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It’s been a year. I’ve made a list of all the movies I remember seeing again and ranked them. My ranking system is out of 10, like the IMDb. I don’t usually see full on drama or romance movies, and I don’t always remember which movies have graphic content. Also, I was originally going to do a more horror movie focused blog, but I ran out of time before Halloween, so there’s a bit more comment content for some of the horror-type movies as a result.

Alien: Romulus

My Score: 9.3
IMDb score: 7.1
Awesome sci fi horror movie. Almost as good as the original. The androids are creepy. And that scene where they have to sneak through acid in zero g…chef’s kiss. Great stuff. I liked the change in relationship between the main character and her android servant that she grew up with. And they have an intriguing trolley problem set up later on. Yes we want the main character to survive, but…the creepy bisected android kinda has a point about not letting the aliens get out…

Directed by Fede Álvarez, who did the 2013 Evil Dead remake and Don’t Breathe. I haven’t seen Don’t Breathe, but I quite liked Álvarez’s Evil Dead. Instead of camp or humor, he went for straight horror, and that isn’t what a lot of fans of the original Sam Raimi movie were looking for. Still I enjoy a good horror movie too, and horror was well-delivered. There were some great moments of menace in Romulus too. The zero g acid scene that I mentioned earlier, there’s a scene where’ they’re trying to get through a room of face huggers that’s also pretty intense, and there’s some Dead Space vibes that are pretty much a requisite for a Xenomorph movie. I also appreciated the inclusion of some space collision danger, which might be a me thing, but the scariest thing I ever saw in a movie theater was the space debris in Gravity.

Maybe it’s because I can never seem to keep my room clean. Debris is ominous enough on land. In space, coming at you faster than a bullet? Oooh boy.

Cailee Spaeny does well enough as the main character Rain Carradine, and she’s from Knoxville! Just like I’m not! I’m not sure what the statute of limitations is on coincidence. I grew up in Dickson, TN, about an hour west of Nashville. I’ve been to Knoxville a bunch. I can always tell when I’m near the place by how many billboard for Fireworks! there are. But it’s not exactly next door. Still, hey who would have thought that this random person was an arbitrary distance from me at some point in our lives! And now you are reading this, so that means you are connected to her too! Isn’t that amazing? We’re all signaling to each other through the void, headlights on a dark highway, heading to one another’s origins, waiting to be born again…or something.

Anyway, Spaeny does a pretty good job and she’s in Civil War too, another good movie that came out this year, so the woman has some talent.

I think the prize to best actor of the movie however has to go to David Jonsson who plays Andy. Andy is a special needs android (…with a special need to kick some ass 🙂). When he starts off he’s barely aware of what’s going on, and Jonsson does a great job of showing the confusion Andy feels as he tries to make sense of everything. He tells corny jokes, which could be just a gimmick if it was played differently, but the way Johnson delivers them it’s like they are the single thread of logic Andy can follow through an incomprehensible labyrinth of chaos.  And then later, when he has a Flowers for Algernon experience he is again perfectly believable as an intelligent, sometimes menacing character.

One divisive element in the movie is the use of another android Rook who is actually portrayed by a puppet and another actor deepfaked to look like the android Ash from the first film. I wasn’t that up on the lore of the Alien franchise and it has been a while since I saw the movie, so I just thought the Rook android was a bit creepy and I thought it was kind of neat because an android that was heavily damaged as Rook was would probably not seem quite human. I remember trying to catch Rook blinking and being unable to. Buuuut Ash was originally played by a human actor, who had hopes and dreams and families and pets (and wizards) that loved him and so of course I can understand some parties being a bit upset about his likeness being used as a grotesque flesh puppet in a horror movie. Aaaand some people may have a point that the effect was over all more of a distraction than anything worth pursuing and maybe it might have been better just to use a different face and make it a different model of android or something. Fine. I thought it worked when I saw it.

So yes, thoroughly recommend. And of all the movies that came out in 2024, it’s really the only one I’ll want to get on some kind of disc. And that’s the mark of a movie that gets a nine or more out of ten from me.

