GreyHunter Reviews

Return to the Theatre of Terror (2023)

Mixed bag horror anthology

[7/10 · 19 March 2024]

Always on the lookout for a decent horror anthology that I haven't seen, I ran across this title somewhere and decided to give it 10 minutes to win me over. After 10 minutes, it was obvious that, unlike so many excretable horror anthologies out there, that this was a professional and talented production, so I kept watching.

First things first. The good: as I noted, this was pretty well-made. I don't know what the budget was (though the alphabetical list of thanks to people who helped at the end of the movie suggests it was basically a crowdfunded indie project), but whatever it was, the people behind the movie made good use of it. It wasn't perfect but clearly a cut above the average amateur affair. Also good: the writing was...pretty decent. Some of the dialogue was a bit clunky, but nothing distractingly so. The framing segments were okay, if a bit too hammy on occasion. One of the segments stood out from the rest, "Splinter," and I do appreciate the attempts to get in actual horror without going for upbeat endings in the other segments.

Inevitably, some shorts in horror anthologies will better than others. This is not to say any of them were *bad*, as such. They all had decent elements of horror, but only one of them, "Splinter." seem to really embrace true horror throughout. The others relied on bringing the horror in or near the very end, which presented a problem due to my main complaint here...the extent of unnecessary filler. The run-time of almost 2.5 hours elides into this criticism. The shorts involved, while clearly done with an eye toward good cinema, were stretched out far too long. The stories and their resolutions didn't rate so much filler, especially given how simple and straightforward they were and how little horror they actually had for most of their narratives.

Being well-made, and being that, even with my above criticism of the segments, it rates a solid 7 for me. Good enough that I've put the original movie (the one being returned to in the title here) in my queue to watch sometime soon.

Keep Delete (2022)

Just from the synopsis...

[4/10 · 18 September 2023]

...it sounded very much like a rehash of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Since it was only 19 minutes, I figured I might as well watch. After watching, well., it's still very much like "Eternal Sunshine," right down to the themes of recurring attractions bringing people together, like low-grade fate. It didn't bring anything really new to the table that "Eternal Sunshine" didn't already cover, and was frustratingly vague about the motives of each person and what sort of incident had brought them to this pass. Ambiguity is one thing, but the narrative was so basic and spare that there needed to be at least *some* backstory to make this short worth watching at all.

Without more backstory, it's just some okay special effects and two people reacting with either misery or cruel disdain, depending. Why they were reacting this way, and what events led to this point? Not a clue. Not even a hint. There's no meat whatsoever to the story, so there's nothing that makes you want to bother even thinking about it as the credits roll. There's considerably less depth here than your average "Black Mirror" episode (a series where it would have fit quite nicely if it had been better-written.)

Give Me an A (2022)

A mixed bag

[6/10 · 29 August 2023]

Most anthologies are a mixed bag, so this observation isn't really a compliment or a criticism. The main problem I had was that, overall, the anthology was just a bit...dull. Well-made shorts, for the most part, but I found myself taking multiple breaks while watching because, in toto, it just wasn't holding my attention. A couple got my attention for negative reasons -- despite knowing the basic premise of the anthology, I could figure out what they were trying to convey, or even what was happening. One, "DTF," stood out because it was amusing, if a bit predictable. Overall, though, most of them just kinda happened and I just kinda happened to watch, and I finished it with the feeling that I hadn't wasted my time but I also hadn't really felt like it was worth the time either.

A couple extra notes. One, I'm a straight male Gen Xer, so that obviously had an impact on my viewing and my review. Two, if you're one of those men who feel like men are being oppressed for some reason, you'll probably just be angry and resentful watching a few of the shorts. Personally I think you should just get over it, accept that the world doesn't revolve around you, and watch this movie with an open mind. But if that's not possible, you should probably skip this movie and watch something that won't upset you. Why upset yourself unnecessarily?

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)

A pretty decent drama and a somewhat disappointing horror

[6/10 · 6 October 2022]

First things first -- like many people, I binge horror in October, generally one movie a day from the 1st through the 30th, then, time allowing, two or three on Halloween itself. This movie was my choice for today (I've seen so many horrors that I have to look off the beaten path for new ones sometimes, and sometimes I just get lazy and re-watch an old favorite) So my disappointment stems largely from the fact that I was hoping for an actual horror to fill my daily horror movie.)

