horror movies in the 2000s were so fucking bad
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Checking out the trailer for Halloween Resurrection after watching the original is what brought this post about.
Iâm sure somehow the Iraq war can be blamed for this.
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i watched the Baz Luhrmann Elvis this past weekend, and honestly, i enjoyed it. my dad is a huge Elvis fan, so i grew up basically knowing all of the songs because iâd heard them so much. and weâd watched so many TV documentaries, and iâd overheard so many conversations between my parents about his life, not to mention that iâve been to Graceland about three times in my life, and was taken, as a child, to panel talks and Q&As with his former entourage. fun fact: my mom once asked Joe Esposito the most âmy momâ question a person could ever ask: âDid Elvis like Italian food?â amidst the bust of laughter from Mr. Esposito and the audience, he responded with a resounding âhe LOVED Italian foodâ
anyway, i say all this to give some perspective on my own relation to this celebrity figure. i donât dislike Elvis, but i also donât really seek out to listen to him, either; however, i know a lot more about Elvis than probably the average person my age.
so iâd been curious about seeing this Elvis movie - a thing that was probably not possible until now. i remember they made a big deal out of the fact that the Presley estate let someone remix one of his songs (âA Little Less Conversationâ - kind of not really a banger to begin with, kind of a song from one of his movies and, tbh, who cares about those), so a full-on movie is the kind of thing that must have been really difficult to wrangle the rights to.
so yeah, i was curious. my fiancĂ©eâs best friend was staying with us last week. on a night i was supposed to go to a wedding, but stayed in because of stomach issues, she and i decided to watch Elvis - it seemed like the best way to sate my curiosity, and also like the kind of movie you can watch with someone you barely know.
i think Lurhmannâs style was a good choice - Elvis, especially in the latter years, was gaudy as hell, and huge, and bombastic. i think the film does an ok job at capturing the breadth of his career, though it also feels very self conscious of itself at times (probably in relation to the varieties of opinions on Elvis that have formed in the ensuing decades since his death), almost trying to reassure the viewer of something.
but it also does a good job of capturing the effect this guy had on people. it made me think of my dad, and how much he meant to him. i wondered to myself, âdid my dad unconsciously want to fuck Elvis? did everybody?â
but ultimately, the movie highlights the beginning of an era of which we are now at the end - an era of the modern musician, discovered by someone, signed to a small label, and blowing up into international megastardom, only to be drained of everything theyâre worth until they literally keel over, possibly on a toilet. Tom Hanks as Col. Parker borders on cartoonish, but so does everything in the movie, tbh.
i think if you enjoy Lurhmannâs work on any level, and if you arenât totally hateful of Elvis and his work, then itâs probably worth watching. iâve mostly avoided thoughts on the film after it came out, so i have no idea what the consensus is. my fiancĂ©eâs best friend, though, thought it was great.
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I will vote for anyone that runs on the platform of outlawing a posthumous dramatized Beatles movie.
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the only one we will ever need
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exceptionally good essay
âWatchableâ was my conclusion in the hard search for positives
I liked that they actually made the lead character a troubled fuck-up that really only had the slightest of redemptions by the end. In dropping the typical Say No To Drugs messaging they allow her to make conscious, rational decisions while remaining every bit as self-destructive as the opening scene (probably) and was a smart direction for her to embody; what with Hellraiser generally being centered on Hedonism/Addiction and not quite Here Are Some BDSM Monsters
The Here Are The BDSM Monsters looked neat but on a design level all seem to be massively into the same bodymod accessories, whereas the original Cenobites were disfigured as a result of their particular choice of Pleasure/Pain
I liked that it featured that one level from Dishonored 2 but it all became very rote by then. Still, some occasional CGI and art was pretty trippy and that one shot of Leviathan was gorgeous
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Watched Incantation by Kevin Ko. Fun! I feel like there was a lot of stuff here to mine out of the experience⊠if you are more acquainted with some of the religious and cultural stuff than I am. I had a good time nevertheless. REALLY good child actor.
