NETFLIX AND KILL: WE ARE STILL HERE (2015) **

Barbara Crampton and Andrew Sensenig star as a couple who are still reeling from the death of their son.  They move to a house in the country and almost immediately, Barbara thinks her dead son is trying to communicate with her.  She invites her hippie friends (Lisa Marie and Larry Fessenden) over to hold a séance in the house to make contact with him.  Instead of reaching their son, they find a malevolent spirit that awakens every thirty years to devour the occupants of the house. 

We are Still Here is a frustrating and slow moving film.  It’s almost as if it’s taking delight in foiling the audience’s expectations and testing their patience.  It takes so much time gathering steam that I found myself nodding off halfway through.  It would be one thing if I had it on in the middle of the night, but I was watching it in the afternoon.  

While the film takes an awfully long time to get itself in gear, the final act certainly has its moments.  I dug the séance scene and the crispy, burnt-up ghost with white eyes that lives in the house is pretty cool.  The scenes of the house “eating” people are juicy, as are the assorted head-crushing, eye-poking, and throat-gouging effects.  It’s just a shame that it takes its sweet time getting to the good stuff. 

BUGSY (1991) ***

In 1991, Hollywood had Bugsy on the brain.  No less than three movies were released that featured the notorious gangster Bugsy Siegel.  While The Marrying Man and Mobsters found Bugsy playing a supporting role, this biopic by Barry Levinson puts Siegel front and center. 

Warren Beatty stars as Bugsy, a coldblooded gangster who has visions of creating a hotel in the desert, which would later be the inspiration for Las Vegas.  He has a hot temper to go along with his grand vision.  If anyone calls him “Bugsy” to his face, they usually wind up six feet under.  He falls in love with a movie star (Annette Bening) who helps him achieve his dream.  However, escalating costs and Bugsy’s almost irritating need for perfection soon makes his gangster investors (Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley among them) nervous. 

Written by James Toback (who also directed a slew of movies that starred Keitel), Bugsy is an agreeable drama that coasts on the charms of its performers.  Beatty is as engaging as ever and he has a lot of chemistry with Bening (so much so that they were later married in real life).  Kingsley and Keitel (who were both nominated for Oscars for their work) are equally fine as the gangsters who back Bugsy’s plans and do their best to stick with him through thick and thin. 

The film runs on a bit long and Levinson’s style is overly glossy.  That works in the movie’s favor though.  Bugsy always fancied himself as a Hollywood heavy, so it’s fitting that the film is slick and classy like an old-time movie from the Golden Age.   

It’s also one of those movies that shows the dark side of the American Dream.  Bugsy sees himself as a visionary and desperately wants to make a name for himself.  The fact he’s a gangster is irrelevant.  We see him kill a man very early on in cold blood.  We know he’s capable of violence.  Despite that, Beatty is so charming that we are rooting for him the whole way.  He makes Bugsy likeable like only Beatty can.  This is the guy who made bank robber Clyde Barrow a hero after all. 

It’s Bening who gets the best line of the movie when she tells Beatty:  “Why don’t you run outside and jerk yourself a soda!”

THE FOREIGNER (2017) ***

Jackie Chan has been in the business of kicking ass for over forty years.  With The Foreigner, he shows he is still capable of surprising his fans.  We all knew he could make audience’s laugh in his Kung Fu comedies, but late in his career, he has shown he can deliver wonderful dramatic performances too.  His work in The Foreigner is right up there with his performance in The Karate Kid.  In addition to his acting chops, Chan once again proves he still has some of that old school acrobatic magic left in him.  Sure, his fight sequences aren’t nearly as long or elaborate as the stuff he was doing twenty years ago, but they still pack a punch, mostly because we’re along for the ride with him emotionally.   

The Foreigner is basically a Death Wish-type thriller married with a serious IRA drama.  Chan plays a grief-stricken father who wants answers after his daughter is killed in a terrorist explosion.  Pierce Brosnan plays the politician in charge of the investigation who may or may not have something to do with it.  When Pierce doesn’t deliver the bombers in a timely fashion, Jackie uses his skills as a special forces agent to blow shit up. 

Chan uses his age to his advantage here.  Because the bad guys see him as just another old man, they underestimate him and he's able to whoop their butts handily.  Make no mistake, he may be getting up there in age, but Chan has still got it.  While the fights are smaller and the stunts are less intensive, they remain inventive throughout.  Credit director Martin Campbell (who also directed Brosnan in Goldeneye) for expertly grafting Chan’s strengths into a more adult-oriented setting.  He takes great advantage of Chan’s skills in the close quarters fights.  There’s a brutal stairway fight as well as an intense brawl in a kitchen.  I also enjoyed the extended First Blood-style sequence where Chan sets traps and lays waste to an army of Bronsan’s goons. 

Brosnan is in fine form too as the politician with his own private agenda.  I can’t tell you how much fun it is to see Jackie Chan matching wits with James Bond.  I only wish they had their own fight scene together.  Oh well. 

The drama gets a little bogged down when it concentrates too heavily on IRA politics.  Campbell still does a nice job at trying to keep these potentially dull scenes moving at an acceptable pace.  Despite a few lulls, the performances are strong enough to keep you invested, even when the plot is spinning its wheels.

THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (1966) *

Don Knotts stars as a newspaper typesetter with big dreams of being a reporter.  He runs an unauthorized story about the local haunted house, which catches the eye of the editor.  He then gives Knotts a big assignment:  Spend one night in the house to see if it’s indeed haunted.  Knotts takes the job and sees all kinds of supernatural shenanigans.  He writes a front-page story about what he witnessed and winds up being sued for libel by the owner of the house.  It’s then up to Knotts to lead a judge and jury through the house and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the place is haunted. 

The bare bones of a good kid-friendly horror comedy were here.  They just forgot to put actual jokes in there.  I guess your enjoyment of the picture will depend on your tolerance of Knotts.  While he was funny playing supporting characters on The Andy Griffith Show and Three’s Company, he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a leading man.  His schtick gets tiresome quick.  I mean his bug-eyed antics wear thin in a half-hour sitcom.  A ninety-minute movie with him front and center is just a recipe for disaster. 

All the usual haunted house clichés are trotted out.  Knotts finds a hidden staircase behind a bookcase, sees a bleeding painting, and hears an organ that plays by itself.  All of this isn’t remotely scary because it’s aimed squarely at kids.  However, I don’t think kids would have the patience required to sit through the boring, unfunny sequences that don’t revolve around the haunted house. 

NETFLIX AND KILL: DREAM HOUSE (2011) ** ½

Dream House is a ghost story rife with haunted house movie clichés.  We’ve seen movies where a family moves into an old house where the former tenants were brutally murdered.  We’ve seen horror movies where a child’s ominous drawings act as harbingers of doom.  We’ve seen horror movies where the husband is an author who’s trying to get a little writing done, but ghosts and madness eventually get in the way.  Sure, we’ve seen all of this before, but this time we get to see it with James Bond in the lead.  

Dream House comes to us from director Jim Sheridan.  His filmography is all over the place.  He made a big splash with dramas like My Left Foot, but he’s also directed the 50 Cent movie, Get Rich or Die Trying.  He doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but he handles all the would-be scares in a competent manner. 

Despite the overly familiar set-up, Dream House does have at least one good twist.  What sets it apart from countless other similar films is that the twist happens about halfway through the movie.  Though predictability finds its way back into the third act, the intriguing twist and its unconventional placement in the narrative prevents it from being just another run-of-the-mill haunted house flick.   

The performances are solid and help to anchor the movie throughout its cliché-heavy passages.  Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz have a lot of chemistry together.  So much so that they wound up falling in love and getting married shortly before the film was released.  Naomi Watts also leaves an impression as a concerned neighbor, although I wish she was given more to do.

SPIELBERG (2017) *** ½

Director Susan Lacy’s documentary on the world’s most famous filmmaker gives you a solid overview of his career.  Lacy is a veteran of PBS’s American Masters series and the film often plays like an extended episode of that show.  She covers all his cinematic milestones in fine fashion, but I for one would've liked to have seen a little more time spent on some of Spielberg’s lesser movies.  (Sometimes failures are more interesting to discuss than successes.)  At least they give a little insight into 1941.  

What I wasn’t expecting was how it delved into his personal life.  The way Lacy portrayed the relationship between Spielberg and his parents was especially touching.  Because of that, you can see how the themes in his work ran concurrent with his relationship with his father.   

The best segment focuses on Spielberg’s friendship with his fellow filmmakers (dubbed “The Movie Brats”).  If you’ve ever wanted to be a fly on the wall while Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and Francis Ford Coppola were hanging out and shooting pool in the prime of their career, you’re gonna love this movie.  The home movies of The Movie Brats chilling out together are just awesome.  Hopefully there’s a lot more of that footage laying around somewhere.  It would make a great documentary on its own. 

While the film is a bit obvious in parts, I liked how they showed Spielberg maturing throughout his career.  Looking back, Schindler’s List seems like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to forget that at the time, a three-hour black-and-white movie about the Holocaust was anything but a guaranteed success.   

Sure, it does run on a little long and would’ve benefited from some tighter editing in its final act.  (I would’ve also liked it if Lacy finally got to the bottom of the whole “Who directed Poltergeist” controversy.)  Despite that, it remains an entertaining and absorbing documentary that should please Spielberg’s legions of fans. 

NETFLIX AND KILL: THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT (2014) **

I've never been a walk-through haunted house kind of guy.  I've never enjoyed walking around in a herd of people inside a deserted Ames led around by some schmo spouting a corny spiel while waiting for someone in a mask from Spencer's Gifts to jump out of the darkness and grab a person in our group.  I'm not a fan of Found Footage horror movies either.  So why did I watch The Houses October Built, a Found Footage horror movie about a group of friends who go across America filming a documentary about the country's "most extreme" walk-through haunted houses, you ask?  Well, when you're trying to cram in 31 horror movies in 31 days for the month of October, you do a lot of things you wouldn't ordinarily do.  

As far as these things go, it's not terrible.  Sure, the characters are all unlikeable and say "fuck" a lot.  Sure, the final handheld sequence where they go into the “Blue Skeleton” haunt is hard to see because the camera shakes too much and it's way too dark in places.  That stuff just goes with the territory.  

There is one moment of invention that elevates the film from the usual tripe.  Of course, I’m talking about the sequence where the characters go to a strip club and all the topless dancers are wearing zombie make-up.  If anything can make a run-of-the-mill Found Footage horror movie better, it’s zombie strippers.  So, it's got that going for it.  

AKA:  Halloween House.  AKA:  Houses of Terror.  AKA:  Halloween Night.  AKA:  Haunted Houses.