This movie had horror elements. That I'll concede. But it wasn't really, overall, in the horror genre. It was a decent drama, and had it been sold as that, with just traces of horror, I would have waited to watch it in November and would have enjoyed it to some extent. Unfortunately, the story of the young boy and the elderly man who became a mentor (of sorts, since the young man never really seemed to completely buy into the old man's rather brutal outlook on life) was interesting for reasons completely unhorrific and selling this movie as a horror -- as of now, that's the only genre tag on its IMDb page -- is likely to alienate people who might otherwise enjoyed the movie on its own merits.

Soul Eclipse (2021)

Just bad

[2/10 · 25 June 2022]

Poorly written and acted.

Just went through the reviews. Sigh. The friends and family of the movie's cast and crew think they're being clever by making sure to review or two other movies, often on the exact same date as their review of this one. Sorry, it's just as obvious as the ones who only review this one. Back to the drawing board for fake impartial reviewers.

Love, Death & Robots: Three Robots: Exit Strategies (2022) Season 3, Episode 1

Amusing enough...

[7/10 · 20 May 2022]

The episode's politics pretty much skewered modern views with accurate scorn. But the writing was entirely too didactic and lacking in subtlety. Just being on-point isn't enough -- the writing also needs to have an element of actual narrative rather than just going from one observation to the next and having the characters expostulate on the ideas.

It wasn't a bad episode, but it felt like the writers didn't put much effort into the dialogue, choosing instead to just have the characters pontificate. That makes for a boring story.

Goodnight Darling (2021)

An interesting start

[5/10 · 16 May 2022]

My 5* rating isn't indicative of quality, simply of what this short achieves. It's a well-made and suggestive short, with a heavy dose of creepiness. But it seems more like a trailer for a much longer movie than a complete narrative in itself. Ambiguity and what's left out can make for great horror, of course, but there doesn't seem any meaning to this short that can be worked out just from what we see. I'd very much like to see a longer version, which means the short did a good enough job to earn 5 stars even without anything concrete to really appreciate.

Treasure Chest of Horrors (2012)

I tried. I honestly tried.

[1/10 · 20 January 2022]

I like to give horror anthologies a fair chance. Even the worst can have a small redeeming feature, such as one director being clearly better than the others (if not necessarily actually goof) or one story might be a bit more interesting (again, if not necessarily actually good.) And the prospect of seeing Lloyd Kaufman in what I assumed would be a brief cameo) kind of made me interested in watching.

I have no idea if Kaufman's role was just a cameo, or if there was some cheesy in-joke about it to enjoy because after watching the framing narrative, the first short, and about two minutes of the second one, I couldn't go on and uttered a sentence that has probably never been uttered before : This is too low-rent for even Lloyd Kaufman.

When the acting is so terrible that you legitimately assume these people had never acted before, that's bad. When the direction and cinematography are far worse than the acting, that's...just awful. Let me be clear -- this isn't classic Troma-level bad. It's easily the worst thing I've ever seen outside of the worst home movies. Trying to claim it's just a horror-comedy (it's not even remotely funny) misses the point -- the filming and acting are beyond home-movie terrible, and the one story I watched was about the level of fourth grade writing. And any hopes that a different director would offer something worth watching was dashed when the framing, the first short, and two minutes of the second short all appear to have the same director and cameraperson. There was no way to tell them apart in this sense, and I suspect that the extra names were just the names of friends of the one director and cameraperson (and I suspect the director did all his own camerawork too) thrown in there to make it sound like a legitimate anthology.

Seriously, people, don't watch it. The words "labor of love" seem far less apt than "labor of rage and loathing" here.

Debunking Borat (2021)

The reviews are pretty funny too

[10/10 · 26 May 2021]

Amazing to see so many reviewers who are suddenly "politically in the middle" yet can't even make it to the end of a five sentence review without going full right-wing conspiracy theorist. That's less self-control than my preteen kids exhibit.

This piece isn't really particularly necessary and the humor isn't particularly incisive compared to the two full-length Borat movies. It doesn't break new ground, just treads the same ground as Subsequent Moviefilm. It's amusing enough, but watching two inane hicks (who, to be fair, seem like patient enough people when they're not spouting hateful nonsense) repeat the same old tired conspiracy theories that the reviewers here are repeating just can't really sustain a 40 minute runtime. That said, if you're a Borat fan, this will need to be on your watchlist for at least one viewing. Based on my critique here, I'd rate this a 7, but with so many snowflakes rating it a 1, I figure rating it a 10 will provide a balance.

