Forums of Filth

Brief recap. I didn't care for THE VILLAGE, and as a result I skipped LADY IN THE WATER. I thought THE HAPPENING was a respectable take on the "nature strikes back" films of the 70s, while THE LAST AIRBENDER and AFTER EARTH wouldn't have appealed to me no matter who directed them, so I nev...

As much as I tend to enjoy a good Jason Statham film, they certainly don't all fall into that category. I remember two things about TRANSPORTER 3, for instance. One was Statham furiously pedaling a child's bicycle to keep up with a remote control device that was going to blow him up if it got too fa...

Honestly, I thought it was "too late" to review this one, but since it's still playing? It's another Marvel origin story, but this one's part of the main "Avengers" universe (unlike the constantly-rebooted SPIDER-MAN and F4). However, it starts off well before IRON MAN (before To...

When I wrapped up 2012, I declared Scott Derrickson's SINISTER the best horror film of the year but didn't really see room for a sequel (outside of the original being a hit, of course). But at least Derrickson stayed on board as co-producer and co-writer of the obligatory SINISTER 2, allowing Ciaran...

Despite my long-standing affection for the original television series, I didn't work up a lot of enthusiasm for a new take on THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., and it doesn't seem like a lot of other people did, either. But this actually turned out to be one of the unfairly buried treasures of the year. Let ...

I never got around to reviewing these, did I? And it scarcely seems worth it as they no longer appear to be going concerns. Nor was I actually planning to see either of these in the first place. Still and all, still and all... My wife treated me to a surprise trip to the drive-in theatre in San Jose...

Ambitious, upwardly mobile Simon (Jason Bateman) and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) return to the former's old California stomping grounds when he scores a job with a billion-dollar company (with an even more lucrative promotion in the offing). Only now they can afford to move into a new and luxuriou...

So... this one's got about a week left on-demand before it disappears from that outlet and I hadn't even known it had come out in the first place. And the late Osio (which ran the first two films in this series) never even bothered with this one (come to think of it, they never ran the third ATLAS S...

Really? Why did I go see this? A: I wasn't interested in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and wouldn't go see ANT-MAN or PIXELS without my family. B: I heard so much hate about this movie before it even opened, so I was curious to see if it was worse than THE VATICAN TAPES. C: I saw all four previous VACATION mov...

I should let you know from the start that THE VATICAN TAPES is NOT a "found footage" movie. But it apparently wants to be one anyway. Any excuse for a character to be anywhere near a camera is an excuse to show the camera's point of view. Even when a guy steps into an elevator for a brief ...

In 1993, a high-school production of a fictitious play known as "The Gallows" ends disastrously when young lead Charlie falls victim to a prop malfunction and is hanged for real in front of the audience. Twenty years later, the school forges ahead with another production of the ill-fated p...

Having heard so many different things about this movie in advance, I approached TERMINATOR: GENISYS still unsure as to whether I was about to see a "reboot" or a legitimate "sequel." Silly me. With a time-travel premise such as this, there's no reason it can't be both. Say all fo...

There will be NO accolades or awards for screenwriting in this case, but JURASSIC WORLD is a monster movie that delivers, plain and simple. Officially, 2 and 3 never happened, but there's no contradictory information to get in the way if you want to count them anyway. In any event, after the disastr...

When SPY was first announced, my immediate instinct said "skip it." It's no secret that I quite like Jason Statham, but I'm not compelled to see absolutely everything in which he appears (for example, EXPENDABLES 2 convinced me that I didn't need to see EXPENDABLES 3). And I really didn't ...

I quite liked James Wan's original INSIDIOUS. As for the sequel? I thought it was quite well-made but almost completely redundant. I did note at the time, however, that the fadeout opened the door for the series to continue in a fresher direction and that I wouldn't necessarily be averse to a third ...

I will never bag on a movie "just" for being a remake. There are some fine remakes out there, and doubtless there will be more. This just isn't one of them. Names have been changed to protect the originals, I guess. Instead of the Freelings, we get the Bowens. Otherwise, same family of fiv...

I believe a little background would be appropriate here... when I first saw the original MAD MAX, I didn't care for it at all (even though it had some "good action"). Of course, I was watching it when it premiered on HBO, and while in those days I wasn't nearly as hip to the joys of such a...

And so the long-awaited second Marvel Universe big-ticket "ensemble" film hits theatres. And I couldn't help but feel... underwhelmed. Is it just me? I don't think so. Was I in a bad or non-receptive mood? Hmm... no, it was Mother's Day and we were enjoying a family outing--I was open-mind...

And here it is... perhaps our last breath of quiet, thoughtful science fiction before the summer blockbusters officially take over. Very kind of Universal to give the directorial debut of writer Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER, SUNSHINE) a fair chance in a mainstream release. Young coding genius Caleb (...

THE LIVING kicks off as a thirty-something husband Teddy (Fran Kranz of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) awakens from an off-screen bender to the grim reality that he'd beaten up his wife Molly (Jocelin Donahue from HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) the night before. Molly has retreated to her mother's house, but eventual...

Hmmm... minimalist horror movie taking place entirely on a computer screen and cashing in on the "cyberbully" news trend. Maybe I've seen this one, maybe I haven't... I've got the time... sure, why not? Today was certainly a good day to get caught up on what's happening in the world of hor...

They "cut" such a good trailer that I didn't "bank" on something so utterly generic. That pun was more clever than most of CUT BANK, which tries desperately to be (not to RESEMBLE, mind you, but actually BE) an early Coen Brothers movie (even if its Americana was actually filmed ...

I'd love to build this up as one of the best films of 2015... but, of course, it was actually Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for 2014. It's only now that it's actually PLAYING in my neck of the woods. So... it's too late to campaign. But go OUT OF YOUR WAY to see WILD TALES all the s...

So--in the last few weeks we've seen a surge of recognition for IT FOLLOWS as "the" horror film to beat this year... even "the critics" are showing it respect if not out-and-out adulation, and while it didn't open in my neck of the woods right away, the word of mouth caused the f...

As I've suggested earlier, here's an item that seemed to be a different film with every permutation of the trailer. When I first became aware of CHAPPIE (I'm not going to go to the trouble of perpetually spelling the title out as CHAPPiE, as it appears on screen, sorry), I saw little more than a cut...