Inside Out 2

My Score:8.9
IMDb score:7.6
Solid sequel. Everyone, give your joy some rest. She does too much. Just be anxious or depressed for a bit. Give joy a beak.

Saw this on a plane. It was good. I cried a bit, but not quite as good as the first movie. Ennui is the best though.

Dune: Part Two

My Score:8.8
IMDb score:8.5
Beautiful. I liked the David Lynch version better, but that’s because it hit me at a formative time in my life. The dialogue and other lines in the Lynch version are better, and I will fight anyone who says different, but the visuals and probably every other aspect of the Villaneuve version is better.  Especially the ornithopters. As soon as I saw the ornithopters, I was sold.

Deadpool & Wolverine

My Score:8.5
IMDb score:7.6
Fun. Points for bringing back Elektra. And Gambit was awesome. It’s a bit of a ‘member berry production, but there’s enough humor and clever surprises to keep it from becoming fermented garbage.

Atlas

My Score:8.5
IMDb score:5.6
I really liked this one. Some people crapped on it in reviews, but JLo does well with the feely bits and there’s a lot of solid sci fi stuff going on story-wise. There is an AI that features prominently in the story, but unlike in most stories it isn’t malevolent. Or at least not necessarily malevolent. The plot hinges on JLo’s character establishing a good connection with the AI, which in turn requires her to deal with her personal trauma. It kind of covers the same themes as Neon Genesis Evangelion, but western coded, not a cartoon, and without heavy handed biblical references or cryptic apocalyptic imagery. No one turns into Tang. Okay it’s almost completely unlike Neon Genesis Evangelion. But there is a giant robot suit and psychological trauma. Worth checking out.

Nosferatu

My Score:8.2
IMDb score:7.8
If, like me, you have recently seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, you’ll swear you’ve seen this before. But there are some neat directorial flourishes. Barry Lyndon-esque natural lighting and an emphasis on the plague aspects. I would say it’s about as good as the Coppola movie. Not quite better. But good. And instead of a wig that looks like a butt, there’s a mustache.

Civil War

My Score:8.1
IMDb score:7.0
Like Apocalypse Now. But it happens in the US. And it’s a bit like if the apocalypse…was going on now. It’s a lot better than I thought it was going to be. It doesn’t really get political in a left versus right way. And I was kind of looking forward to a depiction of a war along those lines, (like the Orson Scott Card novel Empire), but it was also kind of good they didn’t go there. It’s more about the moral conflict of being a war-time journalist. Which, in one sense seems a little out dated…but in another it’s become somewhat universal. Since everyone active on social media seems like a war time journalist lately.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

My Score:7.9
IMDb score:7.5

There are a lot of movies crowded together at 7.9. Basically my criteria for a movie to make 8 is that it has to make me feel something strongly. If tears come out or I’m grinning like a madman or spending hours of time I’m supposed to be sleeping thinking about something, it has to be an 8. But there were a lot of movies that didn’t quite get there, but got really close.

Furiosa was a cool movie. Lots of dramatic shots with the camera looking up at people with defiant looks on their faces while operating violent machinery. Furiosa is a stoic hero who goes through some crap and turns out mostly okay. There is something missing though. Not as good as the previous movie. I think it might be that Furiosa fights mostly for herself in this movie while before she was fighting to protect others. I say that, but then there was a definite arc toward where she was helping someone. That was my favorite part of the movie, but it was also the most janky in a lot of ways, with complicated political things going on and characters dipping in and out of relevance.  I don’t know. If I were in charge of fixing it, I would make it a simple road movie where she has to protect the murder truck from the land pirates, and leave off the parts where we learn that she’s Jesus and she’s playing political rock, paper, scissors. Still enjoyed watching.

