#RTARL goes to the movies

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RTARL's Halloween 2024 Spooky Movie Guide

Commenter JimU asked me for some scary movie recs a while back, and rather than answer his question in a straightforward and timely fashion, I decided to turn it into blog content set to run several weeks later. It feels great to help.

Mentally sorting through the library of things I've seen in order to fire off a recommendation is actually kind of difficult due to the sheer number of titles bouncing around in there. It's also probably due to the fact that my brain is largely comprised of room temperature potato salad at this point thanks to years of recreational substance use. For these reasons, I've decided to put a couple of filters in place to try and streamline the process for myself.

I'm only recommending movies released since the year 2020 (with one somewhat weaselly exception).

For the purposes of this post, I'm not considering animal attack/giant monster movies as "scary." So, you won't find Beast, or Godzilla: Minus One here, despite the fact that those movies are AWESOME. Especially Godzilla: Minus One. You really should watch that one sometime.

Because I'm a benevolent blog lord, I've sorted the movies into distinct categories AND included links to their JustWatch pages for maximum convenience. They aren't ranked or presented in any particular order, but rest assured that every film listed here has the Clyde Seal of Approval and is rated FIVE FUCKING STARS!

Okay, LET'S GET NUTS!

The Crowd Pleasers

The group title kind of says it all. These movies are scary, but not TOO scary, when there's violence it's not TOO disturbing, and there's an underlying silliness and a sense that "everything's gonna be alright in the end" with each of them. I don't mean any of that as a negative, by the way. Fun horror that provides thrills and chills without ruining your day is great!

Abigail - "A group of kidnappers are tasked with finding and guarding a young ballerina named Abigail. The daughter of an incredibly wealthy but mysterious figure, Abigail is brought to the safe house where the gang awaits the $50 million ransom. What they don’t realize is that Abigail is a powerful young vampire intent on breaking free and wreaking havoc on her captors."

The Last Voyage of the Demeter - "Adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying tale of a single journey captured in the Captain’s Log. Aboard the cursed vessel is a crew of unwitting travelers and seafarers. From captain to castaway, nobody knows what is in the twenty-four unmarked boxes that are the cargo for this merchant mission. Nightly, the crew is haunted by a restless spirit that leaves no trace. Their survival on the journey from Carpathia to London is no longer in their own hands."

Cobweb - "Eight year old Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant tapping from inside his bedroom wall—one that his parents insist is all in his imagination. As Peter's fear intensifies, he believes that his parents could be hiding a terrible, dangerous secret and questions their trustworthiness."

Totally Killer - "When the infamous 'Sweet Sixteen Killer' returns 35 years after his first murder spree to claim another victim, 17-year-old Jamie accidentally travels back in time to 1987, determined to stop the killer before he can start."

Malignant - "Madison is paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders, and her torment worsens as she discovers that these waking dreams are in fact terrifying realities with a mysterious tie to her past."

Freaky - "A mystical, ancient dagger causes a notorious serial killer to magically switch bodies with a 17-year-old girl."

The Wretched - "A rebellious teenage boy, struggling with his parent's imminent divorce, encounters a terrifying evil after his next-door neighbor becomes possessed by an ancient witch that feasts on children."

The Fear Street Trilogy - As you may have gathered, this entry is actually three movies, and they're all on Netflix. They're about a town named Sunnyside, cursed to deal with supernatural serial killers popping up every few decades. I never read the Fear Street books as a kid, so I'm not sure how faithfully these movies capture their essence, but they're pretty damn fun.

The Black Phone - "A small town in Colorado is on edge after the disappearance of 5 children. Soon, Finney Shaw is also kidnapped and locked in a basement. The young boy discovers a nearby phone that transmits the voices of the other victims who try to help lead Finney to safety."

The Boogeyman - "Sadie is a high school student suffering from the loss of her mother. Alongside her younger sister Sawyer, she turns to her father for support but he is too wrapped up in his grief to help either of them. But when a mysterious figure shows up at the house asking for help, everything changes. Disappearing again, the figure leaves behind a supernatural creature that feeds off the suffering of the family."

Sick - "While quarantining at her family's lake house during the pandemic, Parker and her best friend are threatened by an unexpected visitor."

Bodies Bodies Bodies - "In an isolated family mansion, a group of rich 20-somethings decides to play Bodies Bodies Bodies, a game where one of them is secretly a "killer" while the rest tries to "escape". Things take a turn for the worse when real bodies start turning up, setting off a paranoid and dangerous chain of events."

M3GAN - "Gemma, a workaholic toy engineer working at one of the biggest toy robot companies in the world, finds her entire life turned upside down when she's left in charge of her newly orphaned niece. To help her niece deal with the sudden loss of her parents, Gemma brings home Megan, a highly skilled AI doll that provides comfort and companionship to Cady as she grieves. What started as an innocent friendship soon turns into a fatal obsession as the bond between Cady and Megan continues to grow stronger."

Fresh - "Frustrated by scrolling dating apps only to end up on lame, tedious dates, Noa takes a chance by giving her number to the awkwardly charming Steve after a produce-section meet-cute at the grocery store."

We Summon the Darkness - "Three best friends attending a heavy-metal show cross paths with sadistic killers after they travel to a secluded country home for an after party."