Dark Matter: Episode #1.13 (2015) Season 1, Episode 13

Uggh

[2/10 · 24 October 2020]

I've been trying to overlook the frequently clunky writing, the cliches, and the (somehow B-grade) soap opera drama that reads like a 15 year old's idea of how adults interact, in hopes that the series improves enough to explain/justify the not-terrible overall rating. This episode was not the one to inspire me to keep going into the 2nd season. The characterizations were awful and a complete betrayal of the (again, frequently clunky) character development of the season. The conflicts were utterly contrived, and required that we assume that every single person on the ship was too stupid to think for more than 3 seconds about their conclusions and logic. There was literally no reason for any of them to believe a single thing they said, and plenty of evidence that they shouldn't, all of which was ignored in the interest of forcing the "tension" of the episode.

There have been plenty of less-than-stellar episodes the first season. This one, however, was just plain bad. I see no need to mince words. The writers were complete hacks who need to either go back to their roots and work hard to improve themselves or just quit and get a job that plays to their strengths, because writing fiction clearly isn't one of those strengths.

Ugh. That's really the only rating this episode deserves.

The Lost Room (2006)

For anyone skimming the reviews before deciding to watch, a heads-up: many of the plotlines were never resolved

[6/10 · 28 September 2020]

...presumably because the showrunners intended a second season that never materialized. Just a suggestion for the major streaming networks...instead of forcing us to go looking through reviews and therefore risking spoiler, if you're going to offer up TV series and miniseries, let us know that they ended before the plotlines were all resolved. Just a "Was cancelled in the middle of a cliffhanger" would be nice. It's not like y'all are losing ad revenue or anything if we choose not to watch a particular series because we don't want to be left with no resolution to half the plotlines.

Other than that, it was a marginally enjoyable show. One major plotline did get resolved, so at least it wasn't a *total* letdown at the end. Just mostly a letdown.

Audition (1999)

As a psychological study

[7/10 · 22 September 2020]

...this was an interesting, if not particularly deep, film. It suffered from significant build-up that didn't really *go* anywhere. For well over an hour, we were treated to a middle-aged widower looking for love (in a fairly skeevy way, deceiving young hopefuls and wasting their time, as Asami actually quite correctly pointed out toward the end) and a young woman with issues up to and including daddy issues (which, of course, our middle-aged man refused to notice or admit.) There wasn't really a lot of substance, just hints and suggestions, and the movie tended toward aimlessness. Then the action picks up a bit and the reveal comes and shows us...well, not much more of substance. The extremity of the behavior is hardly justified by the hints we got. This is not to say it couldn't be believable. It absolutely could, if the filmmakers had done away with some of the aimlessness of the bulk of the movie and spent more time dwelling on the history of the woman in question. It just felt like a bridge too far in its current form.

Incidentally, I've been hearing about how disturbing and visceral this movie is for years. The later portions of the movie are disturbing, no question. Visceral? Not so much. There were two sequences -- guy who emerged from bag, amputation scene -- that were fairly unpleasant to look at, but there are dozens and dozens of movies more horrifying in their imagery than this one. This one barely registered on the nausea scale. I can only assume the supposed walk-outs at Rotterdam and the person who fainted was publicity ploys, because I don't have the strongest stomach (I won't watch torture porn like "Hostel") but I barely raised an eyebrow at the scenes.

As I said, it was disturbing, but since the disturbing nature comes primarily from the character studies, it didn't reach anywhere near its potential because the character studies were fairly shallow and didn't do the hard work of developing the movie toward its conclusion well.

The Village (2004)

I remember when it came out...

[8/10 · 20 September 2020]

Carefully avoiding spoilers...

At the time the movie came out, there was a huge fuss about Shyamalan pigeonholing himself as a "twist ending schtick" movie-maker, with this movie being considered unfavorably compared to "The Sixth Sense." I watched it in the theater and while I wasn't extremely impressed (though I was a bit drunk, so take that as you will) I didn't think the criticism was fair. I hadn't really thought about it in the decade and a half since, and barely even remembered much of it. So I decided on a rewatch recently and came to the conclusion that I agreed with my original assessment, and actually found it more impressive to boot.

The "twist" is a twist, no question. Shyamalan likely was trying to accede to expectations by continuing to give twist endings to his movies. But this movie is actually a fairly solid story even outside of the twist. In "The Sixth Sense," the twist made the movie, or at least elevated it from good to great. Here, the twist is less an attempt at a shock ending than a natural progression of the plot and a thematic element to accentuate the story of the village and how the people came to reside there. Obviously the twist adds to the movie, but as a plot point rather than a surprise ending. This is most obvious in the fact that the reveal was basically done 30 minutes before the end of the movie, at which point we were less shocked than enlightened with regards to the nature of the events earlier in the movie.