Longlegs

My Score:7.9
IMDb score:6.7
Nicolas Cage is not a perfect person. He has had financial difficulties, he sometimes makes bad decisions. He has said straight up in interviews that he has taken roles primarily for the paycheck. And thank goodness. There are so many weird, out there movies that have come out in the last decade or so that would have been pure, forgettable schlock, except Nicolas Cage is in them, and as long as he’s on the screen, the movie is decent. He doesn’t ever phone it in. He’s an Oscar winning actor who acts in B- movies. It’s lovely and wonderful.

That said, Longlegs would be enjoyable even without Nicolas Cage in it. The directing is well done, the tone is immersive, and the other actors each have something magnetic about them. Alicia Wit (who was Alia in the David Lynch version of Dune BTW) is creepy as hell as Ruth Harker, the mother of the main character Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe. Monroe, for her part, more than holds her own in the movie. One can tell Lee Harker is someone who is definitely somewhere on the autistic spectrum, just operating at a completely different level than the characters around her. Harker has some possibly supernatural gifts as well, and trauma that governs some of her response to things. Monroe (the actress) makes subtle choices that feel natural while still a bit unnerving. The movie could have been a straight up police procedural and I would have been interested in it just based on Monroe’s performance.

And then, as a special treat, there’s Kiernan Shipka, from the Netflix show Sabrina (as well as two other movies from this year Twisters and Red One), who is there for just one scene and yet seems to steal the whole movie with her character’s weird way of talking and dissociated aspect.

The plot is a bit weak. A lot of dominoes get set up, but not all of them seem to get knocked down. I think it would have been better if Lee Harker wasn’t personally connected with the Longlegs case. I like all the odd characters, but I didn’t like that everyone who was a bit odd ended up being tied to satanic cultist murders. I also would have liked if they had left Satan out of the story. The movies interpretation of Satan didn’t really match up with any previous depictions of the entity. It kind of works if you think of Satan as an evil Santa Claus, he sees all, but he can’t be everywhere all at once so he needs people to act as his agents and ask children questions. And gifts are involved. But it would have been better if it were some other minor devil, or minor god, or even if there was nothing definitely supernatural about the movie at all.

But the execution of the story is top notch. The dramatic beats of the story don’t hinge on the “twists” that occur. The new information doesn’t come out of left field. The twists are surprising, but they are set up well in advance. The director lets you wade gradually deeper into the pool rather than pushing you in abruptly at the last minute. The pace does get faster toward the end, and you might still not be sure what you’re swimming in, but that works to the movie’s benefit.

The Last Stop in Yuma County

My Score:7.9
IMDb score:6.9
This was a neat movie. Set in the days before cellphones and when Ford Pintos were around. There’s a last chance gas station that’s waiting on a fuel truck to refill its tanks. A salesman, some bank robbers, a older couple and a bunch of other people show up looking for gas. They don’t all get along. It’s not quite as clever as a Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino movie, but it scratches that itch. It was fun to watch.

Trap

My Score:7.9
IMDb score:5.9
Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Yes there was a bit of nepotism going on in this movie, the scenario is a bit unrealistic, and the acting wasn’t always there…why did I give it a 7.9? I don’t know. I remember enjoying it while I was watching it. It’s a thriller, but the format seems fresh. It made me wonder why there aren’t more thrillers surrounding rock and pop concerts. Plenty of opera thrillers. But modern music doesn’t get much action for some reason. Plenty of scenes in clubs, but not actual concerts. Also I like Josh Hartnett and despite some things not quite passing the smell test on believability the plot does evoke the word “clever” even if it can’t quite be used in a description.

Carry-On

My Score:7.9
IMDb score:6.5
Much the same as Trap, there are some things that don’t quite make sense, but despite that, or even perhaps because of that, the plot is interesting. This one has Jason Bateman doing a rendition of his character from Ozark. He’s nothing but evil in the movie, but like his Ozark character he always seems to be working angles and negotiating so I almost found myself rooting for him. The main character does alright. There are some neat fight scenes and a Chekhov’s gun or two that pays off nicely.

Red One

My Score:7.9
IMDb score:6.3

This movie caught a lot of flak for not being kid centric enough for a Christmas Santa Claus movie. But if I watched this when I was eleven years old, I would have loved it. It’s got freakin’ Krampus in it. And a butt load of great actors in it. Whole lot of fun.

