Terrifier (2018)

zero stars
Terrifier is pure, unadulterated trash. I hated every second of it. Director Damien Leone gives us a killer clown named Art, who dispatches his victims in the most gruesome ways possible, but he doesn't stack up well at all to filmdom's more sinister clowns. Pennywise commits psychological warfare and exploits his victims' fears. The Chiodo Brothers' killer klowns from outer space were inventive in their use of circus props to hunt humans. The Joker? He's been analyzed to death. He warrants it. He's one of the greatest comic book villains of all time. Art the Clown doesn't belong in that company, nor does he belong in the company of Freddy, Jason and Michael. He's a one-dimensional killing machine in a one-dimensional movie that isn't scary, suspenseful, interesting or clever. It's witless and stupid. It's a parade of characters who meet a grisly demise for no purpose other than to showcase the special effects crew's talents.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

★★★★
One of the television show's enduring images is that of Laura Palmer's reveal. We see it first within minutes of the premiere episode of Twin Peaks, and we see it again towards the end of David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. It is heartbreaking. Those eyelids and her melancholy posture suggest the saddest of stories. Even as motionless Laura Palmer, Sheryl Lee was still acting. She conveyed emotion with a slight tilt of her head and that sorrowful frown. Hers was a life that ended horrifically when it should have been glorious. Blue Velvet opened with an immediate warning signal—that of burrowing ants—to suggest the horrors to come in a town of picturesque neighborhoods complete with white picket fences. Now imagine Blue Velvet was itself only the surface, and there exists a small town with even darker forces at work. Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth was an evil character, but the antagonist in Fire Walk with Me is a force of nature that feeds off suffering.

This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)

★★
The Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.)* has long been a thorn in the side of film critics, fans and independent filmmakers for decades. Its mission is to offer a voluntary rating system to help parents determine whether a movie is suitable for their children to watch. The organization sees itself as a guide to help with these decisions, but from the outside, the organization is a censorship arm of the big studios and theater owners that applies different standards to mainstream releases and smaller productions. Screeners for the M.P.A.A. view similar content in movies and grade them inconsistently, so that an oral sex scene in one movie (Single White Female) will appear in an R-rated production while a similar scene in Boys Don't Cry between women will contribute to an NC-17 rating. Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated explores this curious process by attempting to uncover who these screeners are and who backs them.

200 Cigarettes (1999)

★½
Movies with lots of dialogue can be great if the characters have something interesting to say. When they talk simply to talk because the writer didn't know when they should stop, then you get the endless banter of 200 Cigarettes, which is a wildly uneven tale featuring smokers, yuppies and partyers all mulling around on New Year's Eve 1981 before attending a bash in New York City's East Village to say farewell to the year and give 1982 a big welcome. The crowded cast is, I think, a cover for a screenplay with no idea how to use dialogue to create a sustained narrative and hold our interest. 1995's Before Sunrise was simply about two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train and decide to tour Vienna while discussing their hopes, dreams and expectations for life. Their conversations stemmed from a desire for human connection and diverged into other topics naturally.

Top Secret! (1984)

★★★★
I've seen the ZAZ Team's Cold War comedy Top Secret! too many times to laugh as hard as I did when I saw it years ago. I've seen it over a dozen times now, yet I can still get a good chuckle out of it. Even when I know what the next gag is going to be, I chuckle in anticipation. This kind of reaction speaks to how strong the comedy is. This movie has among the highest of joke densities that I've ever seen. At a short 90 minutes, Top Secret! is multilayered and stuffed to the edges with puns, sight gags, absurd dialogue and double entendres. The title sequence sets the tone for the rest of the show, and it's the funniest title sequence I've ever seen (vastly superior to the title sequence for Monty Python and the Holy Grail). It's a music video-style presentation of a Beach Boys-inspired song sung by the movie's hero, and it features surfers shooting clay pigeons (skeet surfin') while all manner of silliness plays out on the beach (the sunbather who leaves two impressions in the sand is a highlight). At one point, a crowd of surfers runs toward the ocean. Look closely, and you'll spot the elderly couple and two children among the adults.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

★★★★
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is the kind of movie I want to see Michael Bay make more often. I don't mean he should make more war movies, but rather he should commit to showing respect for the subject matter and audience first, and then deploy the kind of dizzying action scenes on which he has built his reputation. He is certainly capable of it. He made the excellent The Rock early in his career, and the more recent (and grounded) Pain & Gain showed what he could accomplish if he just focused on the story and didn't succumb to his bad habits. He does that more often than not. Pearl Harbor was as bloated as it was overly sentimental, and his five entries of the Transformers franchise are mind-numbingly stupid. I walked into this movie—based on the true story of the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya—knowing full well how much Bay could botch this up, and I was stunned by how well he handles the story, the action and the characters. Just imagine how much better Pearl Harbor could have been if he had brought the same level of commitment to that story as he did here.

