You're Next [USA, 2013]

Nine Things about the Film You’re Next

1. This is a quirky little horror comedy. There’s not much to it, but it’s fun.

2. It’s about a group of killers that invade a family reunion and start picking off the people one by one.

3. It’s really low-budget. I think most of the money was spent on the blood and gore effects. It certainly wasn’t spent on actors or the script.

4. It was filmed in four weeks, during nights, at a mansion in Columbia, Missouri.

5. Even with the low budget and amateur feel, it has an energy that is missing from a lot of Hollywood movies.

6. The plot doesn’t make much sense. There would have been easier ways to accomplish what the killers are trying to do.

7. In a refreshing change of pace, it’s a woman that has the brains and ability to lead the fight against the killers, not a man.

8. There are some nifty and fun kill scenes. It gets pretty bloody, what with all the blades and bludgeoning.

9. The kill scenes get goofier and goofier as the movie goes on. Can we please stop using blenders as weapons?

Driller Killer (USA, 1979)

Nine Things about the Film The Driller Killer

1. This movie is about a New York artist named Reno who can’t handle the daily pressures of life and has strange visions.

2. When Reno sees a commercial for a portable battery pack, he buys one and uses a power drill to kill homeless people and relieve his stress.

3. This movie is interesting mostly for historical purposes. It’s the first movie that underground director Abel Ferrara directed, and he also stars in it. Also, it serves as a bridge between the early 70’s slasher films like “Halloween” and the 80’s interest in gore.

4. It’s super low-budget, with terrible acting and a terrible script. And random lesbian scenes.

5. But it also has a genuine punk rock sensibility that really works in its favor. It’s an early, grungy, punk version of “American Psycho”.

6. As a horror film, it’s pretty boring. There’s a lot of talking, and even more scenes of rock bands playing and rehearsing. Perhaps the movie’s biggest value is in it’s depiction of the late 1970’s New York punk scene.

7. While mild by today’s standards, the kill scenes are more brutal than I was expecting.

8. The movie was officially banned in Britain until 2002.

9. People who are interested in the evolution of the American horror film need to see this. Otherwise, there’s not much point to it.

Captain Phillips [USA, 2013]

Nine Things about the Film Captain Phillips

1. Based on a true story, this is about a merchant mariner on a cargo ship that gets hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.

2. It was directed by the guy that made a couple of the “Bourne” movies.

3. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 2013. But I’m not sure why. It was decent, but it wasn’t Best Picture of the Year material.

4. Half of the movie takes place on a cramped cargo ship. The other half takes place on an even more cramped lifeboat. This isn’t exactly epic.

5. It was filmed on exact replicas of the real ship and the lifeboat.

6. It’s really interesting in terms of seeing how modern-day pirates operate, and how the US retaliates.

7. The story itself is pretty predictable. You’ve got the Good Guy, the Bad Guy Who Isn’t Really Bad, the Real Bad Guy, and the Teenager That’s In Over His Head. The fact that the Good Guy is Tom Hanks takes away a lot of the suspense about who is going to live. I didn’t know the real story, but I knew how the movie was going to end about halfway through.

8. Tom Hanks does a good job, but he’s always the same. In this movie, he’s just Tom Hanks with a Boston accent.

9. The real standout actor is Barkhad Abdi, who plays the Somali pirate captain. He was excellent and deserves an award.

We Are What We Are [Mexico, 2010]

Nine Things about the Movie We Are What We Are

1. The idea for this movie is pretty interesting, but it doesn’t play out quite as well as I hoped.

2. It’s about a family that stays close by performing cannibalistic rituals.

3. The movie starts out with the death of the father. Then the eldest son, Alfredo, decides he must take over as head of the household. He plans on proving his worth by finding the next human to bring home to eat.

4. The bulk of movie follows the escapades of Alfredo and his brother trying to capture various people to kill. They visit homeless kids, prostitutes, and gay bars. But their quest doesn’t work out quite as well as they planned.

5. There are a couple of cops that are trying to figure out who the family is, and catch them, so that they can be famous.

6. The family is so weird that it’s hard to really relate to anyone in the film. You watch the movie, but you don’t really feel it.

7. The biggest problems in the movie are the uneven acting, and the fact that some parts don’t really make sense. Characters seem to know where to go without being told, and they don’t always seem to have a reason for doing things.

8. There are some pretty violent and gory scenes. It is a cannibal movie, after all. But it’s not as gory as you might think. It could have been much worse.

9. The moral of the story seems to be, if you are going to kill and eat someone, get it right the first time. And don’t ever swallow a whole finger.

Big Ass Spider [USA, 2013]

Nine Things about the Movie Big Ass Spider!

1. This enjoyable, ultra-low budget Z-movie is kind of like those movies made for the SyFy Channel, except better.

2. It’s about, well, a big ass spider.

3. A spider eats it’s way out of a dead body at a hospital, and goes on a rampage, growing really fast, making webs, and spitting acid on people.

4. A goofy exterminator named Alex and a Mexican security guard named Jose find themselves competing with the military to find and kill the spider.

5. The movie clearly wasn’t trying to take itself serious. It knows exactly what it is, and revels in it. As proof that the director knows what he was making, Lloyd Kaufman has a cameo (if you don’t know who Lloyd Kaufman is, don’t worry about it. It would take too long to explain).

6. The budget is so low that apparently the director actually cast the film from his Facebook friends. The special effects are pretty bad, except for the spider. I think all the money went to making the spider. It looks pretty cool.