All in all, a solid mystery/drama movie. I'm glad I decided to rewatch it.

Better Watch Out (II) (2016)

Umm...comedy?

[5/10 · 24 August 2020]

I won't complain about the basic plot elements -- it was poorly set up with little thematic follow-through to give it a sense of unity to the characterizations, but the plot elements are entirely the business of the director and writer. You either accept them or you don't. But I will complain about the lack of comedy. I love horror-comedies. I love dark comedies. Pitch-black ones. But other than some awkwardness that just makes you cringe rather than chuckle, I didn't see any comedy here. So we're supposed to be amused by some 12 year old being a horny inexperienced 12 year old? By bickering parents? By...recreation of a scene from an actual comedy? It's not in any way clear where the filmmakers thought the comedy lay in the darkness of the plot. And the depiction of psychopathy was, as I said earlier, poorly set up and poorly followed through. It wasn't believable...which would have been excusable in a dark comedy. But when there's no comedy to be found, that just accentuates the multitude of issues with the movie and its characters.

It's not a *terrible* movie, and the acting is okay (though I'm profoundly disappointed that Patrick Warburton wasn't utilized to the fullness of his comedic talents.) The pretty blonde babysitter-type showed depth and some talent over the usual horror movie trope. But that really couldn't save a poorly-constructed plot.

Also, I kinda hated that mid-closing credits scene. It just reminded me of how the movie was over-the-top and difficult to believe without actually managing to make it into black comedy territory. Instead of finding it amusing, all I could think was that she's conscious and there's no way he get a chance alone with her before she could tell the doctors and cops everything. In a black comedy, I could overlook that bit of logic because black comedies have their own sorts of logic. Here? Nope.

The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen (2014 TV Movie)

A few things to keep in mind....

[16 August 2020]

1) The title needs to be taken at face value. It's not a list of the 50 best horrors you've never heard of, or the 50 best horrors period. It's the 50 best horrors you haven't seen.

2) Clearly some people are going to have seen many or even most of these movies. In the Internet Age, it's pretty much impossible to find gems that nobody has seen. The title is a bit of puffery, but a reasonable viewer should accept that it's meant to convey a certain set of parameters, not )a literal description.

3) It's clearly aimed at people who aren't voracious horror fans. Voracious horror fans can certainly enjoy it for the discussion possibilities (rankings. what got left out, what were you pleasantly surprised to see, etc) but the basic aim of the show is to discuss horror that isn't Halloween/TCM/Saw/Poltergeist/etc. So they're offering alternatives to the ones most everyone can name even if they haven't seen any of them. This is a valid and useful service being offered.

Horror (or any genre, for that matter) fans have to remember that there's a big old world out there, and most of it doesn't share your drive to learn all you can about your genre. It's perfectly okay to reach out to the casual fans too, and teach them a little more about horror films.

Uncut Gems (2019)

Based on the love it has gotten...

[5/10 · 9 August 2020]

...I came into the film expecting to understand why Adam Sandler felt the movie was disrespected during awards season. All I can say is that, for such a frenetic movie, it was surprisingly dull. It was just the story of one man being an aggravating idiot for 2+hours. I'm not even sure how to review the plot except to say that "frenetic" doesn't always mean "interesting."

That said, Sandler pulled off the role very well. Being an aggravating idiot was exactly what he was going for, and, no snark, he hit it out of the park. Pity the movie itself became a slog within 45 minutes, wasting his undeniably-on point performance.

Oh, and John Amos' talents were completely wasted. The man, as Howard said, is a legend. He needed real screen time.

Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer (2018)

Hmmm

[8/10 · 12 July 2020]

Given that I'm not really a fan of the heavy use of electronica, and I'm a pretty straightforward boring het sort, this probably wasn't directed toward me as a demographic. And yet I found it very entrancing. The music, while not to my taste, was a good listen, and the imagery -- basically vignette after vignette, basically music videos interpolated into a plot about, well, 1984ish conformity -- was, as I said, entrancing. It shouldn't have worked for me, but it absolutely did and while I have nothing particularly insightful or profound to offer here, I felt I just do it the justice of rating it here. So, 8. Would, and probably will, watch it again at some point.

Before I Fall (2017)

Okay...

[6/10 · 14 June 2020]

I had suspension of disbelief issues. Judging by the fact that our protagonist has clearly never heard of the movie "Groundhog Day," I can only assume that the movie "Groundhog Day" does not exist in this particular universe, and I do not want to believe in a universe without the perfection that is "Groundhog Day."

