Last Seen Alive (2022) - Movie Review

The latest B-movie product starring Gerard Butler starts out with a decent enough idea. Will (Butler) and his wife Lisa (Jaimie Alexander) pull into a gas station, and while Will is filling up the car, Lisa… disappears. With nothing to go on, and a lot of hard scepticism in his way, Will sets out to find her. For an action-thriller, it’s a very Neesonsploitation premise, but the framing leans more into the ‘thriller’ side of that genre heading. A loved one vanishing (heh) into thin air, not having a clue where they went and not getting any help; even on paper, it sounds exhausting, so surely, it’s gotta work on the big screen, right? Well, it’s not as if this is the first time an American version of The Vanishing didn’t work out.

PG: Psycho Goreman (2021) - Movie Review

Well, after how well the last review went, I figure it’d be worthwhile to go after something else that tickles my fancy for the completely insane. And this film already wins points with one of the most ludicrously awesome titles I’ve ever seen, and with an opening narration that references the creator of Dungeons & Dragons within its first sentence, I quickly knew I’d be in for a good time. I also had a feeling that, by some crazy miracle, I was in for something that would make Titane look normal by comparison.

Shadow In The Cloud (2021) - Movie Review

Much like with Ava late last year, I was initially debating whether I’d even deign to watch this movie at all, let alone review it, and for largely the same reason: The abusive history of the guy who wrote it. Only this isn’t a niche example like Matthew Newton, as Max Landis has had people distancing themselves from him as early as 2012’s Chronicle, his first feature-length script.

Considering it and American Ultra are the only good movies with his name attached to them (and even then, it’s the presentation that makes those two memorable, not necessarily the writing), there’s other reasons to be sceptical about this one… but again, like with Ava, I don’t see disregarding the work of women in the industry off the back of one toxic guy to be all that helpful a move, although to her credit, director and co-writer (we’ll get to that) Roseanne Liang gets why audiences might distance themselves from this film based on his involvement. I, however, am not going to advocate for that. Instead, I’m going to declare proudly that this is a fantastic film that is more than worth checking out.

Rogue (2020) - Movie Review

As is the case with just about everyone who worked on the Transformers movies, critics make it a sport of taking the piss out of Megan Fox as an actress. “She’s just eye candy”, “She’s centrefold fodder”, “She has the range of a broken cellphone”, etc. And I freely admit that I’m not an exception to this, as I never held much stock in her acting chops either. However, since last writing about her as part of the woeful ensemble in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, I’ve since seen her career-highlight turn in Jennifer’s Body, and on the basis of that alone… she isn’t a joke to me anymore. When attached to something without the spectre of Bay surrounding it, she can deliver, and for those still unconvinced, here’s her latest.

Replicas (2020) - Movie Review

After having quite the phenomenal year in 2019 (not to mention knocking it out of the park more recently with Bill & Ted Face The Music), I was honestly willing to give B-movie Keanu Reeves an honest chance. Hell, the plot for this one really intrigued my itch for sci-fi philosophising, all about the ethics of cloning and transferring a human consciousness into another body. Then I discovered that this is written by Chad St. John, who also gave us the jingoistic claptrap of London Has Fallen and the entitled tedium of Peppermint. Then I found out the director, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, is better known for writing the glorified business expense of The Tourist, as well as Roland Emmerich’s woefully unhelpful take on global warming with The Day After Tomorrow. Can’t win them all, I guess.

Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019) - Movie Review

2012’s Iron Sky is a little miracle of a film. Born out of the European B-movie sci-fi petri dish from the same guys who broke out by parodying Star Trek with the Star Wreck series, it remains one of the weirdest and ballsiest theatrical releases of the decade. It is undeniably dated, right up to using a Sarah Palin analogue as the U.S. president, but as a satire of fascism and politics on a global scale, it is downright scary how prescient it is. I mean, it’s not much of a stretch to see how much fascist iconography has grown in prevalence in the last handful of years.

Making a sequel to something like this runs a serious risk of failing to meet the bonkers threshold set by space Nazis on the dark side of the moon who turn a black male model into a white crazed hobo, but thankfully, this film has crazy to spare and then some.

Angel Has Fallen (2019) - Movie Review

Under normal circumstances, I would question this film’s very existence. The latest from modern B-movie kingpins Millennium Films, starring perennial B-movie favourite Gerard Butler, is the continuation and (hopeful) finale to a series that didn’t even need to be a series in the first place. Hell, after the utter bullshit that was the previous entry in London Has Fallen, I was outright dreading having to sit through more straight-faced jingoism.

But then again, as someone who does love a good redemptive sequel, maybe replacing the bulk of the writer’s room and the director’s chair for this follow-up means we can leave behind the alarmingly blatant racism of Gerard Vs. Fuckheadistan, and get back to the hard-hitting action thrills that made Olympus solid, if not entirely memorable. That’s the theory, at least.

Crawl (2019) - Movie Review

In a year where the biggest hitters have been culminations of several years’ worth of production work-up, films like this are easily cherished. These low-stakes, high-tension B-movie genre exercises where the focus is placed more on making the audience feel something rather than just see something. It follows in the footsteps of previous review subjects like The Shallows in pitting a tough and determined woman against the forces of nature, and much like Shallows, the under-90-minute run time means that there’s no time to waste time. And the end result is a very taut, very gripping, very wince-inducing offering.

The Meg (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: The underwater research facility Mana One, led by Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao) and his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), have discovered a previously-uncharted area of the Marianas trench that is even deeper than the current record. As they send a team down to explore the new depths, they soon find evidence of a Megalodon, a gargantuan shark thought to have been extinct that is far from dead. The mission, the facility, even the entire world could be in jeopardy if the Meg makes it to the open seas, and it's up to retired rescue diver Jona (Jason Statham) to stop it.

Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Arms dealer Glenn Arias (John DeMita) is preparing to unleash a new zombie apocalypse on the masses, having engineered a virus that he is able to control. After an infiltration mission goes south, BSAA agent Chris Redfield (Kevin Dorman) enlists the help of scientist Rebecca Chambers (Erin Cahill) and former agent Leon Kennedy (Matthew Mercer) to help him stop Arias and find a cure for the virus. However, as Arias’ plan goes ahead, the three of them will have to work fast to save the world once again.

Top 20 Diamanda Hagan Reviews

She’s an official friend of the blog, she gave me my first ever podcast appearance (and my second), she’s probably one of the few proper allies I have within the realm of media criticism. And yet, if you are ever unfortunate to catch me watching one of her videos concerning Doctor Who, you would see fanboy rage the likes of which even God has never seen before. Seriously, if I lacked any form of perspective, I could easily make up a Top 10 Worst Videos list made up of her Twatty Who Reviews. But this is something I’ve even talked with her before on the podcast, so this is hardly anything new. So, with that little dummy spit out of the way, let’s get into the list already.

Top 20 Obscurus Lupa Presents Episodes

Oh my god, if there was ever a person who needed to never do a crossover again, it would be Obscurus Lupa. She’s perfectly fine on her own videos but, as soon as someone gets in front of the camera with her, she cranks up the derp and only serves to annoy the audience to death. Oh, and she’s apparently just a female clone of the Cinema Snob… if you squint and tilt your head until it does a full 360 degree spin on your neck. And with that, I present to you the Top 20 Obscurus Lupa Presents Episodes.