I can’t help but wonder if writers Matt Black and Laurence Vannicelli have. It’s a low rent affair that suckers a group of moviegoers into watching a violent horror flick that unleashes—you guessed it—demons.
More than three decades later, Vannicelli and Black pen a more good natured horror that traps five Christian teens in the small town cinema where they work circa 1992. After closing they chase a homeless intruder into an unknown basement, find additional theaters, movie posters for Orgy of the Dead and other unsavory features, and a canister.
Here’s where things get a little familiar. The teens decide to screen the film from the basement canister. But it’s not exactly a grisly horror film, like Bava’s. For these sexually repressed teens, it’s worse.
It’s porn.
Hell for sure.
Black and Vannicelli give director Keola Racela plenty to work with, whether touching the funny bone or the gag reflex. Porno is strangely upbeat and even sweet for a film whose villain (Katelyn Pearce) doesn’t deliver a single line or wear any clothes the entire running time (unless you count her merkin).
And it’s gross. You don’t even want to know what happens to Heavy Metal Jeff’s nut sack.
Four of the five teens are afraid they’re pervs in one way or another and are therefore headed to hell. (Not Jeff. Jeff’s keeping his edge.) Racela and cast have fun with this idea, thanks in large part to charming performances.
Porno nails the time period and the mood, delivering some
carnage-laden laughs pointed at both the uptight and the nasty. But Racela gets
a little lost in the storytelling. Porno would benefit from a serious
edit. It runs a mere 90 minutes but feels much longer, likely because storylines
spin out all over the building with little thought to pacing or tension.
Between the sloppy structure and some sophomoric comedy, even the brightest and wildest moments can be overlooked. (Well, not that thing with Jeff.) The weaknesses pile up and by the end, Porno feels like a near miss.
I can’t say I’m a big Ron Howard fan. I find his films safe
and sentimental. But I’d certainly say they were all competently made.
Until today.
What the hell is going on with Hillbilly Elegy?
Howard’s adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir does boast the one-two punch of perennial Oscar contenders Amy Adams and Glenn Close. Adams plays Vance’s unstable mother, Beverly. It’s less a character than a collection of outbursts, so I can’t even say whether she’s good.
Close, as Vance’s beloved Mamaw, gets more opportunity to
carve out an actual character. But like everything else in the film, Mamaw
exists in snippets to illustrate the Middletown, Ohio chains J.D. needs to
break.
The main story is of law student J.D. (Gabriel Basso) trying
to land summer employment at a firm so he can afford Yale next year. His mother
overdoses on heroin just days before his interview. Can he get to Ohio, sort
that out, and still make it back to Connecticut in time? Or will he be forever
waylaid by all the hyperventilating, acid washed jeans, scrunchies and
hysterics that populate his flashbacks?
Howard’s characters don’t show us much, but they do tell us a lot of things. J.D. tells us his mother is the smartest person he’s ever met. We never see even a glimpse of that, so we’ll have to take him at his word. He also tells us twice that he will do whatever it takes to make sure his mother gets the help she needs.
That’s supposed to be the heart of the story. Does there
come a time when you have to put yourself first? Is it ever wrong to sacrifice
yourself for your family?
Too bad Howard, working from a screenplay by Vanessa Taylor,
can’t find that heartbeat.
Flashbacks do little to differentiate J.D. (played in youth by Owen Asztalos) from the others who can look forward to a life of “food stamps or jail.”
Never does the film see J.D. as possessing any privileges
that may make success easier for him than for his grandmother, mother, or
sister (Haley Bennett). Nope. J.D. just worked harder.
The reason Howard’s film seems like it refuses to say anything, which gives it the feel of a poorly pieced together puzzle, is that it says two things simultaneously. 1) Redneck is a term elitists use to make themselves feel superior to perfectly valuable people. 2) If rednecks worked hard enough, they could go to Yale and stop being rednecks.
Well there’s an uncomfortable topic! Of course, that’s what makes it so perfect for horror. Any idea that automatically induces a wince or a grimace, anything you want instinctively to turn away from, immediately creates the kind of discomfort that only horror can truly manipulate.
It’s been used for lurid ends in films like Flowers in the Attic, and has become the source of comedy in others – Tromeo and Juliet springs to mind. But often, it creates a particular kind of tension that drives a film in truly horrific directions: Jug Face, Crimson Peak, Pin, Angel Heart, The Crazies.