I loved the cool place where everyone gets cursed. The place that curses you and the shit that happens there is very neat and spooky and suggestive of supernatural processes and systems that are never addressed, and I would recommend this movie for that alone. However I wish weâd had more time with the characterâs backstory to learn why exactly the people who get cursed do all the dumb shit that leads to them getting cursed. I wanted to understand those characters better, but I didnât get the chance.
I do regret that consumer video equipment is now so advanced that a âfound footage movieâ looks pretty flawless with video quality most of the time. Part of the fun of the found footage horror genre for me is the disruptive intrusion of the hardware and the softwareâbad image quality, glitching shit, people using different types of video technology to capture images that might not be viewable by human eyes, etc. I also wasnât a huge fan of how many angles a lot of the scenes were shot from. Did these people have secret cameras slapped on every surface perfectly capturing all their reaction shots? I guess so!
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I just realized the host of the crystal maze (riff raff) was the âhostâ of the tricks n traps dungeon in the 2000 dnd movie. what a great touch
the best part is how people keep being anachronistic because theyâre doing a DND campaign, referencing stuff their character does out loud constantly. I think people hated this movie cuz itâs too accurate to how most people play tabletop. I was able to make a gemstone player character analog for everyone in the movie. I thought maybe I was being stupid but at the end when they win a lady goes YOUR DEAD FRIEND IS WAITING FOR YOU and they all disappear! back to the table
what the fuck was jeremy irons trying to do with his voice though
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toy story 4 was weird, it started off with kind of a weak/offbeat premise but milked a surprising amount of movie out of it. lots of flashy set pieces with stuff whizzing around too fast to keep track. i wonder if they have a dedicated physics guy just figuring out how to rube goldberg these toys around human spaces. most of the jokes were unfunny, thereâs some awful internet millennialisms like âi have so many questions. i have all the questionsâ. overall a waste of time but not as bad as i was prepared for it to be
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watched matango and itâs now my head canon for how they get the humanoid mascots in the m&m store
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Who among us is familiar with the movie âHard Rock Zombiesâ?
We just watched it last night with an accompanying drinking game and it was⊠a helluva thing.
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tricked my family into watching Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams. no one regretted it
love the attention on the special effects, imagining the discussions: âshould we make them look good and less like 2D billboards of green screen footage with Photoshop glow effects?â ânah kids donât give a shit about veracity, make it look rad as hell. more backflips. more 3D HUDs. donât let me catch you skimping on the particle effectsâ
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I watched Trancers on blu ray because someone from SB posted a really positive review of it on letterboxd a while ago and the movie ruled.
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Surprisingly, somehow enjoyed watching Dunc and canât find much to dunk on it?
Aside from part deux not being available yet, obv.
At least now i know that Denis Villeneuve clearly knows how to woo me, and that i am a sucker for his works 
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Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 was gooooood. Well, it seems good. My friend called to talk with me on the phone right as I started it and I could only watch the film without sound. It seems fun and I want to give it a proper screening.
I thought it was wonderfully mysterious how, when all the cenobites are being killed and they are reverting to their human forms, that Chattterer is revealed to be a child. What a thrilling bit of intrigue with no exposition to ruin it! Super eerie.
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I was kinda shocked at how good Hellraiser 2 was. Like, yeah, the first is iconic, but thereâs a lot of great, nasty shit in 2 that helps it carry itself, too.
Gonna live the rest of my life extremely cautious around soiled mattresses. Or, yâknow, more than I already am.
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Hellraiser 2 hits that sweet spot that I like to think of as âR rated childrenâs movies.â More horror movies could stand to be Jim Henson knock offs
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I like moments of hellraiser 2 but itâs much more of a videogame (pejorative) than the first and it only has two really cool moments (skinless Julia smoking in a white suit, and that demon god lighthouse projecting darkness)
Pinhead and the other cenobites really had their edges sanded off here as they became generic anti-villains getting into anime fights with the evil psychiatrist
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Itâs such a goofy karmic retribution that Julia works so hard to get her skin back, only for it to get sucked off in a second in the hell dimension.
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