Real Sicko Shit

Once more, the group title pretty much sums things up. These are a definite step up in weight class from the Crowd Pleasers, and by that I mean they're some combination of scarier, more violent, more intense, much weirder, or more fucked-up in general. Again, not a bad thing! But, these aren't really ones to throw on for a fun Halloween party vibe. These are more movies to put on, watch in solitude, and then sit in silent contemplation over the inescapable horrors of the human experience. Great stuff, imo.

Oddity - "A psychic medium attempts to uncover the truth behind her sister's murder at the site of the crime."

Stopmotion - "Ella Blake, a stop-motion animator struggling to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother, embarks upon the creation of a film that becomes the battleground for her sanity. As Ella’s mind starts to fracture, the characters in her project take on a life of their own."

In a Violent Nature - "The enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness unleashes an iconic new killer after a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower that entombed its rotting corpse."

The Dark and the Wicked - "On a secluded farm in a nondescript rural town, a man is slowly dying. His family gathers to mourn, and soon a darkness grows, marked by waking nightmares and a growing sense that something evil is taking over the family."

Talk to Me - "A group of friends learns the secret of conjuring spirits. Using an embalmed hand, the group is hooked on this new thrilling pastime that seems like spooky fun but nothing more. Using their terrifying totem, each member of the group is briefly possessed by a spirit before it is banished again. But when one of the group holds on for too long, an unidentified supernatural force is unleashed causing horrifying consequences."

Evil Dead Rise - "Ellie is a single mother of three kids. Struggling in their small apartment, the young family is glad to receive a visitor. Beth, Ellie’s erstwhile sister, is paying them all a visit. The reconciliation is wrenched away from the siblings by the discovery of an esoteric text in the building. The Necronomicon brings forth possessive demons set to test the family to their limit with an unthinkable nightmare scenario. Can motherhood and sisterhood survive the horror that awaits? Or will evil prevail over even the strongest of bonds?"

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster - "Vicaria's a brilliant teenager. After the brutal murder of her brother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to resurrect him."

Barbarian - "In town for a job interview, a young woman arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that it has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway."

X - "In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in a rural Texas farm, but when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the crew find themselves fighting for their lives."

The Night House - "A widow begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing secrets."

Skinamarink - "Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished." NOTE: this is an EXTREMELY unique viewing experience, and is absolutely not for everyone. Many, if not most people will hate it and shut it off a few minutes in, but if you're on its wavelength it's quite something.

Pfft, Kid Can't Even Read

It's never a bad time to expand your horizons and see how filmmakers from abroad scare the bejeezus out of their fellow countrymen. In some ways, foreign horror films hit harder because their particular tropes and cultural touchstones aren't quite as familiar to an American viewer, so while you're waiting for a zig, you get zagged upside the head. Plus, you get to feel ever-so-slightly more worldly when you watch them, and any reason to be even more smug is always a good thing.

Exhuma (South Korea) - "After tracing the origin of a disturbing supernatural affliction to a wealthy family's ancestral gravesite, a team of paranormal experts relocates the remains—and soon discovers what happens to those who dare to mess with the wrong grave."

When Evil Lurks (Argentina) - "A demon-infected man is about to “give birth” to an evil demon in a remote village. When two brothers, Pedro and Jaime pass by. The brothers decide to get rid of the body, but fail to contain the chaos that the new arrival brings. Pedro and Jaime, along with their family, then flee the village to safety, but they cannot escape the wrath that has been unleashed." NOTE: This movie makes most of the Sicko Shit group look like Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. Incredible feel-bad time in store if you fire this one up. Can't recommend it enough.

32 Malasana Street (Spain) - A family moves to a new house to live the dream of the big city. A house where dreams turn into nightmares."

Huesera: The Bone Woman (Mexico) - "Valeria's joy at becoming a first-time mother is quickly taken away when she's cursed by a sinister entity. As danger closes in, she's forced deeper into a chilling world of dark magic that threatens to consume her."

The Medium (Thailand) - "A horrifying story of a shaman's inheritance in the Isan region of Thailand. The goddess that appears to have taken possession of a family member turns out not to be as benevolent as it first appears."

Boys From County Hell (Ireland) - "A crew of hardy road workers, led by a bickering father and son, must survive the night when they accidentally awaken an ancient Irish vampire." NOTE: This movie takes place in/was filmed in the region of Ireland that my maternal grandparents are both from, and where I still have a bunch of extended family. I've been around the particular accent on display in this movie quite literally my entire life. I still needed to turn on the subtitles.

Hold the Camera Still, For Christ's Sake

A lot of people really don't like found-footage-style filmmaking, and will immediately dismiss it out-of-hand. Which is fair enough, people like what they like. I personally think that when it's done well (which is admittedly a small percentage of films in this subgenre), it's an incredibly effective way to deliver kickass scares and an engrossing movie-watching experience.

Deadstream - "A disgraced internet personality attempts to win back his followers by livestreaming one night alone in a haunted house. But when he accidentally pisses off a vengeful spirit, his big comeback event becomes a real-time fight for his life."

