Tag Archives: comedy

Ready or Not: Here I Come

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A thing I have not seen often is a first horror movie sequel made seven years later. A long time after the field has lain fallow is for horror movie series, sure. But for the second movie in a series? My minimal research shows a couple of Hitchcock sequels, and with Hitchcock not involved, man, I dunno. Probably Psycho II counts though, and that’s a lot longer than seven years. And okay, Aliens is also exactly seven. But I’m just saying, it’s not the norm.

This brings us to the surprise sequel to 2019’s Ready or Not, somewhat appropriately titled Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. This is a movie that understands what being a horror movie sequel is all about. It starts at the exact moment that the previous movie ended. Even better, it immediately dives into the real aftermath of a horror movie, which is the survivor is blamed by the police for pretty much everything. I respect what is happening here.

Okay, the eventual premise is a little implausible. I mean, let me walk that back. The idea that a bunch of other rich and powerful families have their own deals with Mr. Le Bail makes just perfect sense, and the idea that they form a council that controls the world from the shadows, sure, also reasonable. But the actual premise, that someone surviving the plot of the first movie triggers a new contest in which they must compete the same way and whoever kills them becomes head of said council? It’s a stretch, that’s all.

Counterpoint: who cares if it’s a stretch? If Samara Weaving is running around in her wedding dress for another couple of hours trying to survive more heavily armed murderers, who occasionally explode? I’m here for it.

And that’s it. That’s the whole review. I’ll never not watch a horror sequel with the exact same premise, if I already liked the first one. Why would I not? It’s a guarantee of a good time!

El Karate, el Colt y el Impostor

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On a dare, I watched a drive-in movie from exactly 50 years ago starring Lee Van Cleef and Not Bruce Lee[1], called The Stranger and the Gunfighter. I think the country of origin must have been Spain, based on the original language of the title and where it was filmed, but a case can still be made for Italian, and not just because of the director or the purported genre. Anyway, you have not seen this movie and will not see this movie, so I’ll break it down. You have been warned.

Lee Van Cleef is a thief everyone seems to know and like, except for the law in Monterrey, who aim to hang him for the crimes of a) blowing up a safe in the bank, b) killing the safe’s owner (Wang[2]) in the explosion, and c) making off with his fortune. The problem is, he b) tried to convince the owner not to run toward the lit dynamite, and c) there was no fortune, just pictures of four ladies in various states of bedroom [un]dress, and an old fortune cookie. (He has no real defense for a), that one happened.)

Meanwhile, Wang’s nephew and his whole family are in trouble in China because Wang stole the local warlord’s money instead of using it in America to make everyone rich. But the nephew is a Kung Fu master, so the warlord lets him go investigate. He arrives before LVC is hung, and they come to a common arrangement, which is to follow the instructions on the fortune cookie and closely examine the asses of the four women, which will lead them to Wang’s treasure, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

The women are as follows: a horny American Christian, a Russian whore, an Italian musician (she plays a stringed instrument I did not recognize per se), and a Chinese laundress. It’s basically a GI Joe fetch quest, with the part of Cobra being played by an evil preacher who had previously been involved with the horny American, but abandoned her at the first whiff of a treasure.

If this all sounds pretty hilarious, a) I’m doing my job, and b) it’s actually funnier than you think it is. Eventually, they solve all the issues, see all the asses, and find the treasure, yay[3]! So if you ever liked a Lee Van Cleef movie, or if Kung Fu Westerns sound great, or especially if you do not have enough images of Chinese men examining buttocks through a jeweler’s lens burned into your memory, and also if you have a lot of booze? This is the movie for you!

[1] I mean, nowhere near Bruce Lee. You ain’t gonna be fooled, and you wouldn’t have been then either. I just think that the Italian director considered him to be as Bruce Lee as they could afford.
[2] I have high confidence this name was chosen purely so people would snicker in a culturally inappropriate manner
[3] The real treasure was the asses they met along the way

Project Hail Mary

The context is this. The first time I heard about Project Hail Mary, it was presented to me as the movie of a generation, and that I should take my kids to see it immediately[1]. When the same person talked up the importance of Barbie, it made sense, as that really was one of the most important feminist movies of all time. So, yeah, fair. This time, though, just over a year later, it was kind of a lot to take in? Already a new best movie ever? The Star Wars of Gen Z? Well, um, okay.