Here are the films we think handle the topic best. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
6. 100 Bloody Acres (2012)
A testament to the entrepreneurial spirit and the bonds of family, 100 Bloody Acres is Australia’s answer to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Same body count and more blood, but a far sweeter disposition and loads more laughs.
Brothers Reg (Damon Herriman) and Lindsay (Angus Sampson) sell organic fertilizer. Business is good. Too good. Demand is driving the brothers to more and more extreme measures to gather ingredients.
Interesting the way writing/directing brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes explore sibling rivalry, but the film’s strength is in its humor: silly enough to make even the most repugnant bits enjoyable. (I’m looking at you, Aunt Nancy. Oh, no! Why did I look?!)
5. The Woman (2011)
There’s something not quite right about Chris Cleese (an unsettlingly cherubic Sean Bridgers), and his family’s uber-wholesomeness is clearly suspect. This becomes evident once Chris hunts down a feral woman (an awesome Pollyanna McIntosh), chains her, and invites the family to help him “civilize” her.
The film rethinks family – well, patriarchy, anyway. You know from the opening, sunshiny segment that nothing is as lovely as it seems, but what lurks underneath this wholesome facade begins with some obvious ugliness—abuse, incest—but where it leads is diabolical.
Nothing happens in this film by accident – not even the innocent seeming baking of cookies – nor does it ever happen solely to titillate. It’s a dark and disturbing adventure that finds something unsavory in our primal nature and even worse in our quest to civilize. Don’t even ask about what it finds in the dog pen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL50yBcw5wA
4. Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
Writer/director Rolf de Heer’s astonishing film is horribly marred by the fact that a cat is, in fact, killed on camera, so buyer beware. For most people, that will be reason enough to miss this one. But that just makes the director’s choice that much more tragic, because this is a really good movie.
Nicholas Hope is astonishing as the titular Bubby, a 30-year-old manchild who’s never, ever left the room he keeps with his mum.
Remember the Oscar-winning indie film Room? Remember how tragedy is somehow skirted because of the courageous love of a mother for her son? Well, this was not Bubby’s mum. Bad things are happening in that room, and once Bubby is finally free to explore the world, his adventure is equal parts deranged and soul-crushing. Hope is so frustratingly empathetic in the lead that no matter what he does, you root for him. You root for friends who will love him, for someone who will care for him, but it’s the resigned cheerfulness with which he faces any kind of abuse that really just kills you.
This taboo-shattering film is so wrong in so many ways, and yet it’s also lovely, optimistic, sweet, and funny. And just so, so fucked up.
3. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Director John McNaughton’s picture offers a uniquely unemotional telling – no swelling strings to warn us danger is afoot and no hero to speak of to balance the ugliness. He confuses viewers because the characters you identify with are evil, and even when you think you might be seeing this to understand the origins of the ugliness, he pulls the rug out from under you again by creating an untrustworthy narrative voice. His film is so nonjudgmental, so flatly unemotional, that it’s honestly hard to watch.
What’s diabolically fascinating, though, is the workaday, white trash camaraderie of the psychopath relationship in this film, and the grey areas where one crazy killer feels the other has crossed some line of decency.
Rooker’s performance unsettles to the bone, flashing glimpses of an almost sympathetic beast now and again, but there’s never a question that he will do the worst things every time, more out of boredom than anything.
It’s a uniquely awful, absolutely compelling piece of filmmaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcM5L-ZBmXk
2. The Loved Ones (2009)
Writer/director/Tasmanian Sean Byrne upends high school clichés and deftly maneuvers between gritty drama and glittery carnage in a story that borrows from other horror flicks but absolutely tells its own story.
Brent (Xavier Samuel) is dealing with guilt and tragedy in his own way, and his girlfriend Holly tries to be patient with him. Oblivious to all this, Lola (a gloriously wrong-minded Robin McLeavy) asks Brent to the end of school dance. He politely declines, which proves to be probably a poor decision.
Inside Lola’s house, we’re privy to the weirdest, darkest image of a spoiled princess and her daddy. The daddy/daughter bonding over power tool related tasks is – well – I’m not sure touching is the right word for it.
The Loved Ones is a cleverly written, unique piece of filmmaking that benefits from McLeavy’s inspired performance as much as it does its filmmaker’s sly handling of subject matter.
