Tag: Bruce Davison

Insidious here, get your insidious here! Can’t get enough of those James Wan other worldly horror films? Then we got a new one here!

At this point it is the fourth Insidious film, but we are delving straight into the side story parts now. We don’t get a number, we get Insidious: The Last Key. It took Paranormal Activity to get to film 5 before it abandoned their numbers for a side story instead.

Just because there is a last in the title, don’t assume it is the last Insidious film. That is a lie in every horror franchise, no matter what they say.

Instead, at this point, go in expecting some more details and unfortunately a lot more questions.

It is important to have your security look nice before they fuck up a spirit.

Our favorite psychic, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), didn’t have a fun time growing up. This takes place after Chapter 3, and before the first film still, where she is rocking out with her two sidekicks, Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell). Except she gets a call from a dude (Kirk Acevedo), who lives in Five Keys, New Mexico. Specifically, he lives in the home she grew up in. And again, this was not fun.

You see, Elise basically always had this ability. The skills to see dead spirits, talk to them, and really feel their pain. While it is cool for old Elise to do that, young girl Elise doing it made it really creepy. Her dad (Josh Stewart), worked at the next door prison (which had a high execution rate I guess), and he didn’t like her saying she saw things. He did the only logical thing in his mind, in the 1960’s, and he had to beat it out of her every time she decided to lie about ghosts.

Hooray child abuse! Oh yes, we get a lot of pained girl screams and pleads for those who need to feel sad inside.

Anyways, also as a kid, Elise was visited by demons, helped free a powerful thing, and inadvertently killed her mom? Jeez. Either way, now, a billion years later, Elise has to return to the home that has too many memories, to hopefully put a stop to what started her a long time before.

Also starring in the past and the present ish, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Aleque Reid, Ava Kolker, Pierce Pope, Bruce Davison, and Tessa Ferrer.

Breasts and horror go together sure, but sometimes even fully clothed it can feel excessive.

The beginning of the film is probably the best part of it, so after the long introduction of 10+ minutes (it feels like), just go ahead and leave. We start in the 60’s, it is creepy, we get the child abuse, the arguments, the scares, the creepy key stuff, and the deaths. Once we get back to modernish times, the film quickly just falls apart.

Sure, the sidekicks have some good jokes. And they tried to make some sort of coherent plot, that had its moments. The suitcase scare later on is bound to be a highlight.

But every damn time they go into The Further it just feels so goddamn stupid. And a significant portion takes place there, along with multiple entities and places. It just feels like they are just making up that place as they go, and whatever happens there is what a writer feels like doing, with no limits or cares in the world! It especially featured the worst acting of the film and the effects were, well, ghastly.

Don’t worry, we have tons of bad acting throughout the film as well. We get someone who is in his 70’s playing the dad to two daughters who are clearly supposed to be early 20’s and not apparently be awkward at all. An easy fix of saying “Granddaughters” instead would have made it less weird. Speaking of weird, the daughters have a lot more plot than one would expect. One of them is featured above and it is honestly the worst time I have seen a horror film try to also make a scary scene sexy. Imagine her having a panic attack on the ground, breathing up and down very hard. It isn’t sexy, no matter how much the boobs move, it is just uncomfortable and takings you out of the film.

The acting is bad in the flashbacks, and generally just bad when really any character interacts with any other character. It certainly doesn’t feel like the end of a series, but really, the beginning. But again, the beginning was neat, and some jokes made me laugh.

Anna Kendrick movie tracker #3? Yeah, this is number 3 for the year. Unless I post it before Mr. Right like a jackass. This is the second of the three that is also straight to DVD, what fun!

However, Ms. Kendrick isn’t the focus of the film. She is technically just a side character, in a handful of scenes, and not super relevant to the plot. She is all over the cover of Get A Job though.

Oh yeah, this is supposed to be me talking about the movie. I have no idea what Get A Job is about going into it, but damn it, I surely had some pretty dang obvious guesses.

The over/under for hearing the term Millennials is 15.

This movie is actually about Will Davis (Miles Davis), well known slacker and pothead. Well, only the occasional bong stuff. He is about to get hired at a shitty internet clickbait journalism site, so he is celebrating with his dad (Bryan Cranston) and girlfriend (Anna Kendrick). His dad gives him some money, finally ready for his son to be a man and need no more handouts.