Other than that, it was an okay movie. The repetition of the day seemed a little underwhelming because so little was devoted to her actually learning anything, or trying to fix things. Why not approach Juliet at school, for instance? Try things that wouldn't end in her inevitable death? Think through what she was doing to Kent by finally returning his "love" (it actually came across as a bit creepy and stalkerish on his end) and racing out to die, likely leaving him a complete wreck? It was all too pat, and the upbeat/downbeat ending was too predictable (and the accelerating montage was straight out of "Vanilla Sky") It just felt like the writer and director were trying to wrap things up without putting in real thought and effort.

So...an okay movie.

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Hail, Caesar! Boo, Octavian (or something)

[8/10 · 21 April 2020]

Having rewatched this movie, I came to the inescapable conclusion that this is my least-favorite Coen brothers movie (out of 11 watched, soon to be12 once I get around to watching A Serious Man.) Which is absurd, given that I still rate it an 8. The Coen's are masters of their craft.

The humor and situations are broad enough that a viewer can pick up on the general references and semi-inside jokes fairly easily with a passing knowledge of Golden Age Hollywood, but much of it still feels like a love note to other film enthusiasts and cinephiles from the Coen brothers, which made it feel a little inaccessible at times, as though we were supposed to find certain aspects hilarious but, without the grounding, we could only muster an awkward chuckle. The extended song-and-dance with the sailors, for instance, seemed too long and elaborate to justify the apparent punchline at the end, so I was left scratching my head, wondering if there was more to it, or if the Coens just wanted to a long musical number for its own sake. Granted, the Coens do riff on lots of genres and cultural eras over the course of their filmography, so this movie neither surprising nor out-of-character. Nevertheless, it felt more like a straight-up comedy of errors that relied on an intimate understanding of the era to bridge the gaps rather than a particularly cohesive narrative set in the period, with big-name stars relegated to what amounted basically to cameos with promises of plotlines that never really stuck.

But, dammit, it's still a Coen brothers movie, and better than 90% of the movies out there.

Embrace of the Vampire (1995)

No mystery here

[4/10 · 13 April 2020]

Alyssa Miano naked. That is the movie summary. That is what the people who made this movie were aiming for. In 1995, naked (and bi-curious) Alyssa was the holy grail of famous actress nudity, just as Jennifer Lawrence was until the iCloud leaks. Since the Internet was in its nascence in1995 and iCloud leaks weren't really a thing, seeing as there was no iCloud to leak, getting a former-child-star-strugglng-in-her-career Alyssa Milano naked on screen was a guaranteed winner. So that's what we got. None of the people involved cared about the plot or theme or message of the movie, and nobody in the viewing public complained about any of those. This could have been a movie about how to balance your checkbook and it would have turned a good profit just so long as Alyssa got naked while doing the math on a calculator, and was seduced by a female accountant she went to in order to get her taxes done.

At least Milano had a career resurgence after that. So everybody won. The studio made a profit, Alyssa transitioned from child star to success as an adult, and legions of '70 and '80s kids got to see Samantha Micelli naked. Isn't it beautiful when it al works out?

0 for plot, 8 for naked Alyssa (she was a hottie, to be sure), average to 4

Bloodride: Bad Writer (2020) Season 1, Episode 3

Not too bad, all things considered

[7/10 · 16 March 2020]

While this episode doesn't tread new territory, conceptually (Carpenter's brilliant "In the Mouth of Madness," for instance, or the much less brilliant but still charming "Stranger than Fiction," or that episode of "Masters of Horror" and so on) it does manage a couple of twists on the concept, with the final twist being just good enough to bump the episode up a point. Without revealing anything, that final twist did seem to have a plot hole, or, depending on how you look at it, a character error, but I'm willing to let that slide on account of the mental state of the person involved.

In a similar vein, some campy acting from secondary characters can be justified by the nature of the conceit here. I'm uncertain how much I buy the motives of the primary antagonist in the end, though. As with the first episode of this series, a time-crunch issue is fairly glaring, at least in this regard, because the character isn't sufficiently developed.

In any event, it's a pretty decent episode. Not an all-time classic of the genre, but interesting enough to be worth watching.