The Hell House LLC series - Okay, TECHNICALLY the original Hell House LLC did come out before my 2020 cutoff. However, the latest entry just came out last year and is probably one of the ten scariest movies I've seen in my life, and in order to really follow it you have to have seen its predecessors. There are four of them, and I'm not gonna lie, while the first and fourth films are great, the middle two suck absolute ass. Check 'em out! Anyway, they're about people setting up a haunted house attraction in a house that turns out to be haunted...FOR REAL!!!

Host - "Six friends hire a medium to hold a séance via Zoom during lockdown — but they get far more than they bargained for as things quickly go wrong. When an evil spirit starts invading their homes, they begin to realize they might not survive the night."

The Horror in the High Desert series - A man goes missing in the northern Nevada desert, and the first film is a documentary investigation into what happened to him. The subsequent entries expand on the story and get downright weird. All three films have sequences that are about as tense and unsettling as you'll find anywhere.

Well folks, there you have it. You should be all set for any spooky movie watching you feel like doing this Halloween season, or at any time really. If you have questions about any of the movies here, or about scary movies in general, by all means drop them in the comments and I'll try to get to them whenever I can.

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A Very Special Guest Post From Jim Harbaugh Scramble

Reader Jim Harbaugh Scramble won one of RTARL’s many grueling sports pick ‘em challenges, and for his troubles he’s been bestowed the honor of penning a post for the World’s Most Internet Website. Which contest did he win? I’m not entirely sure, and frankly he could be making the whole thing up. But, it’s getting me out of having to do a blog, so I’m not gonna interrogate this thing all that vigorously. 

Take it away, JHS!

If there is one thing that this place does not like, it’s movies. If there is one this place does like, it is drinking. What if we combined the two and presented a SIX-PACK of horror films for your consideration?!? Like it or not, this is what you are getting. But, to sweeten the pot, these will be stand alone slasher films getting the JHS seal of approval. No sequels or franchises here. Any place can cover that. But, what, there’s still more! We’ll even throw in three holiday films, so you can be ready to celebrate 2023 correctly.

#1: Blood Rage (1987)

Before Eli Roth made a turkey day trailer and before commenter approved Thankskilling, there was Blood Rage. Filmed on site in Jacksonville, FL, this tells the tale of twin brothers. One is bad, one is good, but the ol’ switcheroo happens.  he good bro escapes and the bad bro goes on a Blood Rage. Lots of fun one liners and gore in this. Also, an amazing scene of the boys’ Mom talking to an operator, for what seems like 20 minutes. Make this one a holiday tradition.

#2: Don’t Open Until Christmas (1984)

The rare British slasher. Most horror fans know about Silent Night Deadly Night. Bigger fans know about Christmas Evil. This is a deep cut and flips the killer Santa genre around; here there is a killer massacring Santas. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, yet it is fun. There’s more violent and in bad taste holiday horror out there, but this one is in a nice sweet spot.

#3: New Year’s Evil (1980)

A Cannon Films cash in on the slasher craze. Pick a holiday that hasn’t been taken, throw in a killer and you’ve got a certified money maker in the 80’s. This plot is probably more nonsensical than the last one. The killer plans on killing a new person in each time zone at midnight. Not sure of the logistics, but he’s going for it. Added bonus is a great theme song.  

#4: The Mutilator (1984)

A group of college kids goes on fall break to an island, only be be mutilated. Who could have seen it coming? No holiday gimmick here, just a great slasher.

#5: The Burning (1981)

A classic summer camp slasher. The camp caretaker was horribly disfigured in a prank gone wrong. Years later, campers and counselors are getting cut up. This one holds its own with the first few F13 movies. Look for a young Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens. Produced by Harvey Weinstein. SFX by Tom Savini.  

#6: The Prowler (1981)

Before moving up to F13: The Final Chapter, Joe Zito helmed this revenge slasher. Tom Savini handles the SFX (and would go along with Zito to do Friday 4.) Follows the early slasher model of the killer being unknown until the end.   Suspects keep getting knocked off. Who’s the killer?  

***

Now, stick around for an added bonus, in true Red Lighter fashion, a second sixer!

Ah, hell, just scroll down to the comments…  

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FOOTBALL IS TERRIBLE BUT BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL IS AN INSTANT CLASSIC

So there’s a B1G matchup of top 5 teams that might be a worthwhile use of time but you’d be better off watching the Irish vampire movie Boys From County Hell several times in a row. This is perhaps my favorite monster movie discovery since Rare Exports. Frighteningly enough that was almost a decade ago.

One bit of advice I’d give you before firing up Shudder (you can use a free preview week if you don’t subscribe) is turn the subtitles on. These people are speaking English but this wasn’t produced or dubbed with Americans in mind. Other than that I’ll say that the acting, soundtrack, special effects, editing, and creature design are top notch.

It’s spooky season so treat yourself to a modern horror classic with a great sense of humor and a cool take on vampires. We might just get back to football posts one of these days but today is not when it happens. Go Hawkeyes.

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RTARL GOES TO THE MOVIES AT HOME ON THE TV THAT IS IN THE LIVING ROOM AND BRINGS YOU THIS REVIEW OF PALM SPRINGS

Back to posting from the phone because I don’t feel like walking a few feet to open the laptop.

Palm Springs was released yesterday on Hulu. Here is my review: it’s pretty good, sometimes very funny and ultimately very sweet. I highly recommend it for a date night movie with whomstsoever thouest might be spending thine long pandemic’s encampment.