Was it worth its horrendous budget? Nope. But it’s certainly worth seeing for “free” if you already have prime.

Twisters

My Score:7.8
IMDb score:6.5
Nothing wrong with this movie that’s worth noting. It’s fun. It has twisters in it. It expands on the first movie a bit. It didn’t really grab me though. No iconic lines or scenes like the first movie. Maybe I’m jaded, but this seemed a bit forgettable. Still fun to watch.

Abigail

My Score:7.8
IMDb score:6.6
A fun vampire movie. It’s almost family friendly. In fact if you have an eleven or twelve year old who doesn’t mind a spot of gore in a movie, or if they seek out that kind of thing, this would be great to see with them.  It reminded me a lot of Dusk Til Dawn , but there wasn’t any explicit sexual content or lewd innuendo. Dan Stevens is in this, and Dan Stevens is great in everything he does. All his projects are at least interesting on some level too. I can’t say they are all good exactly. But they all make you glad you saw the thing. This is no exception. No new ground is covered. Vamps be vamps and all that. But it’s fun watching the dynamics of a criminal enterprise break down and invert themselves.

Ricky Stanicky

My Score:7.6
IMDb score:6.2
Surprisingly good. It’s silly, but it never tries to be anything else. John Cena does a good job playing a well-meaning doofus with surprising talents. It’s a bit like Cable Guy but with a much happier ending.

The Fall Guy

My Score:7.4
IMDb score:6.9
Famously this movie is very stunt focused. There are some good stunts here. I don’t remember anything about the plot. I had fun watching it.

I Saw the TV Glow

My Score:7.2
IMDb score:5.8
This was a movie I saw while on a plane ride from Puerto Rico to Newark. It’s a bit of a slow burn, and if you’re triggered by LGBTQ stuff you might want to steer clear. It’s creepy and atmospheric, with a feeling of inexorable surmounting tension. It takes place largely in the eighties and nineties, and there’s a vibe there. The movie feels like a mix between American Beauty and Donnie Darko. Watching it in the dark on a plane that occasionally dropped suddenly due to turbulence was an enhancement to the experience, but I think it’s a solid movie regardless. I will say it’s probably a bit better to watch it by yourself rather than with other people. This is partly because if you’re with other people, they’re liable to get up for popcorn or a bathroom break and break the feeling of tension you get watching it. Another reason watching alone is a bit better is because the movie is, to a large degree, about loners who connect over obsessively watching a show that no one around them seems to know about or understand. To get that hypnotic fascination feeling, it helps to be by yourself.

If you were ever a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you might feel uncomfortably seen while watching this movie. Bonus points if you’ve ever read fanfiction or looked up supplementary lore for the show. In the movie, the show the two main characters are obsessed with is different enough from Buffy that it could be a stand in for any number of shows, but there are some significant points of similarity, and when I saw the font for the credits in the show, I made a noise and pointed, Which I’m sure confused the large man trying to watch a basketball game on his phone next to me.

I Saw the TV Glow is a solid horror movie, but it’s on the level of a Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episode and it maybe goes on a bit too long to the point where maybe it should have only been an hour long and stopped before the final twist, which kind of ruins some of the mystery that was built up in the earlier parts of the movie. It doesn’t completely ruin it, and in some ways the end is the creepiest part, because it sticks with you after the movie is over. But in the moment of watching it, it is a little less than cathartic.

Wolfs

My Score:7.1
IMDb score:6.5
In Lord of the Rings Legolas and Gimli have a contest to see who can kill the most orcs. That was a humorous interlude in an otherwise epic and dramatic film. Imagine a whole movie of that. But make it about two people playing the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction. Also… it’s Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Is it good? Eh. Really, you’re either already watching it, you’ve watched it already or you just don’t care.