3-Iron (2005)

★★★½
This review was written years before Ki-duk Kim's passing in 2020.

Ki-duk Kim is fast becoming one of the most interesting foreign directors (foreign to the U.S.) working today. His Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring was my pick for the best movie of 2004. In that film, he showed a fascination with the passage of time. He found interest in everyday actions, because it's the little things in life that can have a profound effect on how we mature. Kim's follow-up film, 3-Iron, also utilizes the passage of time as a way to develop a character, but he takes that growth one step further by giving it a metaphysical quality.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

★★★½
Top Gun (1986) was about the brotherhood, the camaraderie, the personal challenges. Top Gun: Maverick is about those things too, but it takes all that and gives them purpose and direction. Tom Cruise returns to one of his signature roles after so many years away from it and delivers a knockout performance. Once the student, he is now the teacher as he trains a new generation of Navy pilots for a mission behind enemy lines. This movie isn't just another entry in Cruise's impressively expanding list of quality action pictures. It is recognition that our time in the spotlight is limited, and that eventually it will be time to step aside to let others take the reins. I did that recently, having left my employer of 21 years because the rules required it. I received a nice sendoff, and my retirement will be sweet once I can start to collect, but I feel I could have done more, and I would have been in position to continue if I had made different decisions years ago. Cruise's Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell sees the end. As his commander tells him, his kind is headed for extinction. Maverick defiantly responds, "maybe so sir, but not today." He has some gas left in the tank, and he intends to get all the mileage out of it as possible before flying into the sunset. We all want to be useful; it's a strong motivator.

Top Gun (1986)

★★★
Tony Scott’s testosterone-fueled U.S. Navy recruiting film Top Gun promises to deliver the goods and does so with resounding glee. It’s as reckless as its main character, veering between exciting aerial dogfight scenes and characters who don’t really grow but react. It’s an early indicator that Tom Cruise could carry an action movie, something he would do well into his 50s with no sign of losing his step. It takes a risk by not featuring a traditional antagonist, despite its cold war themes, and instead internalizes the challenges for the hero to overcome. This works to a point. Watching the movie is the equivalent of downing a box of energy drinks, because once the adrenalin rush wears off all that’s left is the memory of what took place in the skies and that iconic soundtrack. Everything in between is largely filler.

Tremors (1990)

★★★½
Tremors is one of those amazing success stories in modern film. When it was released in 1990, it received good reviews, but it wasn't successful at the box office. That's where the beauty of home video comes in. Many times over the years, this format has elevated films from mediocre release to cult status. Friday and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery are two recent examples of movies that were wildly popular on video after unimpressive showings in theaters.

Train to Busan (2016)

★★★½
A Netflix staple for the last three years, Train to Busan offers not only a thrilling take on the zombie movie, but also a welcome alternative to arrogant Hollywood personalities who have become so insufferable as of late that one is forced to look elsewhere for big screen entertainment. This movie has everything you could want from this genre, and more. It’s exciting and gory, but also surprisingly emotional and very original. Yes, an original zombie movie. Though it uses the running variety popularized by 28 Days Later, it stages most of the action on a train and uses the location to its full advantage. It’s pretty exhilarating.

Touching the Void (2004)

★★★½
A camera crew did not follow Joe Simpson and Simon Yates up and down the west face of the Siula Grande (in the Peruvian Andes) in 1985, yet Touching the Void is every bit as compelling as the real thing. Their story has become legendary in the sport of mountain climbing, or so the opening caption tells us. During that extraordinary week in 1985, the two men scaled the enormous mountain. That was a difficult feat alone, since the mountain has many vertical planes and the wind chill factor goes well below zero degrees. Going back down proved even more difficult.

True Romance (1993)

★★★★

I have seen films from nearly every genre and nearly every decade, from Hollywood's Golden Age to the high art of the '70s to the modern wave of independent cinema. Of all those titles, there is one that stands apart from the rest. That is 1993's True Romance, a brilliant, wildly energetic and blistering masterpiece that puts every fiber of its being on a collision course with greatness, producing an explosion of crackling dialogue, devastating violence, varied personalities and, of course, young love. This is the kind of movie that gets better with every viewing. It's a testament to the talents of writer Quentin Tarantino and director Tony Scott to work in a genre that has seen many entries (Bonnie & Clyde, Drugstore Cowboy, Badlands), and come away with a funny, action-packed and thoroughly entertaining film.