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HERE ARE SOME MORE MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK INSTEAD OF WORKING

I’m definitely forgetting something I meant to write about but most importantly there is Primal. It stars Nic Cage and Famke Janssen and a bunch of actors that made me think, “wait, why do I know that person?” There is a horribly cgi’d white jaguar among a bunch of other animals that Nic Cage hunted and trapped to sell to zoos. They’re all together on a boat with a crazy murderer. This is an all time classic. If you’re going to see any movie ever again for the rest if your life make sure that it is Primal.

Terminator: Dark Fate is pretty good. It’s not great. It goes on too long. The girl that is the future savior of humankind is not believably inspirational but Arnold is awesome and the new bad guy is suitably hard to kill and there’s a little bit of explanation for why there aren’t more killer robots sent from the future (in short, there are!) and there’s a cyborg version of Mary Stuart Masterson. That is all.

I don’t always love Quentin Tarantino movies as much as most people but Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood is truly incredible as a weird mix of pulp and historical retconning. For some reason the dog, the true hero of the movie, goes uncredited. It’s my new favorite of his oeuvre.

And finally, Ready Or Not is pure magical wish fulfillment as all of the insanely rich people are vile, evil and (SPOILER ALERT) they all get killed in ways that range from fully satisfying to hilariously stupid. See this movie.

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RTARL goes to the movies from the couch

So things have worked out in a really stupid way for me recently. Very bad and very stupid. But I’ve had some time to catch up on my movie watching a little bit. See the self-portrait above for details.

In that vein, here are my top 5 movies I’ve watched in the last two days:

5. HEAD COUNT

This movie is really bad. There is a slow burn that isn’t really burning but you kind of know what’s going to happen the whole time. The main character is a psychotic little dickhead who is somehow the most like able one on the screen most of the time. Acting is horrible. Creature effects are horribie. Story is muddled and meandering at the same time. There is no underlying theme. The blocking is okay.

4. COUNTDOWN

Not exactly good, per se, but definitely better than I expected. The acting is mostly natural and believable. The premise is stupid but at least makes sense. It mostly looks good and it’s filled with a bunch of memorable character actors. The comedy bits are mostly funny.

3. SWEETHEART

I really liked Sweetheart. Kiersey Clemons holds the whole thing together, not sure if it’s in spite of the other actors or not. The creature design is pretty cool. The pacing is great. If you like monsters and have Netflix give this one a shot. It’s more or less by-the-numbers but it’s pretty satisfying.

2. CHOPPING MALL

You can never go wrong with the classics. Chopping Mall has everything: robots, semi-nudity, fake blood, shopping, an inconsistent synth soundtrack, and a spectacular original title (Killbots.) What more could a girl want, really?

1. MIDSOMMAR

I’m late to this particular party but, goddamn, man. This movie is incredible. I don’t like to say nice things about Government 2, but their add-on streaming service has this movie in 4k and it’s fucking glorious. I want to go do drugs and take part in pagan rituals even more than normal after watching this masterpiece. I mean that. If you don’t like this movie you are stupid. Like, you can be really stupid and like this movie, but if you don’t like it you are really stupid.

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Saturday content

If you are unaware that something great is about to happen, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is to be released all over the world on May 31st. The promotional materials have been outstanding so far (ads, toys, posters) but there has been one thing missing. UNTIL NOW!

That’s right, finally we have ‘Zilla’s beautiful visage breaking through the iconic roof of the Cineramadome in Hollywood. This sight is so great it could even make a drive to the heart of Hollywood worthwhile. Do you know how much that drive sucks?

The director of the movie lightly teased that this sculpture will have glowing eyes and nuclear breath at some point and I couldn’t be prouder of this fantastic kaiju. There will absolutely be video of that blessed event when it comes to pass and I’ll bring it to you.

Also teased online is that my beloved Kong will make some sort of appearance in this movie, ahead of next year’s sure to be greatest movie of all time, Godzilla vs. Kong.

Stay tuned to RTARL for all of your giant monster and robot-related news and feel free to spout off whatever kind of ignorant claptrap you want in the comments because I can’t see them anyway. Fuck you all, I hate you, have a great Saturday and a super rest of your week.

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Saturday advertising

So we’ve got two videos here and I’m not watching either of them before I schedule this post.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters opens next week all over the planet. All the cool toys for this movie are Walmart exclusives, which sucks.

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Lookit This Shark Movie

I couldn’t bring myself to watch Dolphins last night, so I went with sharks, instead. 

Great White features SyFy Channel movie-level inanity in terms of story, and fares only slightly better when it comes to its acting performances. Where it has those made-for-tv abominations beaten is in the special effects department. Now, I’m not saying we’ve got a Dune-level visual spectacle on our hands here, but I really believed there were real sharks menacing our poor cast of characters, who, by the way, are HILARIOUSLY clichéd and paper-thin. 

I award Great White 3 out of 5 BISKIES.

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RTARL give Jurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom the kind of in depth, deeply considered review that it deserves

I made use of an expiring free movie ticket to take in the first big movie release of the Summer! I mean the actual season, not the moviegoing season, which already started with... I think Solo? I think that’s how it works now. The first wide release of May. Anyway, I saw Jurassic World: Lost Kingdom on Thursday night and I wanted to let you all know what to think going in since RTARL is your one-stop shop for sports and business and entertainment and politics and weather news.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD!