It’s What’s Inside

My Score:7.1
IMDb score:6.6
I almost couldn’t finish this movie because the two characters at the beginning bickered so much. And the man (Cyrus) seemed to be the jerk and the woman (Shelby) seemed to be innocently trying to please him—a set up that seems a bit tired to say the least. But I’m glad I stuck with the movie a little longer because the concept was interesting and creepy.

The central concept is a “Freaky Friday” Flip, but with multiple characters. Something I’ve heard referred to as a “switcheroo episode” but couldn’t find a reference for when I searched online. Your basic FFF has, of course, appeared a lot in film, but having three or more characters switching doesn’t happen as much outside of television. In a two hour or so movie there really isn’t time to get to know the characters well enough to recognize when they are in each other’s bodies, and that is definitely a problem with this movie. The bickering couple at the beginning goes to a party with far too many other people and the movie desperately tries to establish unique backstories and personalities for them all in the ten minutes it has before the plot has to progress.

Really, it does a pretty decent job for the most part, but there are still some confusing moments where one has to recall which personality belongs to which name and which name belongs to which body and which bodies are now switched. It’s not a deal breaker. The characters are confused too and the important plot points still work. In fact, the bickering couple at the beginning, as much as I wish they were a bit less annoying, works wonderfully as a means of keeping track of who’s who. At least you know who Cyrus and Shelby are. Also, the seemingly basic character dynamic of the couple is given more depth as they explore what they can get away with in other bodies. Cyrus isn’t just a jerk to Shelby, he’s kind of a tool to everyone. His nickname is Cyrus the Virus. He’s constantly trying to control things but is also constantly worried about what other people think of him. It gets to the point where his obsession with getting control over situations is almost justified because he so rarely gets anything he wants. He turns from being just a basic douche to being a sympathetic douche. Like a Wile E. Coyote of doucheyness. And as we learn more about Shelby, she not only becomes more nuanced, but also has a definite arc, albeit one with a somewhat dubious outcome.

The acting is…well the characters are sometimes annoying. I think a truly great collection of actors might have found a way to give each character charisma, but I think it’s only fair to point out that the character I disliked the most was Cyrus and he was annoying no matter who was playing him. I also never had trouble picking him out. So was the acting really bad, or was it just the character being his douchey self? I would go with a bit of both. There were certainly some actors who were good at the craft and others who were less good. The movie’s not going for an Oscar or anything so it’s not that big a deal, but when the central concept involves acting differently it gets a bit more noticeable.

Overall, what saves the movie and makes it enjoyable, aside from the sexy creepiness of the central concept, is the pacing. It does start out a little slow at first, but things start to pick up pretty fast and then quickly snowball out of control. The movie ends in a whirlwind while you and the characters try to piece together everything that happened. It feels like you’ve been through an event.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

My Score:7
IMDb score:6.8
I don’t remember anything about this movie. I feel like I saw 40 different war movies this year. But it might have just been this movie. Maybe it had something to do with a radio? I think that was something else. I’m pretty sure I saw this one. Maybe I didn’t. I probably shouldn’t review it….okay just watched the trailer. I did watch this one. It had a radio in it, but it wasn’t the movie about a radio that I was remembering. This movie has more drama bits than the trailer would suggest. One or two people die and it’s Sad for a bit. But it is fun and irreverent too. Brad Pitt isn’t in this movie, but I feel like he should have been.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

My Score:7
IMDb score:6.1
Dumb but fun. A bit like if Godzilla and King Kong were characters in Dragonball Z. There’s some weird human backstory stuff going on. The Earth is hollow (sorta). King Kong and all the other Kaiju live there. King Kong is all alone in the inner world and he is Sad. But wait a minute there are others like him after all! The humans help him find his people. Unfortunately most of them are jerks. The humans and Kong’s people. But really are we not the same? Perhaps if we look inside and become less jerky ourselves, the others we encounter will… Thankfully there’s some inadequately explored external threat that saves Kong and everyone else from having to confront existential angst for too long. Godzilla doesn’t have as much screen time. He/she’s Goodzilla in this one. Or at least, not a metaphor for unchecked hubris or anything.

