Butterfly Kisses

Butterfly Kisses really wants to be a Lake Mungo or Blair Witch Project, where you have super fans digging through the lore and re-watching the film and breaking it down frame-by-frame, looking for hidden things, but it's not. Butterfly Kisses is a faux-documentary that follows a guy making his own documentary about a box of tapes his mother-in-law found under their water-heater. The tapes are what would have been a student film by two college students investigating the local legend of Peeping Tom AKA Blink Man who allegedly appears if you stare town a certain tunnel for an hour without blinking and then gets closer to you every time you blink until you can literally feel his eyelashes on your face (colloquially known as butterfly kisses). It's a very meta-movie which does help how serious they play it, although they definitely play it too serious, crediting made-up people in the credits and filling out the IMDB page with stuff like listing Gavin York, the main character, as playing himself even though he is played by Seth Adam Kallick (it has since been corrected with real information). Even though it is clearly a movie and none of this is real, they really want you to question whether or not it's authentic. The nature of how they structure the story by having a team documenting a man documenting another group of people via found footage allows them to explain away the a lot of the many, many plot holes and cliches of horror movies. The problem is the same that all these meta things have, just because you point out that what you are doing is bad, doesn't make it less bad. When Deadpool says "Boy isn't that a cliche you've seen a million times" it doesn't make it less of an annoying cliche. When the Simpsons video game makes fun of bad platforming mechanics it doesn't excuse the game having bad platforming mechanics. Butterfly Kisses is full of times where they have a terrible effect or a plot element that makes no sense and they have a skeptic character point it out and Gavin craps all over them saying "No, it's all real. How could they fake that?" It gets so convoluted. The entire movie makes no sense. I guess at times it feels like this is what a real documentary would look like, with interviews inter-spliced with footage from the tapes, but the acting is absolutely awful most of the time. They do get some real people to film fake interviews (one of the Blair Witch Project directors and the author of those Weird Pennsylvania kind of books) but they feel forced. Not for one second could you convince me that this is a real documentary and the movie almost seems to beg you to. Butterfly Kisses is a sad Frankenstein's monster of a movie. The only original bit is how many layers of film there are, but having the three layers only muddies the narrative and confuses the audience. Are the tapes Gavin found real or fake? Does Gavin really believe that the tapes are reals and is actually trying to make a real documentary about them or is he trying to pull a Blair Witch and make a horror movie that is played as real found footage? Is Butterfly Kisses a real documentary or is it a faux-documentary that they are trying to fool people into thinking is real? In the end, I don't care. I'm never going to go check out the websites the film mentions and I'll never re-watch it looking for Peeping Tom is the background. There are no compelling characters an the acting is bad and there is nothing novel about this film. Found footage is old news and The Blair Witch Project already exists. Peeping Tom has a little bit of promise, but the movie is not actually about Peeping Tom; they don't investigate who/what he is, they don't look into his mythology, an they only give us two or three minutes of interviews about people having experiences with Peeping Tom at the beginning. Peeping Tom himself i basically a rip-off of the weeping angels from Dr. Who. The movie is really just a convoluted movie about a documentary about a documentary about a box of tapes of college students investigating an urban legend and none if it is worth your time. Gavin is not a relatable character and even tough we get four minutes of character building for him, I couldn't care any less. Even is you look exclusively at its value as a horror movie, there is nothing scary here. There is one terrible jump scare that looks absolutely terrible, but the rest of the movie is just a boring faux-doc.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

101 Dalmatians is more like a story book than an animated movie. Most of the establishing shots and backgrounds look like they are taken directly from an old picture book and animated over. In 1961, this was probably a beautiful movie, but in 2019, I can't help but notice the lazy animation, multiple repeated elements (They use the same model for off of the puppies and Cruella has one face the entire time she's searching in the town towards the end), and for a feature length movie, we get minimal plot and very little characterization. Of the 15 original Dalmatian puppies, three of them have unique appearances and names: Lucky has a horseshoe shape of spots on his back and won't stay off the TV, Patch has a black spot over one eye and thinks he's a tough guy, and Rolly who is fat. By the time we get to 101 dalmatians, everyone is interchangeable and nothing matters. Even Cruella is barely developed and she's the most memorable part. The whole movie feels very rushed. All of the faces look terrible and inhuman and someone seems to have gotten dalmatians confused with greyhounds when making the models for Pongo and Perdy. The entire story is Cruella has puppies stolen and Pongo and Perdy head out to rescue them. It's 79 minutes of "How does she know that this event happened?", "How do they know where they are going?", and "Why is that texture on her coat moving like that?". The story, characters, and animation style are super simple and ultimately disappointing. I guess some of the voice acting was okay and I can cut them some slack because it was 1961, but there is little to celebrate here.