What’s the best way to write a fart noise?

I’m going to hate writing much about this because so much of it is glorious trash and I’m gonna convince myself to get inebriated and watch it again but trust me upfront that this movie is bad. I could waste your time worrying about ruining the story but this isn’t that kind of movie. I’m just going to throw out some dumb shit that made me laugh and let you sort it out.

The opening scene has a t-rex attack and a megaladon getting free from the Jurassic Park that got destroyed in the last one and I was kind of waiting on that to matter more later on but it never happened. The scene is fine because it has machinery and underwater stuff that looks neat.

Then we get a new story about dinosaurs being the animal rights story of our time and there are protestors holding signs that say “SAVE OUR DINOS!” and I started flashing back to trash classic King Kong Lives! and that’s honestly about how good this movie is.

If you’ve never seen King Kong Lives! it is the story of how Kong was hidden in Atlanta for 10 years after falling off the World Trade Center towers (the ones that fell on 9/11) and now Georgia Tech doctors are giving him a heart transplant and then there’s a Lady Kong that turns up in Borneo and they end up doing it and they have a son and Kong gets killed again. The ad line “America’s biggest hero is back and he is not happy!” still makes me giggle on cue. It’s easily the best movie Linda Hamilton has even been in. Easily. And this will always be that movie for Bryce Dallas Howard.

She shows up in high heels as some kind of nod and wink to the people that made fun of the last movie for having her run around in high heels. It’s very dumb and she doesn’t do much to give the impression she’s ever tried acting before. Chris... not Hemsworth or Pine. The other one. The one from not-The Office. You know who I mean, he’s in Marvel movies and he was a trainer in the last Jurassic movie. He’s building a house by himself. She gets hired to save the dinos. She recruits him with some bad banter and then he unexpectedly shows up. One of the kids from that Netflix show is there and he’s a computer scientist or something.

They go to Jurassic Park and Buffalo Bill is there looking like Craig T. Nelson but older. There’s a bunch of lava, a bunch of OUR DINOS! die in the lava. Some of OUR DINOS! make it out but it turns out Buffalo Bill is a bad guy and he tries to kill Chris what’s his name and Bryce Dallas Howard and that one kid from that show on Netflix but they make it off! Everybody watches as a brontosaurus gets engulfed in flames. This is what I would term an unearned emotional manipulation because it’s sad but it’s also really dumb.

James Cromwell is old and he has a granddaughter. Somebody describes them as “very close!” in a way that’s supposed to foreshadow her being a clone but actually sounds more like he’s molesting her. His house looks like Wayne Manor from Batman Arkham Asylum. OUR DINOS! are taken to James Cromwell’s house but he’s old and sickly and he doesn’t know it but OUR DINOS! are about to be auctioned off in his basement. It’s very reminiscent of the auction in Taken but it’s dinosaurs rather than people.

Chris and Bryce Dallas Howard have to do a blood transfusion because the dino traffickers want to cross some stupid genetically engineered dinosaur from the last movie with the raptors that have starred in the whole series in an instance that would definitely be considered “RAISING THE STAKES!” in the pitch meeting or wherever this nonsense got greenlighted. They’re gonna make an Indominus Raptor! But they’ve already made it and they want to add raptor DNA to make it a weapon. Why would a dinosaur be worth money as a weapon in a world where drones can recognize and murder every person in a packed football stadium without even being detected? Who the fuck knows but there’s a “Russian” guy in the auction who keeps saying “xxx millions!” when he bids and it’s so dumb I want to crawl away and die but it also makes me laugh.

At some point, maybe it’s in the scene where Chris explains his escape plan only to have Bryce Dallas Howard ask him “What are you doing?” immediately afterwards just so he can explain it again but slower, she asks the immortal question that really ties this whole film project together “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur?” I laughed loudly. Everybody else in the not very packed theater laughed.

There a scene where the raptor has to escape and explosion. There’s the scene where the (TWIST!!!!) clone granddaughter says “They’re alive, like me!” The dinos get out and kill the bad guys. Some other shit happens.

You aren’t reading this to make up your mind about seeing this movie or not, I hope. It’s fucking awful in the way that Michael Bay movies are awful. The way DC Comics movies really hate humanity is the way this movie sucks. But just in case you needed a review that tells you more than “get really fucking high before this movie starts if for some reason you are contractually obligated to go see it,” well, here you go:

RTARL RATES JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM AN F ON A SCALE OF 1-to-6,000,000,000,000

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RTARL goes to the ol’ Netflix to watch some Stephen King-inspired movies

In the run up to both Halloween and season 2 of Stranger Things, Netflix has released a couple of feature length movies based on Stephen King works. I watched both of them this weekend. SPOILERS! below.

First up we’ve got Gerald’s Game. I’ve seen a lot of crazy hype for this one. Some professional critic or another has called it the best Stephen King movie of all time. That’s craziness. It’s good, not great, but it kept my attention pretty solidly.