1.Oldboy (2003)
This is the one that’s utterly spoiled by the upfront knowledge of incest. It’s also easily the best example of the topic’s handling in a horror film, plus the movie is 17 years old, so we went ahead and included it. Sue us. You were warned.
A guy passes out after a hard night of drinking. It’s his daughter’s birthday, and that helps us see that this guy is a dick. He wakes up a prisoner in a weird, apartment-like cell. Here he stays for years and years.
The guy is Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi). The film is Oldboy, director Chan-wook Park’s masterpiece of subversive brutality and serious wrongdoing.
Choi is unforgettable as the film’s anti-hero, and his disheveled explosion of emotion is perfectly balanced by the elegantly evil Ji-tae Yu.
Choi takes you with him through a brutal, original, startling and difficult to watch mystery. You will want to look away, but don’t do it! What you witness will no doubt shake and disturb you, but missing it would be the bigger mistake.
Grief is such a provocative subject for horror. It’s a topic
ill-suited to other genres because there—in an uplifting love story or very
special drama—the tale is rarely really about the person who’s grieving. Those
stories are usually more interested in the people around the grief-stricken
whose goal is to alter the situation—end the perfectly reasonable process of
suffering that accompanies a terrible loss. Rush a happy ending.
Essentially, they no longer want to deal with someone else’s pain. Horror is different in that way. It’s very comfortable with pain.
Laurel Hightower’s Crossroads introduces you to those
other people, too—the father, who’s begun to move on; the grandmother, who
can’t stand letting her daughter have the attention. But because of the point
of view character in this spooky novella, you’re never more than a whisper away
from the desperate pain of a mother willing to make rash choices to end her
grief.
Chris stops by the site of her teenage son Trey’s fatal car
accident every day after work. She’s been doing this for two years, almost to
the date, when she cuts her hand on the wooden cross that marks the spot. Her
blood soaks into the ground there at the crossroads, and things will never be
the same for Chris again.
Hightower never wallows or dips into the maudlin as she
shadows a woman whose life has ceased to exist outside the rituals that keep
her son alive for her. The device introduces us to a character who’s
simultaneously rational and a bit crazy, a necessary component for the
supernatural tale the author conjures.
Congratulations are due to a writer who can create an
atmosphere where you can believe not only the supernatural events, but the
behavior of the central character, and Hightower has achieved both. We’re in it
with Chris, we understand her thought processes and we ache for her loss.
Crossroads is a tale about grief and about
parenthood, about what we do and do not learn from our own parents, and how
entities outside ourselves read and manipulate us. It explores a personality
type primed for sacrifice. Part of what make the novella so tough is that Chris
feels incredibly familiar, so deeply human.
Hightower knows how to work your nerves and deliver a gut
punch. She lulls you and then delivers a powerful emotional blow. You’ll be thinking
about this one for a while.
Nobody has more fun with the slasher genre than
writer/director Christopher Landon. (Well, maybe his writing partner Michael
Kennedy.)
Three years ago, the duo created a time loop to allow one
victim to return from the dead again and again and again and again until she
stopped the marauder. Happy
Death Day was so much more fun than it had any right to be, thanks, in part,
to a giddy appreciation of the genre and some great casting.
Landon and Kennedy are at it again, and this time the
premise and casting might be even better.
What if Freaky Friday met Friday the 13th?
That’s gold right there.
Freaky is as upbeat and lesson-filled as any Disney
coming-of-age film, and its body count is as high and as messy as anything in
the Voorhees universe. It’s a bloody riot, and Vince Vaughn hasn’t been this
much fun since Old School.
Vaughn plays the Blissfield Butcher—at least for a while.
But the boogeyman who haunts Blissfield teens right around Homecoming each year
steals a cool looking dagger while dispatching nubile youth at an art collector’s
house. When he uses the weapon on Millie (Kathryn Newton, Blockers),
their souls magically reassign. The evil menace wakes up inside the body of a 5’5”
high schooler while Millie wakes up looking like Vince Vaughn.
Oh, the hijinks.
Part of the subversive fun is watching Landon and Kennedy’s wish fulfilment, as the now-evil high schooler dispatches bully teachers, catty bitches and would-be gang rapist jocks. But most of the joy is in watching Vaughn.
He doesn’t overdo it, either. His gestures aren’t wildly
feminine—he never feels like a caricature of a high school girl. It’s still
funny, but the humor is far less built on a man playing a girl as it is on a petite
female inhabiting the body of a really enormous man. That’s mainly the terrain
Vaughn and Landon mine for physical comedy, and it is fertile ground.