The Decameron

While I can appreciate Pier Paolo Pasolini's artistry and vision, The Decameron is kind of a mess. Pasolini adapts eight stories from Boccaccio's novel and although he does maintain the essentials of the stories, they feel stripped down (much like most of the cast #BadJoke). These aren't necessarily the eight best stories or the most filmable stories, or even the most entertaining; it's eight stories with no real thread to connect them. Pasolini kind of uses a frame story (much different than the novels) but it doesn't lead from one story to another or create a narrative thread, it's just a single story told but by bit between the longer stories. As far as the stories themselves, everyone is terribly acted, painfully unfunny, and at least 80% ADR. I don't speak Italian, so I had subtitles on and I was still much more focused on how poorly the sound matched the characters' lips. I'm not sure what the deal is, but almost the entire movie is ADR and it's awful, the most egregious example being a scene with a boys' choir where I looks like Pasolini just told the kids "I don't care what you are saying, just keep your mouth moving and don't stop!" so their mouths don't match the song and each kid is clearly doing his own thing. They'll be holding a long note and a kid in the corner is comping his teeth. It's a shame because Pasolini has many beautiful shots, but the entire movie feel like if you hired an A-List director to run your fourth grade musical; visually, I can see that he knows what he's doing, but no one else does. Honestly, if he'd cut the number of stories in half, hired actual actors, and re-shot scenes instead of dubbing over them afterwords, we could have a masterpiece.

Avengement

Avengement is a very simple action movie that has a few very bright spots, but is mostly kind of vanilla. Although none of the characters are very well developed or much more than a basic outline of a person, the acting is surprisingly good. Scott Adkins, who plays the main role, does a very good job with the role he was given. He does great with the lines and his fight scenes were pretty believable. The fight choreography is actually solid and although the blood was a tad unbelievable (and the practical effect in the flashback to explain his teeth wasn't good) the fight scenes are fun and well organized. There were a few genuinely creative choices in the fight scenes that really elevate the entire movie. The only issue is a pretty big issue; the story is unoriginal and the way it's told is confusing and drags it down. We start off with almost a "I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this situation" scene and then we jump back and forth in time with Scott Adkins's character Cain explaining to a group of people in a bar what he's been up to. Without spoiling anything, Avengement is a revenge story with the inciting incident that is told in out of order flashbacks in the middle of the revenge. The story itself is very easy to understand, but the constant flashbacks (especially with them not being in order) muddy it. The director/writer Jesse V. Johnson made his name as a stunt double and stunt choreographer and you can tell that is his strong suit. Avengement is the perfect kind of "Netflix Movie". It doesn't have any big actors and it doesn't have the kind of action scenes that would spark interest in a trailer. It's a great background movie for a group of friends that is clearly based around big fight scenes and honestly, even though the story does have good moments, the story is secondary to the action. You can see potential in Avengement but the story needs more work. It's worth a watch for a fast, fun Friday night popcorn movie where you and your friends can react to a guy getting bashed in the mouth with a pipe and blood flays all over the wall, but if you are looking for a "Film", Avengment isn't going to quench that thirst. It's a good action movie and I think that's all it was really going for.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate

I'm pretty sure they thought "Man, we landed Lizzie McGuire! She's gonna elevate this garbage script we bought." Well guess what bozo!?! She's the very worst part. Yeah, the script is full of terrible dialog and faux-philosphical conversations that mean nothing and accomplish nothing. There is so much bad CGI and most of the time I can't even imagine why they thought they needed to use CGI (They use CGI water when Tate fills up her bathtub, like they couldn't just rig something to put the red dye into the water in a real faucet?). The camera work is very lazy and there are a few very bad shot compositions (Mean Girls boy at the car in the first 20 minutes). The plot is super repetitive and almost pointless. It's a series of vaguely related scenes more than a movie. The title doesn't even really make sense. I guess she's haunted by her "premonitions"? And of course, all of the acting is just awful, but Hillary Duff gets the VIP award for The Haunting of Sharon Tate. She appears to have watched a couple of Sharon Tate interviews and sometimes she tries to gimmick her voice. What we get is Lizzie McGuire randomly going in and out of an unsettling Frankenstein of English Royalty and pretentious hipster accent for the first half of the movie and then she just gives up. I think she keeps forgetting to do the "accent" and the director is just to over it to do another take. All of her emotions are terribly acted and I didn't believe that she was a real human being at any point in the film. I personally don't care about whether or not the film is "respectful" of the actual Sharon Tate's legacy or the seriousness of the Manson Family murders. If Daniel Farrands thinks a Sharon Tate that constantly has premonitions of her death is a neat idea for a movie, than I think he should be able to make that movie. The issue is that he made a very bad movie. Being based on a true story doesn't make the movie better in any way. Really, the only reason to use the Sharon Tate story for the movie is to exploit it. If he wrote a wholly unique story, he'd have the creative freedom to actually utilize his premise. Having a true story as the basis of your movie makes it really hard to add elements, especially supernatural elements. The Haunting of Sharon Tate is honestly just a sad attempt to exploit a series of terrible murders. There is nothing here worth your time. It's not good as a "true story" and it is just awful as a movie.