It’s about Carla Gugino being handcuffed to bedposts by her husband Bruce Greenwood who then proceeds to have a heart attack and die. So she’s trapped in their weekend getaway house and there’s a very hungry German Shepherd and an open door and later on a bad guy with a pituitary problem. The effects where the dog is eating Bruce Greenwood’s corpse are bad and I hated Carla Gugino for giving the dog Kobe beef before she got chained to the bedpost and I kept wanting her to try standing up as a way of escaping because the bedposts look narrower than the handcuffs to me.

OFFICIAL RTARL RATING: 14 stars out of 23 - not a classic but maybe on the edges of being a top 10 Stephen King adaptation.

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Next we’ve got this poster for Nosferatu. It’s not related to anything else in the post but it popped up when I was trying to find an official one-sheet for 1922. It’s pretty glorious. It makes the great vampire look like an ape and I love that about it.

And now, finally, we have 1922. I couldn’t ever find an official poster for the movie so here’s a cover for the book. Was it ever actually released as a standalone or was it only ever part of Full Dark, No Stars? In any case, I like this poster. I hated the movie and I don’t quite get why somebody thought this story needed to be adapted.

Thomas Jane plays the dumbest guy in the world with some of the worst accent work I’ve ever heard an actor attempt. If you’ve watched this one and your opinion differs from mine please pipe up in the comments. I want to know what’s good about this. A farmer murders his wife so he can pass her land along to his son because she wants to sell the land and he doesn’t want a divorce because he’ll lose it but he already has 30 acres or so of land that are his anyway and then the son he was trying to give the land to goes off and becomes a bank robber and dies and everything gets eaten by rats. “In the end you always get caught” is the moral and not only is it wrong in general it’s not exactly true in the movie because the dummy gets killed by ghosts and never has to do hard time or anything for being so dumb. He loses a hand but that’s not really retribution. He loses his dumb son but that’s also not really punitive just unfortunate. I hated a long list of things about 1922.

OFFICIAL RTARL RATING: 6 stars out of 43. Extra points for the dumb way Thomas Jane keeps saying “1922.”

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RTARL goes to the ol’ cineolodeon for a viewing of the reboot of FLATLINERS and it wasn’t even the worst movie of the weekend for Mr. RTARL

The new Flatliners is every bit as bad as you might have heard if you were even invested enough to know that it exists and was released to theaters last weekend.

But it wasn’t even the worst thing I watched over the weekend! That honor goes to All Eyes On Me, the Tupac biopic which answers the question - if you only had one magazine interview and a few music videos to go on, how would you cash in on one of the most famous people of the past 50 years? Good for those guys recouping, I guess.

You may have fond memories of the original Flatliners from 1990 if you are of a certain age. It was a terrible movie in its own right but, gosh, what a cast! The original was a financial success but not a huge one and one can only assume that the hopes were for something along those lines this time around. There is no real A-list talent involved but there’s a whole lot of, “Oh, yeah, I know that person from...” if you want to dig into it. Nobody is going to dig into the new Flatliners.��

The premise is pretty good for a horror flick - young doctors try to scientifically explore the afterlife by “flatlining” for a few minutes at a time. Using a drug cocktail and some defibrillation to die and come back in a controlled environment the young interns are able to unlock all of their brain’s potential BUT! something comes back with you when you’ve died.

With some visual ingenuity and capable acting you’ve got the basic ingredients for a pretty good fright feature. On the face of it, putting Diego Luna and Ellen Page and some lesser known pretty people together with the guy that did the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev) seems like enough to make a decent movie. But the acting is awful and the visuals are boring. Even the sense of place is off as everybody keeps using the words “Ivy League” but never specifies which school they’re associated with. In my experience only Brown students do that.

The young doctors in training all live in insanely huge and well-appointed apartments/townhomes and spend a lot more time with their flatlining hobby (there are multiple instances where somebody uses variants of the movie title as a noun or a verb and I laughed each time) than they do with actually being students or doing rounds. It’s very nice that their hospital has a secret emergency hospital underneath the old hospital but I’m not clear on why, if it hasn’t been used or updated in six year, there is a cleaning crew that comes through every night to put a timer on the illicit activity of dying and coming back to life.

It’s also extremely convenient that every single one of them has exactly one huge secret from their past that can come back to haunt them. My favorite is the one whose secret is three months old and then she runs a car into a restaurant patio and drives off without a hint of guilt. She didn’t kill anybody that time, I guess.

This is the kind of movie that should at least have a soundtrack to push but it doesn’t even do that well. At least Diego Luna has a really sweet elf-hair wig to carry us through as he gamely tries to act against a bunch of brick walls. That’s the best I can come up with for this pile of trash. Some of it is pretty funny, I guess. Also, SPOILER ALERT! Kiefer Sutherland is the teaching doctor and he walks with a cane and has a horrible wig of his own. So there, that’s three things. Pretty great, if you don’t think about it at all.

RTARL official rating: 3 stars out of 476 available

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BREAKING NEWS!

If you’ve paid attention to twitter over the past 24 hours there have been two inescapable stories: that guy who has 11,000 twitter followers and calls himself a libertarian communist catholic (spoiler alert: he’s a pedophile) and, of course, this game changing transcript.

As the world’s most internet foremost Cats fan site, we would be remiss not to link to Jason DeRulo’s interview. But honestly, Red Lighters, how many of you didn’t know all of these rules for living your life as a Jellicle?

Keep your claws sharpened and your litter boxes clean, Cats will hit theaters nationwide on December 20th. You can count on RTARL to pounce on any Cats-related news until then. This is the greatest mouse hunt in American history. Probably in history, but in American history. Stay jellicle, my kitties!

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RTARL goes to the multiplexolodeon to catch up on the exciting new sound motion picture HAPPY DEATH DAY

This is the official RTARL review of Happy Death Day, aka Slasher Groundhog Day.

I had one major reservation about Happy Death Day on my way into the theater: it’s a PG-13 slasher pic. That seems awful on the face of it but not enough to keep me from spending money. The trailer was catchy enough and the idea strong enough that I figured it was worth a chance. Besides, there’s only about 10 other movies out right now that seem worthwhile. Wait, that’s a bad argument.

I don’t want to bore you with details and spin a bunch of words you illiterate assholes won’t bother reading anyway so I will just say this: Happy Death Day is fucking awesome. It’s well shot, well acted, creepy in the right places, funny in the right places, the music is pretty good, and the story builds in a way to almost makes sense of the premise. If you like slasher flix then this is the best thing that’s hit wide release in a few years.

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OFFICIAL RTARL MOVIE REVIEW RATING FOR HAPPY DEATH DAY: 178 stars out of 192 stars - very very good.

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Before the closing bell

This is a huge night in sports, between finale of The Bachelorette, Season 15 and the first night of the second round of Democratic presidential debates (see prop bets here) but I needed to break this huge news before we get to all that shit and even before closing bell.

That’s right, the sweetest words in the English language: “From the writer/director of The VVitch...” It’s a new Robert Eggers movie and it’s got seafaring slang and accents and it’s old timey and Willem Dafoe and the new Batman are in it. Prepare for your life to be improved immeasurably this October. You won’t see anything this important until Cats is released on December 20th. Enjoy the first trailer for The Lighthouse:

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It happened to me: I saw all of the terrible ads and heard all of the unkind words and still went to see Alien: Covenant: the official RTARL movie review

Before I get to spoilery with my complaints I will say this for Alien: Covenant: it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in the theater.

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That was the nicest thing I could think to say. You probably don’t think that’s a compliment but then you probably haven’t seen this tremendous piece of shit waste of time, either. There is nothing about this movie that I particularly liked and I even liked parts of Prometheus. To take the original Alien and wash it out to the point you end up with this thing is a testament to the founding contributions of the late greats Dan O’Bannon and H.R. Giger. Even the xenomorphs manage to look terrible in Alien: Covenant.

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If you follow box office news at all you are aware that this movie has been a pretty big flop so far through two weekends. If you read movie reviews you might be aware that people hate the movie. If you watched the trailers and the TV spots, especially the reality TV-style confessionals, you are probably aware that you do not wish to see this movie. I was aware of this and I plunged in anyway. I love giant movie monsters and the original Alien is among the best of the bunch for sci-fi, horror, and creature design.

Look at that poster! It’s glorious and pays fitting tribute to H.R. Giger’s most famous creation. I kept thinking of Giger throughout watching the movie but it wasn’t nearly as glorious or fitting.

The movie opens with an interminable scene of Guy Pearce and Michael Fassbender reprising their roles as Peter Weyland and David, respectively, from Prometheus. Weyland does some weird power trip stuff to David including insulting his piano playing and making him get some tea. The robot (David) is offended. At least the room looks cool and you can see Fassbender totally acting his way into being a robot. It’s actually the best bit of acting in the whole movie.

The crew of the Covenant is introduced in a sort of episodic manner as the ship encounters a solar flare out in the dead of space that rips their solar sails. Walter, also a robot played by Michael Fassbender, goes around and wakes up the crew as the ship is faltering on it’s way to whatever system. There are embryos and passengers but we are only ever introduced to the crew. It’s still too many characters to feel any kinship, too, so they might as well have woken up the whole ship. Danny McBride stood out in the advertising as not necessarily belonging in this movie and he most certainly doesn’t but nobody really does. The movie just shouldn’t exist and it’s poorly conceived every step of the way. James Franco dies before he even gets out of his pod but it’s not really all that clear why the pod won’t open or why he just starts burning up in there instead of staying in his little coma. His wife, Daniels, played by Katherine Waterston, is sad in the way you might be if a plant you particularly liked stopped bearing fruit. I don’t blame any of the bad acting on the actors here because they’re all so terrible it’s probably something else holding them back. Well, Fassbender isn’t terrible but his dual robots aren’t interesting, either. Back to Waterston - you’ve seen the hair and it’s an abomination. I thought about it through the whole movie.

I think they want her to look like Ripley but they miss the mark and end up with more of a Mario Bros. vibe. It never stops being distracting. I digress.