And the fact that Vaughn so believably conjures the heart of
a teenage girl makes any number of scenes—especially the romantic
ones—delightfully sweet and tender.
And also, a lot of people die. This is not a PG-13 comedy. But it is a hoot.
Awkward teens pretend to date each other to sidestep the
school bullies, only to find a deep and genuine bond. That sounds pat enough,
but writer/director David Freyne (The
Cured) and a stunning cast have something far messier and human in
mind.
Welcome to County Kildare in the mid Nineties. Divorce is
still illegal, homosexuality a curse, the Irish army or the hair salon are the
likeliest post-graduation vocations. As Amber (Lola Petticrew) says frequently,
“This place will kill you.”
Amber should know. She found her father hanging in the
forest near the trailer court where she rents out spots to horny teens, which
she does to accrue enough dough to head to London the minute she graduates.
But to survive between now and then, she proposes the “let’s
pretend we’re dating” con to Eddie (a remarkable Fionn O’Shea). Because Amber
is gay. Gay gay gay. And so is Eddie.
No. No, he definitely is not gay. Not at all. But still…it
isn’t a terrible idea.
So begins Freyne’s semi-satirical look at the perils of high
school generally and sexual conformity specifically. There are delightful,
early, broad-stroke comic moments that simply feel like a cheeky Irish upending
of John Hughes tropes.
But that’s not Dating Amber. Not at all. The brightly
familiar comedy trappings serve to lull you into a comfortable space so the
film can unveil something beautifully untidy and really heartbreaking, something
simultaneously devastating and resilient.
Freyne mixes darkness and forgiveness in equal measure.
Everyone has their own shit to deal with, and an depressed small town full of
frightened people lacking in any real opportunity or choice is bound to take its
toll—on the gay kids, on the parents who probably don’t want to be married
anymore, on the younger brother who just wants to feel like his family is
normal, and on everyone facing graduation and whatever likely dismal future
lies ahead.
But mainly, Freyne is interested in how Amber and Eddie
contend with things. Luckily, Petticrew and O’Shea share a truly lovely
chemistry, creating the kind of bond you long to see for every desperate and
lonely teenager.
Their honesty gives every scene an extra punch—of laughter or heartbreak. Coming of age still looks like it seriously sucks, but Dating Amber is a keeper.
Normally, you’d expect the MVP of any doc about Michael Jordan – especially one featuring some priceless footage of MJ in his prime – to be the man himself. But in Meeting Michael, he’s upstaged by two kids curious about their Dad’s obsession.
Dad is writer/director Adam Kontras. An Ohio native, Kontras was just a youngster himself when he first idolized Jordan and the mid-80s Chicago Bulls. Now, his L.A. attic is bursting with impressive MJ memorabilia, including two special videotapes with some amazing behind-the-scenes footage.
At just 19 years old, Kontras was pulling the overnight shift at a news/talk radio station in Columbus. Through that gig, he scored a press pass for the Bulls game in Cleveland on Nov. 9th, 1995, and brought a camcorder. With both courtside and locker room access, Kontras captured a truly compelling moment in time.
He released some of the footage five years ago as a short film, drawing superlatives in outlets ranging from online blogs to the Washington Post. For the feature length version, Kontras smartly reframes the entire story as one he’s telling his young son and daughter on the day they’re finally allowed to explore his fan cave.
Though Kontras’s storytelling can flirt with self-congratulations, it’s more often laced with a sheepish wonder at what he pulled off, and some endearing self-deprecating humor aimed at his younger self.
As a director, Kontras (Fastest Delorean in the World, Fastest Delorean Part II) exhibits fine instincts for answering the questions raised by his on-court encounter. For example, footage of Jordan finally answering a merciless heckler sparks a natural curiosity about the garishly dressed front row loudmouth, and Kontras delivers. Bypassing this sidebar wouldn’t have wrecked the film, but giving some time to Eddie “the Heckler” Nahra leads to a richer experience.
It’s these details – some personal, some observational – that keep the film from feeling like a short surrounded by filler.
For Jordan and/or NBA fans, Meeting Michael is a must. But by anchoring the story through the sharing of passions – and by using a touching story about shoes to cement a life lesson – it’s a film with more of a purpose than just liking Mike.
Meeting Michael releases 11/9/20 on Amazon. $4.99 to rent, $7.99 to buy.