Hallucinations

While Hallucinations looks so much worse than Splatter Farm, It's about an hour of concentrated good bad movie. The acting is still terrible with both Polonia brothers and Jeremy (I think his name is Todd this time) having almost no actual human emotion. The story is bananas and makes zero sense. The entire run time has you shouting "Who is that? What is that thing? Why are they doing that? What happened? He took of his glasses before his nap, so why is he waking up with them on now? Why is he walking like that? Is that supposed to be symbolic? What even is this movie?" I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that there was no script or outline other than a couple of props and gore shots they wanted to jam in. It's so bad, but there are so many unintentionally comedic moments. The video quality is awful. It's so bad that I had flashback to watching VHS tapes and having to adjust the traction. There is a lot of static in scenes and there is even a couple of times where the screen rolls. The sound levels are uneven and if there weren't subtitles on the Amazon Prime version, I'd have missed at least a quarter of the dialog. The effects are awful (except for one scene with a vaguely convincing fake chest) and the dialog is worse. The absolute peak of terrible though, is the camera work. It's clearly all handheld and whoever is holding the camera either has shaky hands or the camera is just too heavy for them. All of the movements are stuttered, especially the panning, and there is one scene where a character has to walk sideways alongside a table because there isn't enough room to get between the table and the camera man. As with Splatter Farm, I have to issue the caveat that Hallucinations was made by teenagers in the 80's so if you view it in context, it's not as bad. Don't get me wrong, it is an awful film, but it was made by teenagers with consumer grade tech in 1986, so they deserve some credit. Hallucinations is another great movie for a "bad movie' night: it's nonsensical, it looks awful, the dialog is super stilted and corny, the effects are laughably bad, and the acting is what you'd expect from a middle school pageant. I love it, but it's terrible.

Splatter Farm

I have to start off with the caveat that all of my positive notes are related to the fact that the Polonia brothers were 18 when they made Splatter Farm and it was 1987. I have to give them credit for making a movie at 18 with the technology that existed in the 80's that had enough worth for me to be able to find on DVD in 2019. Even though there are many, many things wrong with Splatter Farm, it was made by two teenagers in two and a half months in 1987. That being said, Splatter Farm is a hilariously bad movie. It is a shining beacon of "So bad it's good" horror movies. The acting is terrible from all four characters and the script is even worse. One of the first scenes ends with a character apologizing for ruining dinner, "but I have to take a shit." They clearly didn't pay attention to what time it is supposed to be in the film, because sunlight streams through the window a night and they can walk outside after breakfast into darkness outside. It's clear that they didn't film the movie in order. There are many timeline inconsistencies and simple errors they overlook, like we see a character being dragged on his back and before he starts being dragged his face is clear and after he's drug into the barn, he's got a bloody eye with each cut, we see him be awake and aware and then the next he's unconscious, and then he's awake and moving his arms, and then he's unconscious. There are plenty of other obvious issues like that everyone is wearing the exact same clothing the entire movie. The film takes place over four or five days and every day one brother is noticeably wearing the same Viagra Falls shirt. The effects are about what you would expect from teens in the 80's, but they look terrible. But, as bad as the practical gore effects are, I think the blood is the worst. They clearly use water and food coloring for all of the blood so it is very watery and various levels or red (except the "blood" that drips from Jeremy's grocery bag, which is very thick, lumpy, and pink, like Pepto chili) and has the wrong consistency. All of the blood splatter originates from a squirt gun out of frame and just streams all around. There is a scene where a character cuts his wrist (with the knife blade almost parallel to his skin) and copious pink water flows up and away form the knife. They also are clearly using spotlights that are way too bright. A character goes outside in the middle of the night and it looks like there is a car with it's headlights pointed at the house. When they are inside the house incredibly bright lights are streaming from behind the camera. They use natural light when they can, but when they need artificial light, it's 400% too bright and clearly not from the household lamp in the corner. When they do get natural light, for some reason, people get green auras and a lot of scenes are entirely green tinted. A couple of times we get what appears to be a reflection on a pane of glass between the camera lens and the characters, like it is being filmed from behind a window, even though it obviously isn't. I'm in no way a film maker and I have no actual technical film making knowledge, so I can't explain why this happens, but I can say that it's very distracting and only partially related to their awful equipment. Absolutely everything about this film is just terrible, except maybe the directing is a D+. Again, I have to reiterate that this is a "film" by two 18 year olds in 1987 that is still available in 2019, so you kind of have to contextualize what you are watching. It is objectively a very bad movie, but I have to give the 1980's Polonia brothers credit for making a movie that clearly put their heart and souls into. They made a terrible movie, but they did make a movie. If we ignore the context, Splatter Farm really only has value as a hilariously bad movie to enjoy with friends. It isn't scary and the gore is over-the-top unrealistic to the point where it isn't even enjoyable in a Hostel/Saw kind of way. Splatter Farm is great for a bad movie night. There is one more thing that I think is totally worth mentioning because it 100% breaks the immersion and is wildly unrealistic. The house the movie takes place has a cat and two kittens and not a single character stops to pet any of them, no one even acknowledges them. One character leaves the house and they cut to an exterior shot and the cat is following behind him and he doesn't pet the cat. There is a close up of the two kittens that serves zero purpose because no cats are ever mentioned or acknowledged, so why are you showing us that there are more cats? There is no way that none of the characters could possibly not at least touch a cat the entire movie. The exploding watermelon that's supposed to be a guy's head was bad, but acceptable. Zero feline petting, is not. Pet the cat.