That’s the context. The result is… it was fine? No, that’s not right. It’s legitimately good. You’ve got a science fictional maguffin that is somehow both the problem and a big part of the solution, and you’ve got a scientist / teacher who has some ideas about how to solve it, and for some reason a no-nonsense project manager in charge of all the other people involved.

Then, after the first third of the movie with the project management and puzzle solving and cool science tricks, it becomes a lost in space movie, which makes sense as I think this was from the same author as The Martian[2]? And then it turns into something unexpected. Something funny, and charming, and emotional. It maybe even stuck the landing, though I’m not so sure about that part. Like I said, it’s legitimately good, and maybe it is the best sci-fi movie of its generation?  But still…

This has been a cautionary tale about the dangers of hype.

[1] My kids are 5 and 3, and I am glad I did not take them to see the movie. But maybe two years from now?
[2] Which I never saw and also never read, so.

Attack the Block

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I watched the new Mario movie with my kids a couple weeks ago, and it was a) not nearly so bad as to deserve the hate I’ve seen it get, but also b) I dozed a few times and thus cannot give it the defense it deserves. All that said, early this week when I was trying to decide if I should review it without a rewatch, I was accidentally notified that my site, this one here on which you are reading this post, had been hijacked by SEO storefront people. So I wrote no review, and instead spent half a week chasing down and patching issues, and breaking things, and fixing the things I broke, plus also it appears that Shards of Delirium (again, that’s this site here) is not indexed by Google, and probably has not been for years. Which explains why the site used to feel [extremely low-key] popular, and then felt like I was the town crier to a ghost town instead, with approximately two regulars. So maybe I fixed that too? Too soon to tell.

But I was talking about the hackers. It seemed like I was playing whack-a-mole with these guys, for hours at a time. Did I plug everything up? I sure hope so, but honestly only time will tell. First I locked them out. Then I found a bunch of hijacker code and got rid of it. Then I turned everything back on, and yes it was working and looked right, but also yes I was getting just astronomical attack vectors, like multiple per second. So I locked it down at the external provider firewall level, and, oops, too much. Then I opened it enough to be usable by other people, and, oops, all attackers. So then I locked down some code internally, and now the CPU is not constantly spiking, and I get a lot less spam than I’ve been getting for the past 3 or so months, and… well, we’ll see.

Which brings me to Attack the Block, the[1] story of a band of hoodlum teens led by Finn from the new Star Wars movies, who pick Guy Fawkes day[2] to mug a nurse who will someday go on to become The Doctor, only there’s something falling out of the sky that is going to disrupt everyone’s night. So it’s Moses and his gang against pretty much everyone. The ever increasing horde of aliens who are just really laser focused on our antiheroes, and the local drug lord, and the cops, and nurse Sam who they done dirty, and their girlfriends, and… well, okay, the two little kids are mostly always on their side. But everyone else? It’s just a neverending series of obstacles that crop up again and again, and every time they fix one issue, two more pop up, and in conclusion the movie basically mirrors my fight with the SEO spammers. …except that my fight involved fewer buckets of blood and alien sword fights and above all fewer fireworks.

Alas.

I have this to say about the movie, all in all. It starts out with Moses and four or five other boys mugging a nurse, and by the end of the movie, I liked them. It was a pretty deep hole to climb out of, so, bravo! Also, though? Turn on the subtitles. I promise you’re gonna need to.

[1] I should not say “sensitive” here. It’s probably trademarked.
[2] Because the style of the randomly generated movie was “set on a holiday”. (The scare was “alien”, of course.)

Send Help

During the previous date night, we saw previews for the new Sam Raimi film. Lo and behold, new date night happened soon enough that we actually got to go see said film, after sushi dinner. Yay, date night!