But of course, day one into the job he is fired. Right as he walks into the door, they couldn’t hire like they thought they could. He lives with a group of guys, not his girlfriend. Charlie (Nicholas Braun), a slacker who is getting a job as a chemistry teacher somehow. Ethan (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a slacker who is making an app to help stalk people. And Luke (Brandon T. Jackson), a slightly harder working slacker who is getting a job as a stock broker!

Yay jobs for everyone. Except for Will. And for Will’s dad, who also loses his job despite being with the company forever. Shit, being unemployed is hard, especially in today’s world. Thankfully, Will gets a job that eventually matches his passions, making videos for some corporate company. His boss (Marcia Gay Harden) hates him, the bosses boss (Bruce Davison) likes him, and the other kind of boss (Alison Brie) wants his body, but hey, money is money. And I guess, really, this movie is just about getting jobs in this day and age and the struggles they bring.

Also featuring in smaller roles, Greg Germann, John C. McGinley, Jorge Garcia, and John Cho.

Corporate jobs means ties. Ties get in the way of food. Corporate jobs hate food.

I expected Get A Job to be a completely shit movie. And honestly, on some levels, it is still that film. It is mostly an incredibly pointless story. It is simple, basic, and more synonyms. The only thing that can possibly make this a worthwhile film experience is if the comedy is on point.

And you know what? It barely reached a good enough level at that. Davis’ character isn’t very funny, being our lead. Cranston is giving a few amusing moments, but he also basically plays a straight man this time around. All of the humor that actually interested me in this movie came from Braun and Jackson. For whatever reason, I found the chemistry/coaching plot from Braun to be almost hysterical. I didn’t giggle out of my seats, but I definitely tittered. Jackson’s scenes, especially with McGinley were a nice change of pace. Higher energy and a bit stressful.

Everything else you can practically ignore. The main plot line is meh. Kendrick is barely in the film. Mintz-Plasse’s plot is pretty shitty.

No one will ever watch this movie and change their life from it. No one will probably really watch this movie over ten times in their life. But for whatever reason, two side character plots just really clicked with me and put this film into mediocre territory.

Today I review a movie called Words and Pictures, which are the exact two things that make up my reviews.

For all intents and purposes, that is also probably the best sentence in this review, so you might as well stop reading these words and looking at these pictures now.

“Oh shit they kiss? But they are such rivals throughout the film! Why would you spoil that?!” – GorgView reader.

Somewhere in the North Eastern part of the USA lies a high school where people have to wear uniforms and is somewhat special. How special? I dunno. Special enough to feature two teachers who work there. One is Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) who teaches English, is an author, and an alcoholic. He hasn’t written in awhile, is late a bunch, and thinks his students don’t care anymore. He also has an estranged relationship with his son (Harrison MacDonald).

But we have a new teacher at the school! Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche), a famous artist from NYC who is moving here to teach advanced art instead. Why? Because she got that rheumatoid arthritis, so making great art that she is used to kind of sucks. She is also a mean lady, for that reason.

They butt heads and argue, but also flirt kind of. They set off a war at the school, debating which is more important, words or pictures. Mostly because Jack is trying to save his job and remain relevant, and Dina is the type who always wants to win.

Also starring some people as teachers (Bruce Davison, Navid Negahban, Keegan Connor Tracy) and some students who have a plot line in this movie too (Valerie Tian, Josh Ssettuba, Adam DiMarco).

It only takes about ten minutes I think for a Dead Poets Society reference.

Hearing about the plot, I thought the movie might be okay. It sounds like a terrible competition, especially since I knew it would involve high school students, which are like non cool college students. Speaking of high school students, the side plots involving the girl and the guy were kind of terrible. It was awkward to watch, even more awkward at how people reacted to it, and took away from our leads. So it kind of just made the movie overall weaker for having basically all of it go down. In my reviewing opinion of course.

Owen and Binoche however do fantastic at their roles. Owen has an advantage, where he was given an really charismatic character to work with (After all, he knows a lot of words in the English language and loves to use them), so he was incredibly entertaining to watch. Binoche seemed to have real chemistry as well. Very real feeling characters.

But at the same time, this felt like a pseudo-intellectual euro-trash movie, that thought it was better than everyone else, while not really ever elevating its game. Just because it is set in an elite setting, doesn’t mean it is an elite movie.

Good acting, kind of shitty plot. Okay for a watch, then probably wont see it again.

Željko Ivanek.
Xander Berkeley.
Craig Fairbrass.
Bruce Davison.