Alien: Covenant

Covenant is a huge step down from Prometheus in every way but one. The script is just awful and the CGI is somehow worse. The story is less confusing, but a lot less eventful and interesting. I don't feel like I know anything now that I didn't before watching Covenant. I give Covenant credit for having better acting (except Danny McBride who is terrible), but that's it. So much of the new information we do get directly contradicts what we know from Prometheus and the original four movies. Without spoiling the shear, wondrous stupidity, they are constantly changing how Xenomorphs and the other aliens work. Covenant's story is identical to most of the other Alien movies in that a team get caught on a planet with naughty aliens and have to escape. I was about to call the people scientists, but as with Prometheus, they don't act like scientists. At least with Prometheus they wore there helmets for a bit, but these bozos hop right off the space ship with zero protection or breathing apparatus and are constantly being total morons. The vetting process must have been incredibly lax. "So it says here you are a scientist." Yeah, I'm a food scientist; I mainly help engineer corn. "Cool, we're sending you into space. And you sir, it says you are a scientist too?" Well, I watched all of the Magic School Bus episodes and have a degree in physical education. "Close enough. To Space!" They have zero awareness and make the most reckless decisions. This certainly doesn't help the fact that none of them are particularly likable and have almost no characterization. About half of the crew is in some sort of romantic relationship with another crew member, but I could never tell who was paired with who until someone died. The ending is dumb and you can see it coming from a mile away. Unless you want to see all the Alien movies just to say you did, Covenant is an easy pass.

Scary Movie

Having now seen Scream, I have more appreciation for Scary Movie. Scream is already a borderline parody of horror movies and Scary Movie cranks it up to 11. Of course, some of the jokes haven't aged well and quite a few times they are trying way too hard for a small payoff. Scream took a lot of jabs at the genre and Scary Movie capitalizes on many of the things that Scream didn't hit. The acting is all that it needs to be for a stupid parody movie, but Anna Farris is great. Shorty wasn't funny in 2000 and he wasn't funny in Scary Movie 2 in 2001 and he still isn't funny now. My biggest issue is that while Scream is a satire from people who clearly love horror movies, Scary Movie doesn't feel like it comes from the same place. Especially having seen interviews from the Wayans brothers, I don't think they made Scary Movie as horror fans lampooning the genre; they seem to think that the entire genre is stupid and deserves to be made fun of. Scary Movie has some funny parts, but the script is missing heart.

Toy Story 2

Jumping right to the comparison to the first Toy Story, Toy Story 2 is a much better movie. The animation improved immensely in the four years between the films; it wasn't necessarily bad in Toy Story, but Toy Story 2 didn't have any noticeable issues and the animations were much smoother. The voice acting is still great and there aren't any particularly weak characters which is impressive with how split the movie is between Woody centered scenes and Buzz centered scenes. The story is much more compelling too, even if it is kind of a retread of the first with new characters. The only real flaw I have is with a very important decision that Woody makes about halfway through the film. Even though the movie is twenty years old and a pretty popular Pixar movie, I won't spoil it, but considering all we know about Woody from the first film and the values and beliefs that he reiterates here, his actions later in the movie are out of character. I also don't really understand the Stinky Pete character and his motives seem questionable or at the very least under-developed. There are still a few logistical inconsistencies with what and when toys are able to come to life and some "they really didn't notice that?" questions, but I can overlook that in a movie where a cowboy doll comes jumps onto a dog and rides it outside to rescue a penguin squeaky toy from a yard sale. Toy Story 2 is a solid film with a few character issues, but still a fun movie with a compelling story and relatable characters, easily the high spot of the series.