WHAS is recognizable to any State fan… but not immediately.  …  It could be mixed bag of strange and hilarious, but it was rarely uninteresting and it was always 100% more inventive than what most sketch TV had to offer, then and now.  When The State went off the air, members resurfaced here and there, but it wasn’t until Wet Hot American Summer – where the whole crew reappeared, including show director / editor David Wain – that it seemed like we might get a proper followup.

And it happens, but only after making you believe that this might be an actual movie.  To a casual viewer that could make the weirdness seem out of left field, but it was totally a payoff worth waiting for for State fans…•

HOLY CLICKABLE LINK

Sometimes there are movies that are so specialized in EVIsubject matter that I wonder if the intended audience actually finds it interesting or is similarly puzzled by the limitations.  ‘Grand Champion’ was, apparently, director Barry Tubb’s “love letter to Texas,” as he grew up in Snyder, where the film took place, and probably got to witness some of the livestock shows that the film includes.  That’s all fine and good.  I like genre films, and I like animals.  But ‘Grand Champion’ is so torn between kids movie antics and wanting to be good to steers and Texas that it makes for an odd little film.  Not unpleasant to watch, hence the three stars, but not really clear what the end goal was…

A REVIEW SURPRISINGLY LACKING IN JOKES ABOUT “BULLSHIT” LIES HEREIN

I hate actually liking cult movies.  But while you and I have both seen movies like Riki-Oh, or perhaps even influenced by it, the actual tone – which is moderately dark, for what it is – combined with the steady state insanity, makes for a movie I wasn’t fully expecting and ended up being impressed by.

I CAN TELL YOU LIKE LIKING CULT MOVIES, YOU JERK

Bone is a strangeass movie.  That’s about as eloquent as it gets.  I did my Larry Cohen bid for a while, starting with the classic films – It’s Alive, Q, The Stuff – and moving around his career to all the strange stuff he’s touched.  … Cohen’s low budget to a fault, his guerilla film-making style always in sync with the straight-ahead momentum of most of his movies.  Even quieter affairs like It’s Alive give the sense that if a take is good enough, it’s going in the picture.

But Bone was his first deal, and while that down and dirty environment is still there, there’s a bit more wandering here, and a bit odder substance to the movie, as a result.

SUBSTANCE.  WHAT’S THAT?

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Wallace & Gromit, yes?  And what have they been up to?  Alas, it’s much of the same.  But with W & G, that’s not really a bad thing…

ALSO NOT A BAD THING: CLICKING HERE

Chronicle is pretty rad-tastic.  It doesn’t smell.  It does, however, fizzle out.  But it does quite a bit well before it gets there. If you’ve seen the trailer to Chronicle, you’ve seen the majority of the plot points in the movie.  Thankfully, screenwriter Max Landis (yes, related to another Landis) and director Josh Trank seem to understand that knowing the plot of a movie is only half of the picture sometimes.  Getting there can be the most important part…

BUT TO YOU, THE WORDS IN THIS LINK ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART

Set Up is appallingly bad.  Worse than I expected.  Worse than a lot of movies I’ve seen, and as all of us bad movie watchers like to say: I’VE SEEN A LOT OF BAD MOVIES.  I’d like to believe ol’ Pudding Top (i.e. 50 “I’ll never call you Curtis Jackson” Cent) can act, but beyond having a good stoic face his line delivery and body movements and facial expressions (besides stoic face, which he ends up using for a lot of emotions) are all rank.  Which starts the movie out as rank, since it’s his voice we hear in voiceover, attempting to set up some intrigue for the viewer…

OH BRUCE WILLIS, WHERE ART THOU

Hot Damn, Gremlins 2.  How is it that you exist? Maybe I saw Gremlins as a kid.  But it’s the sequel that I always remembered.  It was the sequel I watched and re-watched on TV, and it was the sequel that I bought on VHS and then DVD and then IT’S COMING OUT ON BLURAY SOON.  The movie blew my mind with its 4th-wall breaking insanity –  which, yeah, you had your Ferris Bueller-esque ‘character talks to view’ movies, but Gremlins 2, after a certain point, is all out wacky.  It breaks rules in the same unclassifiable way that ‘Rubber’ would do a million years later.  That is to say – it ain’t ‘Funny Games,’ it’s not about something, so it’s freed to just go banana-boat nutso on you and hit you in the gut in whichever way it pleases ya’…

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

This is my third time through Puppet Master.  Third attempted time.  Because I always fall asleep.  But it should be interesting – scary toys are always a win, and your main characters are a group of psychics, and we got a score from Richard  Band, who made one of my favorite themes for Re-Animator… And yet, I wouldn’t say I liked Puppet Master.  And it is boring, against all odds…

AGAINST EVERY SINGLE ODD THERE IS

I’m a Miike follower.  I want to watch anything Miike’s got, but admittedly, my experience in the realm of yakuza flicks and tokusatsu is limited. That rating states that this film is average, or slightly above.  Which is valid, but ‘Zebraman’ is still a more unique experience than you’ll commonly get in film, and this is true for a large chunk of Miike’s work, regardless of the film as a whole being good or not…

MORE POORLY WORDED SENTENCES THISAWAY