7. It’s also really funny. The main characters, Alex and Jose, have a great chemistry and comic timing.

8. It’s an homage to other monster movies, and you can find references to many other films here.

9. If you are expecting an actual horror monster movie, you will hate this. But if you’re in the mood for a stupid-smart, good-natured monster comedy, then this is something you’ll want to check out.

Philomena [United Kingdom, 2013]

Nine Things About the Movie Philomena

1. The movie poster for this film is one of the biggest misrepresentations of a movie I’ve ever seen. It makes the movie seem like some kind of screwball road-movie-romantic-comedy for retired people. This is absolutely NOT what the movie is.

2. Based on a true story, this is a charming but heartbreaking comedy drama. It’s also simultaneously heartwarming, but without being sappy or saccharine.

3. It’s about a young troubled girl, Philomena, who goes to live with nuns in Ireland in the 1950’s. But this is not “The Sound of Music”. Not by a long shot.

4. Philomena is pregnant, and she is one of thousands of pregnant girls who work in convents almost as slaves, while the nuns sell the children.

5. As an older woman, Philomena decides she wants to find the son that the nuns took from her and sold to rich Americans. She teams up with Martin, an unemployed journalist, to help her solve the mystery.

6. What Philomena discovers gives proof to the old saying “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

7. Martin is an atheist, and Philomena is a devout Catholic. They have strong words for each other at different stages of their quest. It’s a fascinating partnership, and give an extra layer of depth to an already interesting story.

8. I’m used to seeing Judy Dench play smart, strong female characters. It’s pretty shocking to see her play such a timid, simple, religious woman going far out of her comfort zone to look for her son.

9. The movie is very critical of the Catholic Church, and rightfully so. The book that the movie is based on uncovered some very cruel and hypocritical activities of the Church in Ireland.

Bronies [USA, 2013]

Nine Things About the Movie Bronies

1. This little documentary was much more interesting than I expected. I actually watched it twice in one week.

2. It’s about how the show “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” was created to use the classic My Little Pony characters as archetypes for various positive character traits, and challenge female stereotypes. It was aimed at little girls.

3. What nobody expected is that guys got obsessed with the show, too, and began to call themselves “bronies” - which is a combination of “bro” and “pony”. Their favorite form of greeting is the fist bump - which they call the "bro hoof".

4. The movie follows several different bronies from all over the world, and how they found each other. It also goes into the difficulties they face for being open about how much they like a
“girlie show”. It also shows their journeys to various “BronyCons”, which are huge conventions of bronies.

5. People that are uncomfortable with bronies suspect that they are either gay, or the opposite - they like little girls too much. This movie does a good job of dispelling those myths. One of the more interesting scenes is a gathering of bronies in the military.

6. What’s fascinating is how this show has obviously hit a real nerve among men - this is not an isolated phenomenon. We see people from redneck small towns, couples in Germany, a DJ in Israel, and a British kid with Asperger's Syndrome. This is not an isolated fetish.

7. Some bronies feel this documentary is too one-sided, by making bronies all look socially awkward and prone to discrimination. It also tends to ignore grown women that like the show (they call themselves “pegasisters”)

8. Other bronies are upset that the movie doesn’t talk about clopping - which is the porn part of My Little Pony fandom.

9. I’m not a brony, but I support them. This movie makes the point that men can be sensitive and inclusive and loving. In a world where violence among men is “normal”, but friendship and love is “deviant”, the movie shows that the problem is with the brony-haters, not the bronies.

General Orders No. 9 [USA, 2011]

Nine Things about the Movie General Orders No. 9

1. This mysterious, beautiful film is literally unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

2. Full of ambiguous, almost archetypal images, it seems to have about as many interpretations as viewers. This guarantees that some people will find the movie boring.

3. It starts out like an experimental documentary about Georgia. But it’s not.

4. Then it seems like one of those “people are bad, nature is good” statements. But it’s not.

5. It’s a poem about change.

6. It’s a meditation on the order of things.

7. It’s a prayer of a broken person.

8. It’s a bitter acknowledgment of loss.

9. It’s a surrender.

her [USA, 2013]

Nine Things About the Movie her

1. This movie is a complex, poetic work of genius. And I NEVER use the word 'genius'.

2. WARNING: This is not really a love story. At least, not in the way you think. Made by Spike Jonze (who also did “Being John Malkovich” and “Where the Wild Things Are”) it’s a science fiction philosophical romantic character drama fable with a transhumanist twist. It’s funny and sad and happy and melancholy.

3. It’s about an introverted, heartbroken man named Theodore who works for a website that writes personal letters for other people. Theodore buys a new artificial intelligence operating system for his computer. Then he falls in love with it.

4. The operating system evolves and grows and starts to fall in love with Theodore, too. Well, sort of.

5. This is a movie about ideas much more than actions. Characters in the movie aren’t really characters, but perspectives on topics. Long stretches of the movie consist of nothing more than Theodore talking to his computer.

6. People that are not engaging with the ideas in this movie, or who can’t connect with its pacing, will find this movie really slow and boring.

7. The movie openly acknowledges the contradictions of advanced technology and human relationships. Jonze shows us a world where technology has freed us to connect with other people, no matter what our private fetishes are – even at the expense of isolating ourselves from most other people. By embracing these contradictions and refusing to take a stand, the movie offers a new definition of connection and intimacy.

8. Always a visual poet, Jonze uses many nonverbal cues to shine a light into the characters' interior lives.

9. There are so many ideas and concepts that overlap and interconnect with each other throughout the movie that it will require multiple viewings to let them all sink in.