These are all names that you may have seen before, but probably don’t recognize in big amounts. If you clicked their links and saw their pictures, you might recognize their face, but find that you can’t quite picture what you have seen them in before.

Timothy Omundson.
Mark Rolston.
Wade Williams.
J. C. MacKenzie.

Are you getting it now? These guys are those guys. Those character actor guys. The ones that make you go, oh yeah, That Guy…Who Was In That Thing.

These are the working actors, who don’t make million dollar blockbusters, and then can live at home with their family or months off not a worry in the world. These are the actors who aren’t doing it for the money, because their pay certainly isn’t a lot (unless they are a long running TV show maybe). These are the ones who love to act, who will do most any role, and sometimes even have to live paycheck to paycheck. These are the guys not going to be winning awards down the red carpet anytime soon. Nope. They can probably only get Emmys. Well that is not true, one of these guys was nominated for a Tony, but I forgot who.

It was one of these sixteen guys. Yeah. One of them.

Robert Joy.
Stanley Kamel.
Rick Worthy.
Paul Guilfoyle.

This documentary interviews all of these sixteen individuals and splices them together to tell a sort of story. We learn why they wanted to be an actor, what they were before acting, how their parents took the news, what their first big break was, what their favorite memories were, their regrets, the process into getting onto a new television show, what they have been doing lately, their interactions with fans when they have that “Oh shit, you are famous” moment, and their thoughts on fellow actors.

And that is about it.

Gregory Itzin.
W. Morgan Sheppard.
Zach Grenier.
Matt Malloy.

Honestly, early on, I was excited about this film. What a fun concept!

Then I got bored. Like, a third of the way in, I was already done. It seems like a good idea, to let us get to know these guys, and some of the stories were interesting. But I stopped caring pretty quickly. I don’t know if it is just the straight them talking format, and nothing else (because that is true), or what. But man. It turned into a snoozefest. I think it is only 80 minutes long, but it felt really really long.

Maybe the problem is that I just only knew like, half of these guys from things, and the rest felt like scrubs? Let’s go with that.

Either way. This documentary could have been a lot better.

Shit, this movie came out in like, May or so to theaters. Just didn’t come out where I was living in a 60 mile radius. Why not? It is an independent Rob Zombie horror movie. I thought people loved Rob Zombie stuff?

Either way, I found out like a month later The Lords of Salem was already out in Europe or VOD or something, so I quickly bought it and forgot it. A few months later, oh yeah.

I slack so hard some times.

See, even these old bitches love Rob Zombie.

Heidi Hawthorne (Sheri Moon Zombie, wife of Rob) is a local radio DJ in the town of Salem. She is a cohost of the most popular segment in town, along with her friends Whitey (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Munster (Ken Foree). She personally receives a package in the mail from The Lords. It is a band they never heard of, but they listen to it anyway, and it sort of fucks with Heidi a lot.

So sure, why not play it on the radio? It is a strange eerie tribal chant like noise, with no actual lyrics, just noise. Pretty metal, in that regard. Their guest on the radio that night is Francis Matthias (Bruce Davison), a man who researches the Salem Witch Trials. He really finds the track they play unnerving, and the band name itself, so he goes on a research binge as the side story. The music itself causes all of the women in town who hear it to go into a trance like state. Very odd.

Anyways, long story short. Witches yo. Curses yo. They cursed Hawthorne’s bloodline, claiming it will eventually bring Satan into the world, and the witches will return and take over. Can they do it?! Judy Geeson, Meg Foster, Patricia Quinn all play witches.

My mind is all sorts of wat right now.

Well, this is a weird movie. I haven’t seen any of the other Rob Zombie horror movies, so I can’t tell you if this is weirder than them or not. But it has to be weirder than Halloween. How could have made that one super weird?

I HATE the song by The Lords of Salem so much. It really grinds to the bone, which I guess is the goal. It is just a horrible sound, and I find it hard to believe they would have ever played it on the radio in the first place.

I wouldn’t say the acting is bad in this movie, it is just not an important part to the movie. It isn’t bad acting, it just isn’t good either.

As a certified coward, I can say this movie didn’t scare me in the slightest, just made me feel all sorts of weird. There was very vivid imagery, with low levels of special effects that made the whole thing look cheesy. Grotesque imagery is not what this movie was advertised as, and I was just left mostly confused. No, not of the plot, but confused at why I watched the whole thing.

The ending also is pretty lackluster, not really ending the story, but almost feeling like a strange 10 minute Jazz Fusion set in the middle of a rock concert. What in the what?