Smile 2

My Score:7
IMDb score:6.8
Not as good as the first film, but a chilling horror movie. If you liked the Denzel Washington movie Fallen (which is a great movie everyone should watch) this gives some of the same vibes. The main character being a pop star creates some pointed social commentary that kind of dances on the edge between “Oh damn!” And “Aw damnit.” It gets a little cute with dream sequences, which is annoying, and the ending, while epic in its implications, is a little disappointing in its execution. If you decide to watch it, try to guess what things the main character is imagining and what things are real. Make it into a little game. Because it doesn’t always follow logic.

Road House

My Score:6.9
IMDb score:6.2

Basically if a movie doesn’t quite make it to 7 it means I recognize the skill behind it, but I can’t exactly recommend it. Sometimes that’s because something irks me and it ruins it for me, sometimes it just never hits the right groove.

This movie is more of the second thing. The fighting choreography was well-done. The Corridor Crew did a segment with the stunt coordinator that was illuminating. The movie is worth watching for that, but plot-wise it’s pretty forgettable. Or at least I don’t remember much of the plot. I remember kind of feeling like I was watching a TV show that got expanded into a movie.

The Substance

My Score:6.9
IMDb score:7.4
The horror of celebrity does seem to be a theme this year. This one is influenced by David Cronenburg and, perhaps H.P. Lovecraft. The horror parts are very good. American Werewolf in London kind of good. However, unlike American Werewolf in London, there isn’t any humor to break up the tension. Unlike in Cronenburg’s The Fly there isn’t even a relationship to break focus away from the…well from the horror. We are stuck on the main character almost the entire movie. And while she is well acted by both Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, she isn’t very likeable.

More than that, it’s not always clear what her motivations even are. She appears to be disgusted by the head of the production studio who was her boss for the earlier part of her career (played super over-the-top by Dennis Quaid), and yet, when she gets the chance to be a younger version of herself she goes right back to work for him again.

What I wanted to see after understanding the premise, was a bit of navigating a more modern world with the benefit of experience, something where the main character makes some better choices, but eventually has to confront the consequences of her past. But the younger version does exactly the same things the older version did. In fact she acts worse at times. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except the main character has no agency, and there are really just two Hydes.

It’s also, just to make another comparison, like a Darren Aronofksy movie. Except even in Requiem for a Dream there was a time when the characters were having fun on their drugs, and in the Substance it’s just one misery after another.

But sometimes it’s good to watch that sort of thing. The Substance isn’t a pleasant movie, but it is impressive. I should also mention that if you enjoy looking at attractive women there is quite a lot of that. Oh the movie provides that ironically, but it’s there.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

My Score:6.6
IMDb score:6.1
One third of this movie is good. Maybe. It would probably be more accurate to say one third of this movie could have been good. But the other two thirds keep interfering. Do you want to watch a movie with many of the actors from the original movies? Do you want to watch a movie about an evil ghost that freezes things? Do you want a fresh take on the Ghostbusters franchise with new younger characters? Well maybe there could be a way to have all three of those things, but this movie seems to try for all of those goals and fails at all of them, where maybe if they let one or two of them go it might have been a good movie.

As it is, it’s not exactly bad. There are some fun moments and there are things that if they were fleshed out a bit more might have been good. In particular I kind of liked the story line where the young Phoebe Spengler falls in like with a ghost. There are some things that don’t make sense about parts of that arc, but with a bit more time some of those things could have been explained or fixed. But there was just enough time to think about getting interested in it, and then it was back to, “Come on, you guys! We’ve got to fight the ghosts!” There were too many characters and the movie tried to do too many things. I suppose a body could argue that Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 had similar problems. Those two movies seemed to have a better balance though. Or at least, they were more entertaining.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

My Score:6.8
IMDb score:6.7

There were some fun moments, but the movie never quite got beyond the nostalgia for the old movie. I think the worst thing is what happened to the Lydia Deetz character. At the end of the first movie she’s happy and on her way to figuring her crap out. But in this sequel, it’s like she’s back to being a mopey teenager, only she’s now a mother. It doesn’t fit.

