Oct 2 - Oct 8
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, Brian and Charles, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Where the Crawdads Sing, Slapface, Shin Godzilla, Totally Killer, Slither
- The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster [2023] - 55
TABGaHM is an interesting film that reframes the Frankenstein story into a new lens. The concept is well envisioned and intentioned, but the execution is excruciatingly boring. It’s a beautiful film in a handful of technical perspectives and has a truly excellent opening sequence, but all of this is lost somewhere in the next 90-minutes. I’m sure that my own ignorance of the portrayed strife plays into my opinion of this film somewhat, though I’m not sure a lack of relation was what caused me to almost mark this one DNF. I don’t know. Good ideas, extremely heavy-handed and tiresome realization.
- Brian and Charles [2022] - 60
Have you ever thought, “Wow, I sure loved 2007’s Lars and the Real Girl. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made the same movie but took out all the parts that mattered?” No? You haven’t? Oh… Well, let me tell you about Brian and Charles anyway. It’s uh… it’s what I just described. This is a film that lives and dies by its gimmick and, while that gimmick is pretty good — a “robot” that is very obviously a man wearing a cardboard box under a sweater — it isn’t good enough to carry the entire film. This is one of those movies that really struggles with defining anything for the audience to really care about. We’re not involved with Brian enough to care that he has a companion in Charles, and we don’t really understand why the conflict is happening enough to really be opposed except on a basic “this is wrong” sort of level. Very mediocre film, very poor translation of concepts, just go watch Lars and the Real Girl instead; that movie is fantastic.
- Beyond the Black Rainbow [2010] - 30
Beyond the Black Rainbow is the inaugural film by Panos Cosmatos, more widely known for his 2018 follow-up, Mandy. Ignore my score on this for a second while I tell you about how much I love Cosmatos’ directorial style and visual sense. [I love it]. This movie is a total v i b e and is very good to look at. That said, it’s also entirely incomprehensible, boring, and plain pointless. While his storytelling does improve pretty significantly with Mandy, I still think that Cosmatos is a writer/ director who should drop the first part of that title and let his artistic vision allow other people’s stories to come to life… because his sorta suck. This is a great movie to have on in the background at a party or to grab screenshots from, but the actual experience of the film itself is borderline tortuous.
- Where the Crawdads Sing [2022] - 25
Speaking of tortuous… Where the Crawdads Sing is a film that should be studied in screenwriting classes as exactly what not to do when making an adaptation. There’s some adapted works [Jurassic Park] that are almost nothing like their source material, but also distance themselves far enough from it to become their own things entirely… this is not one of those. Adapted for the screen from a fabulous book of the same title, Crawdads feels like a movie that was created by writer Lucy Alibar and director Olivia Newman by copy-pasting as many Goodreads quotes as they could on top of the already existing script for Sweet Home Alabama, and then erasing all the words that spilled over the edges; culminating this gnarled mishmash of garbage into a terrible, off-brand Hallmark film that means nothing, says nothing, and has nothing to do with where it came from. Had I not just finished the book, this would not have been one I made it through.
- Slapface [2021] - 30 ~ DNF
Slapface is the 2021 indie darling and directorial debut by Jeremiah Kipp. After their parent’s death, Tom and Lucas have to rely on each other and both struggle to gain a sense of normalcy. Through a dare, Lucas accidentally befriends a local monster who defends him against those that would cause him harm. This is a fine setup… man o man is this an awful experience though. Lots of corny child acting, terrible storytelling that doesn’t actually make any sense most of the time, a conflict you don’t care about, and a runtime that should have been 30-minutes shorter. I’m absolutely baffled by the Rotten Tomatoes scores [91/85] for this waste of time.
- Shin Godzilla [2016] - 76
Had to do a little pallet cleanse with a movie I’d already seen and knew I loved — this week was rough in the Cacciatoreviews watch world. Shin Godzilla is one of the most different of the Godzilla films in that, while it does feature and star the giant lizard, the presence of the monster is simply a catalyst for what is actually a highly political drama. If you’re already a fan of the franchise, this is an easy win. If you’re not, 2021’s American release, Godzilla vs Kong, is a much more approachable [albeit infinitely sillier] entry point. I grew up watching Godzilla movies just as soon as I could get my hands on them and still own many of my VHS tapes. For someone like me, Shin Godzilla far from disappoints… even if its filmmaking is what I might call “uneven” or “extremely silly” during certain scenes. Overall, this is a fantastic entry into the long-running WWII narrative franchise and I can’t wait for the 2023 entry, Godzilla Minus One.
- Totally Killer [2023] - - ~ DNF
Annnnd back to the no good very bad week. That might not be a totally fair way to categorize Totally Killer, but it’s close enough. This is one of those movies that you just have to look at and ask “why?”. Why does this exist? What is it’s purpose? Who thought this needed a place in the cinema world? It’s pretty inoffensive, but it’s also entirely immemorable. It’s just… boring. The pacing is bad, the action is goofy, the tone is all over the place. This movie could have started 20-minutes in without losing any weight or context, and I only made it another 20 after that before deciding this had nothing to offer and moving on.
- Slither [2006] - 63
Another “fine” movie to add to my list of “fine” movies. Slither is entirely ridiculous and genuinely fun at times, but it’s every moment where it’s not ridiculous and fun that drag it down. This movie is only 95-minutes long, but it could have been 65 or even 45 and retained every interesting moment without making me wish an alien slug was taking over my brain instead of the characters’. It’s mostly clear that this is part spoof and part homage to 80’s creature features, but it doesn’t quite take the theme far enough and ends up embodying a kind of half-genre that just doesn’t really work. There’s plenty of parts of this movie to enjoy but, overall, those parts are best watched through a YouTube “Best Moments in Slither” type video rather than sit and snore through everything that isn’t them. Harumph. Better luck next week.
