.

So whenever I see news stories about people who have either survived or lost their lives to intruders or predators, I’m never really surprised by the outcomes, because typically their behaviors are reflective of their horror movie reactions.

Now the reason I say all of this is because I knew right off the bat how the two brothers in Goodnight Mommy would react to their particular situation when I saw that their "mom" gave them some refreshing Kool-Aid to drink for a snack one afternoon. Granted it was from one of those fancy pitchers and she poured into in a nice glass, but the point remains, there weren’t any Hi-C boxes for these kids! I guess they keep things gangsta rural Austria!

Anyway, I put mom in quotes because the story starts when two young brothers, Lukas and Elias, come home one day and see their mother’s face completely wrapped in bandages. She apparently has had serious plastic or reconstructive surgery done to her face, but the reason for it is never fully disclosed. You do learn however that she is a television personality of some sort, so you can’t help but believe that that had something to do with it.

The issue for the two boys is that she is not acting anywhere near the way their mother used to before she had the surgery. She doesn’t seem to be picking up on certain things that a normal mother would, she’s short and testy with them, and she displays oddball behavior like randomly punishing one of them and only cooking dinner for the other. Things get so bad in fact, that at one point in the movie that the boys decide to run away and seek help from the local priest. But he of course doesn’t believe them, so it’s up to them to find out once and for all if it’s really her or if it’s simply someone who is there to hurt them.

Now this isn’t a horror movie in the traditional sense of the word; there aren’t any hatchet men or killer clowns that randomly show up. It instead works as a mind bending suspense thriller that takes you all the way back to the days of Alfred Hitchcock. The weird angles and creepy set design the directors use to tell the story adds to the overall chilling nature of what’s happening to these two inseparable boys. And the fact that they basically look alike, makes you wonder if twins should be added to the list of common phobias like clowns are.

But towards the end of the film, you finally get what you came to see, a horror classic that ranks right up there with the likes of The Shining and Children of the Corn. Things all of a sudden take a turn for the weird and you find yourself squirming in your seat from all of the haunting images you see on screen; some of which will last with you for weeks. And by the time you walk out of the theater, you will feel great about the fact that you’re not a parent and that you don’t have to spend a significant amount of time around any children.

I loved this movie simply for the fact that it literally had me thinking about every scene I saw in it, just to be sure that I didn’t miss anything. And any horror movie that has blood and boobs in it, instantly has me sold. I rate this movie as very FRESH and I suggest that you go see it.

The Visit

For over a decade now I have repeatedly said that I would never write or pronounce M. Night Shyamalan’s name correctly until he once again put out a decent film. Lady in the Water, The Crappening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth are easily some of the worst pieces of trash I’ve ever seen in a theater; and that’s saying something when you consider the fact that I’ve also seen Ridley Scott’s The Counselor and all three of The Fantastic Four films in the theater on their opening weekends. But the fact that I didn’t include eight A’s and twenty five L’s in his name this time around, should give you some indication of how I felt about his latest effort The Visit.

In this particular film, Shyamalan was smart in that he chose to prey on the one thing we are all afraid of in this country, old people! Think about it, ever since Cloak & Dagger came out in the 80’s, every movie with old people in it portrays them as either killers, crazy people, or zombies; and sometimes all three.

Well in this movie we are introduced to Becca and Tyler, two kids who are on their way to visiting their grandparents for the first time ever. The reason why they are seeing them for the first time is because their mother hasn’t had a relationship with her parents ever since she left home at the age of 19 to run off with her high school substitute teacher. The two of them instantly fell in love and were determined to be together regardless of the consequences. Her parents clearly didn’t approve of this and apparently when she left, something so awful happened that neither she nor her parents ever talk about it.

Well Becca sees this trip as an opportunity to heal some old wounds and to help her mother reconcile with her parents. Her mother has decided to pass on the opportunity to go with her kids on this trip as she is not quite ready to face them. And as you learn more and more about these two old kooks, you can see why.

The first few days are full of what you would normally expect to see from kids interacting with their old grandparents for the first time. But as the week goes on, more and more weird stuff starts happening. They have logical and well thought out excuses for them but the entire time, the kids know that something isn’t quite right. They decide to try and get to the bottom of it and when they do, the results are terrifying.

Now in the past, that word meant something completely different for Shyamalan and your experience with his art but in reference to this movie, it’s actually a good thing. This film moves at a snail’s pace at times but there’s enough oddball activity that takes place at night to help make up for it. And another thing that helps is the fact that this movie is actually quite funny. Tyler’s desire to be a rapper leads to some pretty weak but hilarious freestyles from the 13 year old.

By the time you get to last act of the film and you finally know what’s going on, you will never want to go to your grandparent’s place alone again. Who knows, they just may ask you to get in the oven too! It hurts every bone in my body to say this but Shyamalan has actually put together a fairly decent film and I can’t help but give it a rating of kind of FRESH!