So, Rachel McAdams is a frumpy[1] single lady with a pet bird, a Survivor audition tape, and dreams of corporate promotion. Unfortunately, her old boss[2] has recently died, and his inheriting son has no real interest in her qualifications for the new Vice President position, because his frat bro is available, and also as I may have mentioned, she’s frumpy. But, because she’s actually talented at her job and they might lose some business, she’s invited along to Bangkok to close the big deal. Which is why she is available to wash up on an island down the beach from her boss when the plane unexpectedly crashes into the ocean on the way there.

Bam! Premise of Send Help achieved.

The boss guy is, as previously hinted at, kind of a dick. Maybe a lot of a dick, even. And Rachel McAdams is a little bit over the top with her intensity, even though she is certainly the aggrieved party. If this were on the Hallmark Channel, she’d soften his rough edges and he’d get her to let her hair down and they’d build a cozy island paradise for themselves. But it’s a Sam Raimi movie, so instead this is all psychological cat and mouse as we wait to see just how real that intensity is, and/or just how ingrained the dickishness is. Can they survive the elements and the circumstances and each other? It sure is fun (and hilarious and disturbing and disgusting) finding out!

Plus, get her away from the makeup artists for a few weeks, and she doesn’t look very frumpy at all. Funny how that works.

[1] If she was ten years older, I think they might have even gone for dowdy
[2] Portrayed via somewhat subtle implication by Bruce Campbell

Wake Up Dead Man

Did you know they made a third Knives Out movie? Of course you did, it was like two months ago and you’ve already seen it. …and now I have too!

Wake Up Dead Man is a locked room mystery in which a fire and brimstone priest with a small but dedicated congregation is murdered, apparently by the new assistant priest (who has some specific Catholic title, and I will not be able to help you more than that) with a motive of “stop ruining the church”. But once Benoit Blanc gets involved, well, you know there’s going to be more to it than that.

The movie did a thing I’ve never seen before. Well, first it did something I’ve seen lots of times, which is dole out information in a way that recontextualizes what you thought you knew. And it does this several times. I could tell I was in for a treat when I had the idea it was basically all over but the “gather everyone in a room and tell them what really happened” scene, only to realize there was more than an hour left. Which brings me to what it did that I had never seen. The consulting detective, having been called in to solve the case, actually shows up in the middle of things and well before the events of the case are even over.[1]

Anyway, it’s a mystery, so I don’t really want to go crazy with detail, but I felt that the subject matter was treated with surprising kindness, even though it was ripe for lampooning or even axe-grinding. The typically star-studded cast was as good as you expect them to be, I could not stop chuckling, and every time I thought I had a handle on what was going on and felt very clever, I was 25-50% right at best, but never in a way that felt cheap or like I was actually writing the smarter story in my head. Good stuff.

[1] I know. Christie had Poirot onsite for murders all the time. The difference is, he just happened to be there when the events were set into motion. This was a different thing where you would expect the police and famous detective to only show up once the crime is over, but in fact the crime still had days left to go. Look, it’s unusual, okay!

Vicious Fun

A difference between the movies of the 1980s and the movies of the 2020s is that, for the most part, we have a more enlightened view of the way people ought to behave. For example, if you were a judgmental nerd with a crazy hot roommate in 1983, the arc of your story would be to win the roommate as a prize for your many inappropriate behaviours, such as berating her for wanting to watch Falcon Crest with her friends, or tailing her (admittedly scuzzball) date to a Chinese restaurant on the edge of town and inserting yourself into his life.

Whereas in the 2020s when you are that same loser character in 1983 under the same circumstances, and you take all of the same actions… you know, ultimately what I did not like about this movie is that he was still the protagonist at all. So be prepared for that, even if his end state isn’t quite as thoroughly rewarded as it once would have been.

The plot twist is that, after getting way too sorry for himself drunk and passing out in a supply closet of said Chinese restaurant, he wakes up to a small motivational self-help group in the main room of the now closed location. Before very long at all, he deduces that they’re not alcoholics so much as they are serial killers, and he’d better hope he can blend in if he wants to survive the night, much less get back to winning the heart of his roommate.

