The Punisher (2004)

★★★½
The Bride has some competition. Uma Thurman's character from Kill Bill: Volume 2 isn't the only one going on a revenge spree. The Marvel Comics hero The Punisher comes to the big screen once again (previously seen in a 1989 movie) and, like Spider-Man and Daredevil, he does so with a vengeance, literally. The movie is an explosively good time, but it doesn't settle for pyrotechnics to carry it. This is a strong character-driven film fueled by an intense performance by Thomas Jane and a surprisingly sadistic performance by John Travolta, in what is probably his best role since Pulp Fiction.

The Pope's Exorcist (2023)

★
The Pope's Exorcist is a clunky and unimpressive exorcism movie that looks good but does nothing new in its presentation of a possessed child who speaks with a gravelly voice. I grew impatient as every minute passed. I started thinking of better movies in this genre, and if that's what I'm doing in the first 20 minutes, then that is because this movie kept falling short of even the most modest of expectations. It features frights, screeches, levitations, superhuman strength and even necks that twist around. If Linda Blair watched this, she couldn't be faulted if she stood up proud and took a bow before everyone around her and declared that she did it better. Even the puke scene was derivative, although it wasn't pea soup this time but blood. I suppose director Julius Avery had to draw the line somewhere with the nods to 1973's The Exorcist, but the inclusion of ghostly writing on a child's belly makes me wonder if anyone—anyone—during preproduction meetings asked if there were too many similarities with William Friedkin's iconic horror show. There's even a freakin' spider walk.

Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)

★★★½
I don't remember when exactly I watched Pee-wee's Big Adventure for the first time. It was on H.B.O. a year or two after the 1985 theatrical release, which came and went unnoticed for me. I did watch his H.B.O. special The Pee-wee Herman Show beforehand, so I was familiar with the character. The adult humor went over my head (Jambi upon receiving hands: "I've had something I've wanted to do for a long time"), but I was struck by the imaginative set design, quirky humor and colorful characters. Growing up, I envisioned Pee-wee Herman as children's entertainment, but his appeal never wavered upon adulthood. Pee-wee's longevity speaks to the child in all of us or a part of us that is tethered to more innocent times. Children love the bright colors and goofy antics, but adults can appreciate the surreal humor and artistic merit of Pee-wee's world. The actor who created the character, Paul Reubens, worked tirelessly for years to maintain the aura of this innocent man-child with an undefinable age. He gave interviews in character. The mystery was part of the presentation.

Prom Night (1980)

zero stars
A character in Scream says that if someone watched Prom Night, that person would know the rules of the slasher film genre and survive if such a scenario ever came up. As I watched Prom Night, I couldn't find any rules established anywhere in its runtime, so its educational value is in question. Its entertainment value is also in question, since there is not a single decent acting job to be found, nor is there any reasonable attempt by the director to generate any kind of tension, nor is there any interesting dialogue written to get the plot going. In short, this is a wasteful 87 minutes of stunningly awful story exposition.

The Perfect Score (2004)

★★★
High schools place way too much pressure on students to achieve greatness on the S.A.T.s. Most big universities will accept students who score about average. I scored a 1060 on my first attempt in March 1993 (630 on math, 430 on verbal). The guidance counselors actually told me to retake the test to get my verbal score up. Retake? As if my total score wouldn't be good enough, they told me to try again, which I didn't do. I still managed to go to college. The Perfect Score is a movie that examines the paranoia of scoring high on the S.A.T. to get into the best colleges. It's pretty funny and has a good caper plot at its heart.

Prey (2022)

★★★½
Prey doesn't just go back to the basics; it builds on the basics so that instead of getting a retread, we get an entirely new way of experiencing the Predator story while re-experiencing what made the original movie so good in the first place. Director Dan Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison have created a worthy entry in a long-running series that has included too many disappointing sequels. The premise alone is brilliant: Take the familiar armored and high-tech Predator alien and transplant him to 1719 earth and have him do battle with Native American warriors. It absolutely could work, and it does. This is a thrilling and bloody action movie that gets the period details right while featuring a strong female character with aspirations of fighting alongside her male companions. It's a return to the wilderness environment of Predator with new challenges like the presence of French fur trappers, primitive weapons and the wild animals of the Americas.

Party Girl (1995)

★★★
There’s an iconic photograph of Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the middle of a party. She stands still and smiles gleefully at the camera while revelers party on. The photo highlights the character’s position as the center of attention amidst the merrymaking. It is very likely that Holly didn’t know everyone around her. She was part of a scene, and she enjoyed it and thrived in it. It was a lifestyle. I thought about that photo as I watched Party Girl, featuring Parker Posey as a free spirit who throws raves and charges a fee so that she can pay the rent. Parker Posey—the Queen of the Indies who adorned video store shelves with a steady supply of movies throughout the ‘90s. By the end of the decade, she had starred in dozens of movies, most of which played at art houses, where she made her mark.

Police Story (1985)

★★
One of Jackie Chan’s biggest hits, Police Story (1985) is a wildly inventive martial arts movie with lots of action and thrilling chases. Using his signature style of fighting multiple enemies with any prop within reach, Chan is a master choreographer with an endless imagination. Throughout his career, he has staged fights in almost every imaginable scenario, often with a dash of humor throw in to make his movies accessible to all ages. It’s a formula that has served him well for many years and allowed him to gain worldwide recognition. Unfortunately, outside of Chan’s most devoted fanbase, Police Story is not likely to find much approval. The action is all there, and it’s terrific, but the slapstick is bad.

Passengers (2016)

★★★½
Passengers is exciting not just because of the action but because it carefully examines the full effect of the unenviable dilemma of its characters. Like 2004’s Open Water or the 2010 Ryan Reynolds one-man show Buried, Passengers features a small cast stranded far from help and having only limited means to survive the predicament. These movies live and die by the strength of the actors, and by that I mean their ability to convey the psychological breakdown and hopelessness of their characters. Open Water was about two scuba divers stranded in the middle of the ocean. That premise all by itself is bound to cause anxiety. Now imagine that on a whole other level, like stranding two passengers on a spaceship that still has 90 years to go to its destination. It’s a fantastic idea.

Piranha (1978)

½ star
Everyone has to start somewhere. For Joe Dante and John Sayles, Piranha gave the young filmmakers the opportunity to work on their craft in a throwaway horror movie, allowing them to get their foot in the door before moving on to better things—much better things like Gremlins and Limbo. Ditto for special effects legends Phil Tippett and Rob Bottin, who supplied the stop-motion animation and gory makeup here before showcasing their talent in Robocop and Starship Troopers. Those titles came later. For now, we have to deal with this mess. Piranha is dreadful, with bad dialogue, questionable decision-making and insane plotting. Only the climactic gorefest brings any suspense to the story. Beyond that, this is a disaster.

Payback (1999)

★★★
Payback is a movie with many twists, intersecting plot threads, characters that exit unexpectedly and a protagonist who lives up to the tagline “Get Read to Root for the Bad Guy.” Mel Gibson bulldozes through all of this with a fierce determination, motivated by a relatively small amount of cash that baffles his enemies. A more recent movie character, John Wick, went to war over the killing of his dog. That Mel Gibson’s Porter would take on the city’s Outfit over what began as a personal matter is perfectly in line with that kind of story. Take a character and show him commit a disproportionate amount of vengeance against his offenders, and you’re in for a wild ride. Payback would make for a good triple feature along with John Wick and Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer.