NETFLIX AND KILL: THE BABYSITTER (2017) ** ½

Cole (Judah Lewis) is a nerdy, bullied kid that still has a babysitter (Samara Weaving).  Fortunately for him (and the audience), she’s smoking hot.  Cole wonders exactly what it is the babysitter does after he goes to bed, so he is determined to stay up late and find out.  As it turns out, she likes to bring her friends over to perform a human sacrifice. 

I really wanted to like The Babysitter, but despite a handful of funny moments, the movie often acts like it’s too cool for its own good.  The way the characters endlessly spout out pop culture references (not to mention endless obscenities) grows tiresome, and the on-screen graphics that occasionally pop up to add an exclamation mark on the proceedings gets old fast.  I mean, the whole thing is pretty much taken from Cole’s perspective anyway, so there’s a heightened sense of childhood paranoia already on display.  Having all the title cards popping up is just gratuitous.  (Example:  When Cole witnesses a human sacrifice in his living room, the letters “W…T…F?!?” appear just below his horrified expression.) 

Director McG is deliberately going over the top with the gore and the performances, which is fine.  I even dig the retro-‘80s vibe he’s trying to give off during the death sequences.  I just wish he was a little more disciplined when it came to all the Edgar Wright-inspired graphics. 

Even though the film is tonally a mess, the performances are so good that it really works better than it should.  Lewis makes for a likeable young hero, but it’s Samara Weaving that steals the show as the sexy and deadly babysitter.  No matter what the movie’s faults are, it still has a scene in which she and Bella (Amityville:  The Awakening) Thorne play Truth or Dare and make out with each other.  Because of that, a lot of its sins are easily forgiven. 

Thorne also gets the best line of the movie when she gets shot in the boob and says, “Can’t you just put a tampon in there?” 

NETFLIX AND KILL: DEATH NOTE (2017) **

Nat Wolff stars as a dorky high school kid who finds a magic notebook.  The evil guardian of the book (Willem Dafoe) tells him if you write someone’s name it, they’ll instantly die in the way you described.  At first, he and his girlfriend (Margaret Qualley) try to use it for good by killing criminals under the guise of an avenging angel named Kira.  His detective father (Shea Whigham) is quickly put on the case and joins forces with an unconventional profiler (Lakeith Stanfield) to bring him down. 

Wolff is pretty in the good lead.  I liked the fact that even though he had a book that possessed evil powers, he still screams like a girl whenever he’s in danger.  He has a likeable chemistry with Qualley, who looks a little like a young Eva Green, and they make some of the film’s more tedious sections tolerable just because they are fun to watch.  Willem Dafoe basically plays The Green Goblin again, but dressed up as a porcupine man cosplaying as the Joker.  Whigham has some good moments as Wolff’s father, but Stanfield’s character is annoying.  I’m sure he’s a talented performer in other films; it’s just that his character’s eccentric behavior gets on your nerves almost instantly. 

Death Note was based on a manga, which is probably why it pretty much makes no sense.  I mean, the book just drops out of the sky and Wolff picks it up.  That’s your opening scene!  I guess this was one of those deals where I had to read a comic book prequel or watch an anime short beforehand to figure out what was going on.   

Some of the death scenes have a Final Destination quality about them.  Most of the kills are weak though.  I guess it’s novel that the characters used the book’s power on a global scale instead of just using it to get back at bullies, but the approach is just too clunky and the book's endless list of “rules” gets irritating almost from the get-go.

NETFLIX AND KILL: 1922 (2017) ***

Thomas Jane has a pretty good track record when it comes to Stephen King adaptations.  I happen to think Dreamcatcher is a bug-nuts minor classic and The Mist has one of the best horror movie endings of all time.  I’m happy to report that 1922 is another winner from King and Jane. 

Jane stars as a proud farmer whose wife (Molly Parker) wants to sell off her family’s farmland.  Jane won’t hear of it.  Farming is in his blood and he doesn’t want to give the land up.  Besides, it’s all he knows.  She’s headstrong though and won’t budge.  He soon begins plotting with his son (Dylan Schmid) to bump her off in order to preserve their way of life. 

Screenwriter/director Zak Hilditch does a good job of painting the characters in short, economical strokes.  They are desperate and conniving people driven by greed and the way they lie and corrupt to get what they want evokes the work of Jim Thompson.  Hilditch’s use of dark colors and placement of shadows in the early going is more Film Noir than horror movie.  Farm Noir, if you will. 

The second act is when the horror elements start coming into play.  There’s even a subplot about killer rats that may or may not be a reincarnation of Parker’s vengeful spirit.  The sounds of the rats running, screeching, and scratching behind the walls are quite effective.  Anyone who’s ever had a rodent problem can feel some empathy for Jane’s plight.  (Well, with his rat problem, that is.)   

The Farm Noir first half was a tad more successful for me than the stuff with the killer rats.  Both portions of the film have their moments of quiet eeriness though.  It’s just when I think back to the movie, it’ll be the early scenes of Jane manipulating his son that I’ll remember.  Some of the detours 1922 takes in the second act (like Schmid’s evolution into a ruthless bank robber) are a bit unnecessary too, and it probably runs on a good ten minutes longer than it needed to.   

If anything, 1922 is a reminder of how great Jane can really be.  With his steel-eyed stare and speaking out of clenched teeth with a thick country drawl, he does some of his finest character work of his entire career.  Heck, he even makes you feel a little sympathy for him, which considering what a cold-hearted bastard he is in the movie, isn’t an easy feat.

LEATHERFACE (2017) ** ½

Remember Mary Harron’s wonderful indie cult classic I Shot Andy Warhol?  Remember Lili Taylor’s mesmerizing performance as the man-hating, SCUM Manifesto-writing, Andy Warhol-shooting Valerie Solanas?  Remember Stephen Dorff’s heartbreaking turn as the enigmatic transgender superstar Candy Darling?  They were so terrific together that I have spent the last 21 years wondering what it would take to team up those two titans of indie cinema again. 

As it turns out all it took was… Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 8?!?!   

What’s odd about Leatherface is that it’s the second film in the Texas Chainsaw series to be called Leatherface (after Leatherface, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3).  Last time I remember something like that happening was when the fourth Rambo movie came out and they called it Rambo, just like Rambo:  First Blood Part 2.  This also happens to be the second prequel in the series.  In fact, two out of the last three installments have been origin tales if you can believe it.   

Not that a die-hard TCM fans (that’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre fans, not Turner Classic Movie fans) would complain as long as it delivered on the gore.  Oh boy, it sure does.  There’s plenty of red stuff and squishy body parts to go around.  I just wish it felt more like an honest-to-God Chainsaw movie. 

You can’t blame directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (the team that did the amazing Inside) for trying something new.  Even though this is yet another prequel, it focuses more on how Leatherface became Leatherface rather than the usual sawing and slashing.  That means if you came looking for the usual Chainsaw thrills, you might be a tad disappointed.  With the exception of the opening birthday party scene and the last five minutes or so, this prequel is skimpy when it comes to sawing.  There is not a single meat hook in sight.  Sigh. 

This entry is more of a pastiche of other movies than a logical expansion of the Chainsaw series.  I probably missed some of the references, but there were scenes that copied/stole from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Natural Born Killers, Necromantik, Of Mice and Men (yes, Of Mice and Men), The Revenant, and Hannibal.  Okay, so maybe Bustillo and Maury weren’t trying for something new after all. 

The plot is all over the place.  Dorff plays a sheriff whose daughter is killed by the infamous Sawyer clan.  He doesn’t have any proof that will hold up in court, but he makes sure that the demented matriarch (Taylor) will feel his wrath when he sends her kids to child protective services.  Years later, Ms. Sawyer turns up at the nuthouse where her younglings are stashed and instigates a massive riot, which allows her kids to escape.  While the kids try to make their way home, the sheriff sets out to make their life a living hell. 

So, as you can see, it doesn’t really sound like any Chainsaw movie you or I ever saw (no pun intended).  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not bad.  Dorff in particular is excellent.  There’s just a couple of goofy plot devices (like trying to make Leatherface’s true identity a mystery throughout the picture, which doesn’t work at all) and lame stalling tactics that get in the way of the fun.  Still, it’s almost worth watching just for the gore alone.  It’s just that when you hear the Inside guys are directing a TCM flick, you have a certain amount of expectations.  I can’t say those expectations were met, but I can say that this is the best Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel AND the best Texas Chainsaw film that has the word Leatherface in the title, so that in itself is a minor victory. 

THE LADIES CLUB (1986) ** ½

Karen Austin stars as a cop who is raped in her own home by a gang of thugs.  After her attackers get off scot free, she receives an outpouring of mail from rape survivors.  She decides to form a club with her doctor and invites the women into her home to talk about their experiences.  Before long, they decide to stop talking and do something about it.  Together, they go out at night targeting, drugging, and castrating known rapists. 

The Ladies Club is a solid exploitation picture that fuses revenge fantasy with social commentary.  It’s not always successful on either score, but you have to give it points for trying.  Things get off to a fine start though and the scenes of the women picking up rapists in bars and dropping them off to the doctor for low-rent castrations are often quite funny.  Despite that, it’s not nearly as nasty or as exploitative as it could have been.  In fact, given the subject matter, it’s ultimately kind of toothless.  With a few edits here and there, it could’ve easily played on Lifetime.  The ending is a bit pat too.   

The supporting cast is solid.  Diana Scarwid does a fine job as one of the ladies and Arliss Howard is pretty good as her concerned husband.  It’s Nicholas Worth who is the most memorable as a scumbag rapist who justly gets what’s coming to him. 

AKA:  The Violated.  AKA:  The Sisterhood.

NETFLIX AND KILL: EXTRAORDINARY TALES (2015) **

Director Raoul Garcia did a nifty feat in adapting five Edgar Allan Poe stories into animation form.  Many of the stories have been done to death, so the animation is a novel way to keep them feeling fresh.  He was also able to get a couple of genre all-stars to narrate the tales, some of them from beyond the grave.  While the results are uneven at best, it’s no worse than most anthology horror films. 

In The Wraparound Story (**), Edgar Allan Poe is reincarnated as a raven.  He flies to a graveyard to brood in solitude, but winds up conversing with the statue of Death.  These sequences are slight to say the least, and they don’t really make much of an impression.  They’re really nothing more than padding to get you from one story to the other. 

The Fall of the House of Usher (** ½), narrated by Christopher Lee, recounts the familiar tale of Roderick Usher.  The animation is well done, but the highpoint is easily Lee’s vocal performance.  The gravitas his voice lends to the proceedings is immeasurable and makes up for the skimpy story. 

The Tell-Tale Heart (***), narrated by Bela Lugosi, is about a guy who kills an old man and buries the body in the floorboards.  The cops arrive on scene and the sound of the dead man’s beating heart drives the murderer insane.  The abstract black and white animation in this segment is reminiscent of Sin City.  The narration by Lugosi is wonderful too.  While the recording itself is creaky and scratchy, it adds to the overall atmosphere.  Again, the story is a bit too short to get the full effect, but it’s worth it just for Lugosi. 

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (** ½) is narrated by the Warlock himself, Julian Sands.  It’s about a doctor who mesmerizes his dying friend.  This one has an old school E.C. Comics vibe to it that is a lot of fun.  As with the other tales, it is slight, and suffers from a long-winded set-up, but it isn’t bad. 

The next tale is The Pit and the Pendulum (**) and it was narrated by Guillermo del Toro.  A condemned man awaits his sentencing from the Inquisition.  The animation is a bit more polished than in previous stories, but it lacks the cool sheen of The Tell-Tale Heart.  The story is slow moving, the pacing dawdles, and the ending is a bit of a letdown.  Del Toro’s narration leaves something to be desired too. 

The Masque of the Red Death (**) is the final tale.  Although it contains no narration, it does feature dialogue that is recited by Roger Corman, who of course, directed the original film.  Corman’s involvement is welcome, but honestly, his version was a lot better.  I did enjoy the animation though as it looks like a water-color Disney movie.  While the animation is vibrant and abstract, the story itself a bit slow moving.  It doesn’t really pick up until the Red Death shows up, and even then, it’s too little, too late.

NETFLIX AND KILL: TALES OF HALLOWEEN (2015) ** ½

Tales of Halloween gives us ten intertwined All Hallows Eve-themed horror stories.  It’s similar to the superior Trick R’ Treat in that characters from other stories turn up in different stories.  Adrienne Barbeau acts as our host, trading in on her role in The Fog as the silky-voiced radio DJ narrator.  There are also a lot of cameos by horror directors sprinkled about, which add to the fun. 

The first story is Sweet Tooth (***).  A babysitter and her boyfriend frighten a young boy by telling him about the local legend “Sweet Tooth”.  It seems the kid found his parents eating all his candy on Halloween night and killed them in a fit of rage.  After the boy goes to bed, the babysitter and her boyfriend eat all his candy and Sweet Tooth comes after them.   

This segment has a great hook.  The camerawork is a lot like John Carpenter and there are a lot of nods to his work.  The gore is also pretty sweet (no pun intended), but it’s a shame the monster looks so damned rubbery. 

The Night Billy Raised Hell (**) was directed by Darren Lynn (Saw 2-4) Bousman and it’s about a boy who is dared to egg the house of a neighbor who never celebrates Halloween.  The neighbor (Barry Bostwick), who wears a top hat to conceal his horns, catches him and makes him go around town playing increasingly mean-spirited pranks.  Eventually the duo takes to robbing trick or treaters at gunpoint for their candy. 

This segment has a good set-up.  Unfortunately, once we meet the neighbor, it all goes out the window.  I like Bostwick and all, but his performance is way too hammy.  I could’ve also done without all the annoying and unfunny comedic sound effects too.  At least we get a cameo by the ever-sexy Adrianne Curry playing herself. 

Trick (***) by Adam (The Toolbox Murders remake) Gierasch stars B-movie favorites Tiffany Shepis and Trent Haaga.  Four friends watch Night of the Living Dead while getting wasted and handing out candy.  One trick or treater comes to the door and stabs Haaga.  While his friends try to figure out what to do, they are picked off one by one by knife-wielding kids in costumes. 

After a silly second episode, this one gets the job done.  It’s simple, but effective and Gierasch does a good job at making the unlikely premise scary.  The rat poison death is particularly gruesome.   

The Weak and the Wicked (** ½) is from Paul Solet, the director of Grace.  A young man wants to get revenge on the street punks who burned his family alive.  In order to do so, he must ask for help from an unlikely source. 

Like Trick, this one is simple.  Perhaps a little too simple.  As with the first episode it suffers from a weak monster, but I did enjoy the performances by the cartoony killer street gang. 

Grim Grinning Ghost (** ½) is up next.  Lin Shaye tells a ghost story at a party about an evil spirit that kills you if you turn around.  Naturally, her daughter encounters the same ghost on her way home. 

The scene of Lin Shaye telling the story is effective, mostly because it’s always fun to watch her ham it up.  The rest of the tale is competently done.  However, the ending is way too abrupt to make much of an impact. 

Ding Dong (**) by Lucky (May) McKee is a bit of a disappointment.  A couple who lost their child the previous Halloween decide to go all out with scaring kids that come to the front door.  In doing so, they try to hash out their marital problems. 

Ding Dong benefits from the bravura performance by Polyanna MacIntosh, who plays the wicked domineering wife.  I’m not sure what all the shots of her painted red and leering at the camera were all about, but she at least looks great.  The Hansel and Gretel theme that runs throughout this story never really works though.  That’s mostly because the narrative is so fractured and borderline incomprehensible.   

This Means War (***) finds two neighbors (Dana Gould and James Duval) trying to outdo each other with their Halloween decorations.  When it becomes clear that neither man will back down, they set out to destroy each other’s decorations.  It all ends in an all-out street fight between the two. 

This segment plays like a Halloween variation on Deck the Halls.  It isn’t scary at all, but it’s a welcome breath of fresh air after the disjointed Ding Dong.  Gould and Duval are well cast as the warring neighbors and both men get their moments to shine.   

Friday the 31^st (****) by Mike Mendez is by far the best story of the lot.  A girl in a Dorothy costume is pursued by a masked killer.  After he murders her with spear, he is visited by a trick or treating alien.  When the killer doesn’t have a treat to give, the alien possesses Dorothy to get a trick. 

This one is a clever mash-up of slasher movie and alien invasion.  Mendez does the slasher thing beautifully.  I can see him directing a bona fide Jason movie down the road.  The alien is really cool too and is done through old school stop-motion animation.  The ending is a hoot.  Think Evil Dead Meets Monty Python.  If only the other stories were this much fun. 

The Ransom of Rusty Rex (** ½) by Ryan (Abominable) Schifrin is about a pair of kidnappers who hold a millionaire’s son for ransom.  They quickly realize he’s not exactly human.  Even worse, he’s HUNGRY.   

The twist ending of this one was fairly obvious from the get-go.  However, Schifrin goes through the motions in a competent fashion.  There’s more comedy than horror here, and while it’s not entirely successful, it’s a decent enough story. 

Things end of a positive note with Bad Seed (***), directed by Neil (Doomsday) Marshall.  It’s all about a killer Jack O’ Lantern.  After it bites the head off the guy who carved it, the pumpkin goes on a rampage. 

Bad Seed has a winning sense of humor about it.  (I particularly liked the scene with the police sketch artist.)  It also does a nice job of tying all the previous stories together.  Marshall films the pumpkin attacks with panache too.  It’s just a shame they couldn’t come up with a satisfying ending.

NETFLIX AND KILL: HOLIDAYS (2016) ** ½

Usually horror anthologies are wildly inconsistent endeavors.  Most times you have to sit through two or three clunky stories to get to a fun and/or memorable segment.  Holidays is different from the rest in that nearly all the stories are about as good (well, goodish) as the one that preceded it.  The stories themselves also feature a lot of the same faults (mostly crummy endings), but it’s still worth a look for fans of the subgenre. 

The first story, Valentine’s Day (** ½) was directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team who did Starry Eyes.  It’s about a bullied teenage girl who has a crush on her swim coach.  After she is pushed off the diving board by one of her tormentors, she sets out to get revenge. 

This tale has a distinct Carrie vibe to it.  (One of the girls even wears the same hat that P.J. Soles wore in Carrie.)  The strong set-up that succinctly establishes the heroine’s bullying is undermined by the rushed and unsatisfying finale.  Some of the fantasy sequences are a bit too tongue in cheek too, which makes for an inconsistent tone. 

St. Patrick’s Day (** ½), directed by Gary (Dracula Untold) Shore, is about an elementary school teacher with a problem student.  She tries to teach the class about the origins of St. Patrick’s Day and is soon plagued by visions of snakes.  Eventually, she learns she’s pregnant with a demonic snake baby. 

This segment has a real fever dream type of quality.  Shore tosses in everything from bizarre visions, to Wicker Man-inspired scenes of pagan rituals, to a disgusting birthing scene.  None of it quite sticks, but it gets points for sheer weirdness alone.   

Easter (** ½) is about a little girl who’s confused with the whole Easter Bunny/Jesus connection.  (“It’s kind of like a scary version of E.T.!”)  That night, she’s visited by a bizarre amalgam of Jesus and the Easter Bunny who wants her to join his ranks. 

Easter features some very odd imagery (like chicks hatching from Bunny Christ’s wounds) and a weird looking creature.  Like the other stories, it’s more about setting an off-kilter mood than telling a straight story.  Like Valentine’s Day, it ends much too abruptly to be satisfying though. 

Mother’s Day (** ½) revolves around a woman who habitually terminates her pregnancies.  Her doctor sends her to a remote hippie clinic in the desert ran exclusively by women.  There, they perform an ancient rite on her and hold her prisoner so that she can give birth to… something. 

The naked hippie rituals and freak-out sequences are the best part about this story.  Like St. Patrick’s Day, it revolves around pregnancies and strange visions.  It ends with an effective exclamation mark, but the journey to that moment is uneven to say the least. 

Father’s Day (** ½) focuses on a young woman who’s still reeling from the disappearance of her father.  On Father’s Day, an old tape of her father’s voice winds up on her doorstep.  She then goes off looking for him to uncover the reason for his sudden disappearance.   

This segment starts off with a great hook.  It also contains a suspenseful sequence where our heroine listens to the tape in her Walkman in order to retrace her father’s footprints.  The ominous build-up is all for naught though thanks to the abrupt and frustrating ending. 

Halloween (**) was directed by none other than Kevin (Clerks) Smith.  An asshole runs his webcam service and verbally berates the girls who works for him.  When he tries to rape one of the girls, they knock him out and start up a new cam show with him as the star. 

As is the case with Smith’s other horror work, Halloween begins like his typical foul-mouthed slacker comedies before turning dark and disturbing.  While the punchline is messed up, it’s more of a torture porn movie than the weirdo shit the other stories offer.  It might be the worst story of the lot, but it still has at least one clever edit. 

Christmas (** ½), directed by Scott (Priest) Stewart, stars Seth Green as a father waiting till the last minute to buy a VR gadget for his kid.  The customer ahead of him takes the last one and has a heart attack before he can get it to his car.  Instead of calling for help, Green takes the headset and runs.  When he tries to use the VR glasses on Christmas morning, he sees horrifying visions. 

This one has a great set-up and a good performance by Green.  Like so many other stories in the anthology, it falls apart in the homestretch.  You think it’s going to lead up to a confrontation with Green and the dead man, but things take an abrupt 180 near the end and the resulting twist is more of a head-scratcher than a mind-blower. 

New Year’s (***) stars Lorenza (The Green Inferno) Izzo as a lonely woman who goes on an internet date on New Year’s Eve.  The guy she picks up turns out to be a psycho killer.  Unfortunately for him, she turns out to be even crazier. 

Holidays concludes on a high note.  This tale is simple, straightforward, and effective.  Sure, the twist ending is predictable, but the big reveal is done in an entertaining manner.  Izzo’s performance is enormously appealing too, and her wide-eyed glee makes this final story breezy fun.

GLOW: THE STORY OF THE GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING (2012) ****

I wanted to love the Netflix show GLOW, but I ultimately found it to be an uneven experience.  While it got better as it went along, a lot of the drama felt forced and sitcom-y, especially early on.  Luckily, Marc Maron was terrific as the schlock moviemaker-turned-wrestling director who was loosely based on Matt Cimber, and his performance alone made it worthwhile. 

As a fan of the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, I wondered how closely the show would hew to what really happened.  Not very close as it turns out.  If you enjoyed the Netflix show and/or was a fan of the GLOW wrestling show in the ‘80s, you owe it to yourself to check this documentary out.  Not only will it give you a better picture about how the show came together, it will also pull at your heartstrings, something the Netflix show had a hard time doing.  It is simply one of the best wrestling documentaries ever made. 

GLOW:  The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling shows how everything really went down.  From the show’s humble origins, to the casting, to the rehearsals, and finally to being filmed at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.  We also learn how the show suddenly disappeared (at the height of its popularity, no less) and the fates of the female wrestlers who were left in the lurch. 

The footage from the old show is priceless.  The scenes of the girls rapping are especially memorable.  The new interviews with the ladies is genuinely moving too, particularly the scenes with fan favorite Mt. Fuji.  She proves to be just as charming and sweet as ever, even while confined to a nursing home bed.  The scene where all the ladies are reunited for the first time in nearly thirty years is guaranteed to leave you misty eyed.  

Unfortunately, Cimber declined to participate in any of the interviews.  We do see him at the reunion, mingling with the ladies, and bringing cheer to Mt. Fuji.  He probably deserves his own documentary somewhere down the line.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) ** ½

I’ve never been a big Blade Runner fan.  I think the last time I saw it was when the Director’s Cut came out.  I didn’t think that was necessarily an improvement.  (Did we really need that unicorn bullshit?)  Heck, I never even bothered with the “Final” version.  Still, I went in with high hopes for this belated sequel, mostly because I’m slowly becoming a Ryan Gosling fan (thanks to The Nice Guys).   

I was a little miffed that Ridley Scott wasn’t at the helm.  Not really because he directed the original, but because I loved his bonkers Alien:  Covenant (which was mostly ignored by critics and the moviegoing public).  Instead, we got Denis Villeneuve.  He did his best to take what Scott did right and add his own voice to it, although the results are decidedly mixed. 

One thing I can say for the movie is that it echoes Blade Runner well enough.  Like its predecessor, it’s an elegant film filled with beautiful visuals.  It’s also a superficial and empty exercise in style.  All the gorgeous cinematography in the world can’t hide the fact there isn't much of a story here. The plot is overly simple and is stretched out to a nearly three-hour running time.  I can’t honestly imagine why they waited thirty-five years to tell this particular story as it is thin at best. 

The central mystery isn’t that hard to figure out either.  (SPOILERS from here on out.)  I mean they wouldn’t make Ryan Gosling Deckard’s son because that would be too easy, right?  So that only leaves one other age-appropriate person in the cast.  I’m not even sure I understood what the big deal was over her either.  I mean the woman’s very existence is supposed to “break the world”, but since she spends all of her time in a germ-free environment like John Travolta in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, she doesn’t seem like she poses much of a threat to anyone.  I mean she could easily catch a cold and die if she ever came close to another person, so she seems like she’d be easy to eliminate. 

The subplot with Gosling’s girlfriend (Ana de Armas) is likewise overly obvious.  His lady friend is nothing more than a hologram version of an Alexa device, which I guess is supposed to be some sort of social commentary on our everyday reliance on computers, but it was all done much better in Her.  Oh, and you can pretty much guess his girlfriend’s fate from the get-go too. 

The finale is also a bit of a letdown.  I dug Gosling’s fight with the replicant badass (Sylvia Hoeks), until I realized that’s pretty much the end of the movie.  She’s not terrible or anything, but she’s definitely lacking the presence of Rutger Hauer.  Likewise, Jared Leto’s villainous character was well-acted, yet not very menacing.  Also, it sucked that there was no big showdown between Leto and Ford and/or Gosling either.  Bummer. 

The performances are fine.  I liked Gosling a lot and Dave Bautista is so good you’ll wish he had more than one goddamn scene.  (Seriously, if anyone could’ve taken the main baddie role, it should’ve been him.)  Ford does a decent job too, even if he seems to be playing… well… Harrison Ford instead of Rick Deckard. 

Still, it’s all nice to look at.  Roger A. Deakins’ cinematography is stellar.  Visually, there are several sequences that are arresting.  However, like the original, it's an ultimately hollow (not to mention a tad boring) experience.

JUST THE TWO OF US (1970) ***

Denise (Elizabeth Plumb) and Adria (Alisa Courtney) are two lonely housewives who spend a lot of time with each other when their husbands go away on business.  They go out to lunch one day and witness a lesbian couple holding hands.  That makes them curious enough to experiment with each other.  Denise winds up falling hard for Adria, but she rejects her for a younger man. Denise then befriends the couple who take her to a swinging party where she gets high for the first time and is seduced by an older woman. 

Co-directed by Barbara (Humanoids from the Deep) Peeters and Jack Deerson (the cinematographer of Two-Lane Blacktop), Just the Two of Us is a quiet, effective lesbian drama that contains just enough skin and sex to play at the grindhouse.  It’s surprising just how thoughtful and progressive this romantic drama is.  Because so much emphasis is placed on Plumb and Courtney’s relationship, when they finally get together, it really means something.  When they grow apart, you really feel for Plumb. 

Part of why the film works is that the performances are all strong.  Plumb is the standout as the confused and lovesick Denise.  Her chemistry with Courtney is considerable, both in and out of bed.  

Just the Two of Us only occasionally veers into time capsule kitsch.  The musical interludes are badly dated and the party scene is kind of chintzy.  Since the party ends with a hot lesbian sex scene on a pool table, it’s hard to complain.  

AKA:  The Dark Side of Tomorrow.

BLOOD GAMES (1990) ***

An all-girl team of sexy baseball players crush their male counterparts on the diamond.  When their coach welches on a bet, the girls’ coach (Ross Hagen) holds the guy at gunpoint until he coughs up the money.  The guys’ team finds out what happened and they retaliate by stabbing Ross. The violence escalates until the women kill the son of the crooked man who owns the town.  He then offers a bounty on their heads and the women are soon in a fight for their life.

Blood Games blazed the trail for female baseball movies.  By that I mean it came out two years before Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own.  In fact, this flick features one of the worst games of baseball ever played on screen.  The budget was so low that they couldn’t even afford to play on a real ballfield.  Instead, they play in some field in the woods where the grass is knee high.  The girls also wear booty shorts, which I’m not really going to complain about, but man, it would be hell on their legs if they had to slide into home.  Another odd thing about their wardrobe:  No hats.  How do they expect to catch a fly ball without a visor to block the sun? 

The ladies also have their own tour bus, which raises the question:  Do they go across the country hustling baseball games?  Is such a thing even financially viable?  Maybe that’s why they couldn’t afford pants and hats for their uniforms. 

Luckily, the baseball stuff is quickly brushed aside in favor of the violent back-and-forth between the women and men.  The scenes of them stalking, fighting, and killing one another is a lot more convincing than the scenes of them playing ball.  I guess this was meant to be a literal war of the sexes.  Even if it isn’t entirely successful, there are still plenty of scenes that pack a punch. 

The movie is more effective in the first half when the crazed rednecks are attacking the women’s tour bus.  The scenes of the ladies being hunted in the woods play like First Blood, but with boobs and baseball bats.  While that sounds like it can’t miss, there’s way too much annoying slow motion in the second half.  I guess they had to get this thing up to 90 minutes somehow.  

Blood Games does have one standout sequence.  It comes when perennial drunk George “Buck” Flower sneaks into the ladies’ locker room.  The ensuing shower scene in a classic.  The bit where one of the girls uses a hair dryer to dry off her boobs is priceless.  

In short, Blood Games pretty much gives you everything you'd want from a female revenge picture.  

AKA:  Baseball Bimbos in Hillbilly Hell.

NETFLIX AND KILL: V/H/S: VIRAL (2014) ***

I wasn’t much of a fan of the first two entries in the V/H/S anthology series.  Even though the franchise is of the Found Footage variety, I still decided to give this one a whirl.  Boy, I’m glad that I did.  Not only is this third installment a dramatic improvement in many ways, it’s one of the best Found Footage horror films ever made. 

The wraparound segment, Vicious Circles (**) is the weakest link.  A guy keeps filming his girlfriend with his new camera.  When he sees the cops closing in around his block, he decides to film all the excitement.  Meanwhile, his girlfriend gets captured by the lunatic driver of an ice cream truck and he desperately tries to rescue her.     

The Found Footage aesthetic is especially annoying in this segment.  The videotape footage is full of popping, scratching, and static, but it’s really overdone, almost to the point of parody.  Although there are some grisly moments here, like a guy losing his feet while being dragged by the speeding truck, the fractured narrative and odd plot detours (like a family barbecue that turns deadly) don’t really lend themselves to the wraparound format.  Luckily, the stories themselves are a lot of fun. 

The first tale is Dante the Great (***).  A failing magician finds a magic cloak that allows him to do amazing and impossible illusions.  He becomes an overnight sensation, but we soon learn that fame comes with a price:  He has to feed his assistants to the cloak in order to gain more power.   

This segment plays fast and loose with the form.  It’s not really a Found Footage flick, but more of a mockumentary.  The sequence where the magician takes out an entire SWAT team with his magic powers is awesome and his duel to the death with his sexy assistant is one for the books.  It’s almost enough to make you wish it was its own standalone full-length feature. 

Parallel Monsters (***) is up next.  A scientist works on creating a doorway to a parallel universe.  He opens the door and is startled to meet his alternate self.  They get along famously and decide to switch places to see how the other half lives.  Very weirdly as it turns out. 

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, this story has a cool Outer Limits Meets Playboy Channel vibe.  The Found Footage gimmick works well here because the scientist is filming it all for his scientific research.  The scene where the two parallel dimension scientists film each other is really cool too.  You never know quite where it’s headed and the big reveal in the end (which I wouldn’t want to spoil) is guaranteed to make your jaw drop. 

Bonestorm (****) rounds out the pack and it is by far the best use of the Found Footage gimmick I have seen.  A group of teens go down to Tijuana to finish filming their skating video.  The ditch they’re skating in just so happens to have some weird satanic markings on it.  When one of the kids cuts his elbow and bleeds on the pentagram, it awakens an evil group of zombie cultists. 

This segment is fun, especially if you’re like me and made skate tapes in your younger years.  The filmmakers really capture the feeling of hanging out with your friends on a lazy afternoon and shredding.  When the shit hits the fan, the feces really flies.  The scenes of the skaters caving in zombie skulls with skateboards, slicing them up with samurai swords, and blowing them up with firecrackers are worth the price of admission.  This is some of the best zombie mayhem I have seen in a long time.  It also helps that the zombies all have a great Burial Ground-inspired look to them. 