Bloodride: Ultimate Sacrifice (2020) Season 1, Episode 1

Uggh

[5/10 · 16 March 2020]

The frustrating problem with this episode is that the problem that kills it isn't the plot or the acting or the writing (all of which were...adequate if not particularly memorable.) The real problem is far more basic -- it was a terrible choice for a 1/2 hour episode of TV. The events progress far more quickly that a reasonable suspension of belief can deal with. From the mother witnessing what happened in the woods (avoiding spoilers here) to her calm, almost blase acceptance of the story as she sits drinking with the ladies in the backyard, to her descent into evil and then into pure psychopathy...it developed so quickly that it was impossible to take seriously as a story, or, for that matter, as character development. This episode might have worked over the space of an hour, laying the groundwork and allowing the characters to evolve naturally at the shocks of each new revelation. But in the short amount of time allotted? It simply didn't work.

And, no, the mother expressing general dissatisfaction with moving to the country in the beginning of the episode didn't remotely justify how quickly and blandly events transpired afterwards.

It had promise, but couldn't possibly overcome this very foreseeable flaw.

Freaks (2018)

A nice little gem of a movie

[7/10 · 11 March 2020]

This movie is yet another allegorical piece about intolerance and paranoia and/or the issue of terrorism. In itself, that's not a terribly original movie/book/comic book/TV concept. What makes this one stand out, however, is that plays out as a slowburn horror/thriller rather than an action movie or broad sociological drama. For the first half of the movie, the plot could go in so many directions that the intriguing possibilities keep the viewer's attention. Is there something off about the outside world? About the father? About the daughter? Is the surrealism of the initial 50s-ish suburbia viewed through the window going to play out in some unexpected manner? It's a genuine mystery made intriguing by the canny traversing of the line between suggestion and reality made possible by dialogue that is straightforward in its application but ambiguous in its actual meaning.

As noted above, the first half of this movie plays out as a slowburn mystery; the second half becomes a more traditional action sci-fi, and while I don't mind a decent action sci-fi (Terminator, Total Recall, other movies that may or may not star Arnie), it is the weaker and less compelling part of the movie. It's not bad by any means. It's just less interesting than the original mystery.

One last thing, regarding the child in the main role: The odds overwhelmingly favor the likelihood that the "OMG KID SO ANNOYING!" crowd barely in their teens themselves. It's astounding that so many people expect a 7 year old not to act like a 7 year old. Kids get angry, kids get scared, kids act out, kids have trouble understand the deeper issues (especially when the only adult in the given kid's life never tells her what's going on or why things are the way they are. We can, however, question the severity of the dad's approach.) Most mature adults, even ones without kids themselves, grasp this. There was nothing about Chloe's behavior that wasn't perfectly normal for a seven year old kid. And, yes, the premise of the movie require a younger child; it doesn't quite work if the lead is a 40 year old virgin.

And the young actress handled the role phenomenally, incidentally.

Night of the Living Deb (2015)

Well, I enjoyed it

[7/10 · 10 March 2020]

At least for what it is. It's no "Shaun of the Dead," of course, but given that "Shaun of the Dead" is the de facto "Godfather" of zom-com (and horror comedy in general, for that matter), it's hardly fair to compare this movie to it.

The movie lives and dies by its lead actress, and more so than most -- she's clearly the standout performance (which is a shame when a movie has the great Ray Wise) and she handles the comedy, physical and verbal, very well. Not to mention being able to pull off cute even with the trite "beautiful girl playing plain by having messy hair and unflattering clothes" dynamic. (I almost said "beautiful young girl" but a look at her IMDb page reveals that she was *40* when this movie came out. Unless there's an error on IMDb or this movie was shelved for a very long time before release, she's aged really, really well. I mean, good Lord, I would have guessed mid-to-late 20s, tops.)

The movie's main flaw is that it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be straight-up comedy or camp, something independent/low budget comedies occasionally suffer from. It vacillates between the two, which can cause abrupt changes in comedic tone. Trying for both just hurts the flow and coherency of the movie. Overall, though, while it wasn't the greatest movie in the world and I did find the comedy/camp comedy transitions jarring, I quite enjoyed it, and it was solidly written and acted (primarily by the lead actress, as noted above), so I have no complaints about the time spent watching.

30 Rock: Cleveland (2007) Season 1, Episode 20

In 2020....

[9/10 · 27 February 2020]

There's just something hilarious about Bill Cosby being held up as the self-appointed Guardian of Morals and Image for black people.

30 Rock did a great job of anticipating the 2008 election a year before the candidates were even nominated. Part of me wants to believe that the Cosby as leader of the Black Avengers was a joke before its time and it would be years before anyone realized what 30 Rock did there. I want to believe....