I think what would be cool is if she were working as a sort of good version of Beetlejuice, helping ghosts deal with their human neighbors. And then Beetlejuice could start to compete with her.

Anyway that’s not what the plot of the latest movie is. The main plot is about Lydia’s daughter dating the wrong guy. Also Lydia’s father is dead, and her mother is still annoying. That’s about it. There’s a fun dance sequence and someone is trying to kill Beetlejuice while someone else is trying to arrest him? Or maybe they’re trying to arrest the one who’s trying to kill him. It’s a mess. But there have been worse movies and the acting is good.

Argylle

My Score:6.4
IMDb score:5.6
This was a lot like Sandra Bullock’s 2022 movie The Lost City…only not as good. I enjoyed the heck out of Lost City. It was fun and there were some real action parts. Part of the reason why I enjoyed that movie though was that the characters had definite strengths and weaknesses and they had to deal with the problems and consequences that arose for those limitations. That isn’t the case with Argyle. Don’t get me wrong, you can still get through a bag of popcorn with Argylle. It’s…cute. But it’s junk food. Every problem eventually gets solved by the main character pulling a skill set out of her ass at the last minute. Unlike in the (great) movie the Long Kiss Goodnight, the main character of Argylle doesn’t show any signs at all of having any special skills. There isn’t any real struggle for her. And later when she awakens to her previous self it’s pretty much instantaneous with no real conflict with her other persona. It’s all just played for cheap comedy and action. But then, sometimes that’s all you want from a movie.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

My Score:5.9
IMDb score:6.4

Getting into actually bad movies now. Anything less than 60 is a failing grade and that’s the case here. Movies that get a five have a lot going for them, but they fail to execute on a fundamental level. To put it another way, you would have to bribe me somehow to watch them again.

Axel F made me feel embarrassed for Eddie Murphy.

You ever go through your closet and you find an old jacket or some other piece of clothing that you haven’t worn in twenty years? And then maybe it still fits…kind of, and you wear it out, but it doesn’t quite feel right? That’s what this movie feels like. It’s almost funny in a few places. It reminds me vaguely of Beverly Hills Cop. But Eddie Murphy is a different person now. He does movies for children. He isn’t that edgy fast talker from way back when. Either that or the writing or the directing is off somehow because this is like the high school production of Beverly Hills Cop that you you politely clap at the end of because you know one of the kids in it.

Salem’s Lot

My Score:5.5
IMDb score:5.6
The original Salem’s Lot is a classic, and this movie…isn’t. It has the feel of a lot of Stephen King movies where you can tell that someone paid a lot of attention to what Stephen King wanted…and it didn’t exactly help the movie. Like in the nineties TV version of the Shining where Jack uses a croquet mallet instead of an axe. Sure it’s closer to the book, but…I felt the same way about Dr. Sleep, the sequel to the Shining that came out a few years ago. It was probably good as a book, but as a movie it seemed to lack some kind of cinematic oomph.

I’d say this version of Salem’s Lot is about as good as the average Steven King made-for-TV movie. It’s not bad. The special effects are good, the plot is good, even the acting is good. But it feels like it’s trying too hard to get the lines right rather than trying to tell an entertaining story. This feeling becomes especially noticeable in the scenes where the characters engage in small talk. They tell little folksy dad jokes that seem out of place, and yet there’s never any indication that anybody else sees it as strange.

Other than this uncanny valley attempt to mimic the Stephen King vibe, the movie is pretty solid as a horror movie. It hearkens back to a time when vampires were actually scary. And there were some clever scenes. In particular there was a neat sequence in a drive-in theater that was memorable. So it’s worth checking out if you want a family friendly vampire movie. Bear in mind I may be forgetting some un-family friendly stuff when I say that. There are vampires after all. But the vibe seemed very PG.

I watched the whole thing. I think if it was an original story I might give it a 6 or something, but having seen a version that was better, this was a disappointment.