The other thing that would have made me like the movie more [aside from the aforementioned more sympathetic protagonist] is if I had not just seen the same overall plot play out across season one of the Dexter revival. Which is in no way their fault, since the movie predates the TV season by five years. Anyway, Vicious Fun was maybe sufficiently vicious, but definitely not sufficiently fun. I wanted more comedy out of my horror comedy than I actually received. Alas.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Rarely has an episode of my podcast hit the nail so squarely on the head, and rarely has a movie title so succinctly summed up its contents. The scare die was clowns or dolls, and the style die was cheesy. And so I have finally watched[1] Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

This is basically one of those teenage screwball comedies with a recognizable face as the annoyed authority figure and a lot of unrecognizable faces as the various teens getting themselves into screwball situations to annoy the authority figure. Only instead of trying to save the ski lodge from the evil yuppie developer, or trying to keep their frat house from being shut down by the dean, they’re trying to save the town from an alien invasion of clowns with a circus tent spaceship, cotton candy body containers, popcorn guns, and balloon animal minions.

This movie is exactly what it sounds like, exactly as good as it sounds like, and has not only a line of dialogue but also a theme song that name-drops the title. The script was not so much written as it was recorded during a late night dorm room weed session and then just filmed straight from the recording, with no notes, no editing, no rewrites, nothing. Whatever you think of, it’s what they thought of too.

I’m not going to turn around and say it’s good now. I’m not even going to say I’m being unfair.  But I will say that you have to truly admire the dedication to the bit. This is the kind of movie that proudly proclaims, “You think you can make a movie? All you need is a rich dentist and a time machine to get you back to the 1970s or ’80s. Because if we made this, you can too!” (For all I know, you don’t even need the time machine.)

Also, though, the klown kostuming is pretty legit.

[1] How have I not seen this before? I was expecting to be all, “oh yeah,” but nope. First time.

Psycho Goreman

You learn basically everything you need to know about Psycho Goreman[1] in the opening text crawl, when we learn that he comes from the planet Gigax. These are people who are definitely in a joking mood, and want you to be in on it. …for certain values of “you”.

There are these two siblings, and the younger sister is abusive to the nebbish older brother. (10 and 7, maybe?) For example, in their regular game of crazy ball[2], if he wins he gets something pretty regular, I forget what because it was reasonable, while if she wins, he has to dig a hole and then bury himself in it. And of course he never wins.

Anyway, in the course of digging the hole, they uncover the hidden burial site of an immortal dark power bent on galactic domination, and wacky hijinx ensue. It’s astonishing how close this comes to being a family-friendly movie[3]. You would have to change almost none of the plot, but man would you have to change a lot of the special effects.

My point is, you shouldn’t watch it with your kids. Even if it does have a little bit of a lesson right at the end. You should watch it if you like gross-out horror comedy or were ever kind of a dweeb, and if you’re not allergic to children in movies.

[1] PG for short, but since the movie is unrated, I guess they did not compromise on their artistic vision.
[2] Dodgeball but with a Calvinball-influenced ruleset
[3] There’s even a musical interlude in the middle, almost more of a music video, entitled Frig You. Which is a perfect encapsulation of how it’s almost family-friendly.

Boys from County Hell

Imagine a small town. The kind everyone of a certain age who lives there wants to escape from, and within a rounding error of nobody ever actually does. Imagine the young men and women of that certain age, yearning for freedom. Imagine they’re in Ireland, and their town’s claim to fame is Bram Stoker tourism.

Now imagine there’s a cairn in the middle of a field, and legend says someone, or something, is buried under it. Something you wouldn’t want to run into at night, if you take my meaning. Also, the land is being sold for development, and one of our Boys from County Hell sees helping on the construction of that development as his ticket out, even if it means knocking over a few old stones, you know?

Once all the setup was finished and the main action commenced, I simply could not stop feeling the influence of Shaun of the Dead. Yes, vampires instead of zombies, but between the exotic UK accents and the slapstick absurdity and the occasional gore… yeah, there’s no way it wasn’t an inspiration. I daresay this is… well, it’s not a successor at all. I liked it, but come on. Shaun is just one of the best. And I don’t think they were going for homage. But I daresay the movies are having the same conversation with the audience, and this one is worthy of being in that conversation.