V/H/S:  Viral is easily the best in the series and one of the best anthologies of 21^st century.  Folks, this is why you watch all the sequels in any particular series.  You never know when you’re going to be surprised. 

AKA:  V/H/S:  New Virus.

NETFLIX AND KILL: XX (2017) ** ½

XX is a modern anthology horror film directed by four women.  Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing novel about it.  The stories themselves are mostly thin and uneventful, but it must be said that each director gets about as much mileage out of them as they possibly can. 

I guess another unique thing about XX are the Wraparound Sequences (***).  Before each story, there is a little segment where a bunch of creepy old toys and dolls run around on their own.  I don’t know what they have to do with anything, but they reminded me of a Tool music video.

The Box (** ½) is the first story.  It was directed by Jovanka Vukovic and based on a story by Jack Ketchum.  It starts off with a little boy sitting next to a strange man holding a box on a subway.  He asks the man if he can look inside his box and he is happy to oblige.  Afterwards, the boy starts acting strange and eventually stops eating altogether.  Pretty soon, everyone in the family except for his mother is on the starvation kick.

This segment is filled with promise, but it ultimately fizzles out in the end.  There’s no shocking twist or grand finales here.  Quite the opposite in fact.  It’s more of a denial of an ending than a satisfying conclusion.  An open-ended ending might have worked for a feature length film.  However, for a short such as this, it leaves things frustratingly unresolved.  It does have the benefit of one gnarly cannibalism scene.  Since it turns out to be all a dream, I guess it doesn’t count. 

The Birthday Party (**) is the weakest story of the lot.  A harried mother tries to get everything ready for her daughter’s birthday party.  The preparations come to a halt when she finds her husband dead in his office.  She doesn’t let that stop her though and she continues on with the festivities as if nothing’s happened. 

It’s hard to tell what director Annie Clark was going for here.  Was it supposed to be a black comedy thing or a psychological horror type of deal?  She tries to split the difference and consequentially, nothing really works.  This scenario is ripe with humor, but Clark never goes for laughs.  She also doesn’t focus enough on the mom’s fragile mental state to make it click as a psycho drama.  Unlike the last segment, this one does have a decent twist ending, which comes via title card that explains everything we just saw.  It’s an OK punchline, I just wish the set-up was better.

Things improve remarkably with Don’t Fall (***).  A quartet of friends go hiking through the desert.  They make camp and find some nearby cave drawings that could be gibberish or could be a taken as warning.  That night, an evil Native American spirit possesses one of the campers and turns her into a monster.  She soon starts picking off her friends one by one.

This tale isn’t really typical of an anthology movie.  There are no twist ending or messages about morality.  It’s just a straightforward horror show.  Don’t Fall is short and to the point and doesn’t fuck around.  While I appreciated that aspect of it, I have to admit that there’s not a whole lot to it.

Her Only Living Son  (** ½) comes to us courtesy of Karyn (Aeon Flux) Kusama.  It revolves around a single mother whose son is approaching his eighteenth birthday.  She is shocked to learn from his principal that he is abusive to his classmates, but is even more shocked to learn that the teachers approve of his behavior and even praise his leadership abilities.  Eventually, we learn who his real father is and why his birthday is of such significance.

This final tale continues some of the same themes of previous stories:  A son going through a strange transformation, birthday stress, and a mother doubling down on her maternal instincts.  The conclusion is obvious and done in such a low-key manner that it leaves you feeling shortchanged.  (Maybe if the budget was a tad higher Kusama could’ve delivered the goods.)  On the plus side, the set-up is well done, and the performances are strong all around. 

THE DOUBLE O KID (1993) **

Corey Haim stars as a junior special agent who is given an assignment to drop off a package to one of his superiors.  During the exchange, Corey comes into possession of a vital code key that a group of evil hackers need to hold the world for ransom.  Soon, the bad guys come after him, and it’s up to Corey to save the world.

I’ll pretty much watch anything either of the Two Coreys are in, but even I have to admit that Haim looks pretty out of it in this movie.  He does come to life a bit when Nicole Eggert enters the fray as his love interest.  The two of them were paired more effectively later in the year in the much better Blown Away though. 

At least the villains are interesting.  It’s nice seeing Wallace Shawn chewing the scenery a bit as the leader of the hackers and Brigitte Nielsen gets an odd scene when she wears a cocktail dress in a Jacuzzi.  Oh, and if you ever wanted to see John Rhys-Davies murdered by a killer arcade game, here’s your chance. 

Sure, there are a handful of weird moments here, but most of it is more dumb than funny.  Like the scene where Corey is chased by a killer hockey team.  Because of this scene, it might make a good double feature with Prayer for the Rollerboys.  It’s not altogether unwatchable though.  There are plenty worse secret agent spoofs out there, that’s for sure.