So Daniels and her dead husband were planning to build a lakefront cabin when they got to the, uh, system, they’re supposed to be going to. Husband Franco (maybe he’s Daniels, too?) was the captain of the ship so it matters that he’s dead but second in command Billy Crudup is a man of faith who nobody respects. So he doesn’t think there’s time to have a one second remembrance of the dead captain. His wife (Carmen Ejogo and here I’m just going to stop linking actors because she’s the last one whose character I know for sure. I just watched this last night, by the way) talks him into letting the crew members drink Jack Daniels in secret before charred dead Franco gets ejected into space in the first scene that made me laugh out loud. It’s still very early in the plot and I don’t get this whole thing where the crew and the passengers are completely separated but all of the crew members are married to each other. Why would this crew get hired? They aren’t in charge of building the new society of pioneers (the idea of being pioneers tries to hammer itself home but it doesn’t really stick even when it’s in the dialog) they’re just transporting the couple of thousand people, so why would they be paired off like this? Danny McBride spends so much time talking about his wife that there’s no way she’s going to survive. And she doesn’t.

 After the whole solar flare fiasco and the bunch of dead people, newly in command Crudup decides to veer off course for an unstudied planet that looks EVEN MORE HABITABLE THAN THE ORIGINAL DESTINATION! Nobody thinks it’s a good idea but Crudup gets his way.

The computer simulations showed a very habitable zone and the landing crew, lead by the acting captain (that seems like a bad idea to me), jumps off their little scout ship with no masks or biohazard gear of any sort. Neat. They’re just walking around on an unknown planet and ready to breath in whatever they have there.

Immediately one of them steps on a plant that releases spores that get in formation and fly into his ear. He gets sick right away and if you’ve ever seen an Alien movie you know what that basically means. But, wait, there’s another guy that also breathes in a bunch of spores! So we’ll get two chest bursting scenes right off the bat! Awesome, I’m already bored! I prayed to myself that it would just look cool because story-wise and acting-wise this shit was off the rails already. SPOILER! It never looks cool.

The first guy starts jerking around violently and collapses. Crudup’s wife tries to carry him back to the ship to chuck him in the medical room but he pukes all over her. I kind of assumed that meant she’d start spawning aliens, too, but they didn’t go that far. When she gets the ready to explode guy back into the medicine room, the medic that is Danny McBride’s wife (that’s her whole character, really) locks Crudup’s wife in there with ready to explode guy. Maybe I’ve got this mixed up. Maybe the guy starts exploding first.

Anyway, his back spits blood all over McBride’s wife so she goes and makes a call. She grabs a space gun to go back and kill the thing that popped out of the guy’s back, unlocks the door, and then slips in a bucket of blood. I’m not kidding. This was the second time I laughed out loud. Also, the baby alien? Looks like crap. Not like cheap FX but just a terrible design. It looks like a kid in a Pan’s Labyrinth costume. Eventually McBride’s wife fucks everything up so badly that the ship explodes. This movie is fucking hilarious.

The crew that was out exploring and carrying around the other sick guy gets there just in time to see the ship blow up and the other sick guy to explode with a baby alien. They all fight the baby alien. It’s hard for them to spot the alien even though they’re about 100 feet from a burning spaceship and the baby aliens are bright white, effectively glowing in the dark.

Blah blah blah blah blah. Michael Fassbender with long hair and a Luke’s desert outfit from Return of the Jedi shows up to rescue the crew and bring them back to his lair. It’s very clearly David from Prometheus but there are some questions to answer. Why does a robot have long hair? Does robot hair grow like human hair? What happened to the Noomi Rapace character he was flying around with at the end of Prometheus? Noomi Rapace is so awesome in non-English movies but not super great in most of her English movies, why?

It’s David from Prometheus! I’m stunned! Shocked! What a surprising reveal! Oh, who could have guessed? He takes the scout crew back to where he lives. Lots of dead architects are there. It seems kind of bad. Danny McBride has the main ship hovering close to the planet in a dangerous way. He wants to make it a little more dangerous. His crew members object for several seconds. Then they fly closer like he wanted.

It turns out in relatively short order that David killed Noomi Rapace and he loves the xenomorphs. He tries to corral one by breathing into its mouth after it kills another crew member. Then Billy Crudup shoots the xenomorph. Oh, yeah, at some point one of the crew members got alien acid blood on his face. It gets treated but he’s just asleep for the rest of the movie until he dies. David takes Crudup into his cave of alien eggs and tricks him into hosting a baby alien. The xenomorph that pops out of him is the more classic black skinned model.

David and Walter, the two Fassbender bots, have fundamental differences about their roles. David is an older model and he was given tools to create things like music while Walter can’t create things because of his programming. David teaches Walter to play the recorder. David killed Noomi Rapace and he wants humanity to end! Walter disagrees. They fight.

Danny McBride swoops in and picks up not-Ripley and whoever else is still alive. Walter jumps on board but he’s very obviously actually David. Nobody on the ship notices even though they know David is evil. The ship doesn’t even detect it even though the robots are linked to the ship operating system.

The ship alerts Not-Ripley and Kenny Powers that there is an intruder on the ship. They both know it’s the xenomorph. David helps them track the xenomorph in earnest even though he’s rooting for the alien. There is a very loud alarm blaring throughout the ship but the two awake and alive crew members that aren’t Kenny Powers or Not-Ripley are having sex in the shower. The xenomorph pushes its tail in between the lovers in a way that I’m sure was much more graphic in the script. Then it kills them both.

Kenny Powers and Not-Riply kill the xenomorph after getting off such memorable one-liners as “let’s kill this fucking thing!” Then it’s dead and they are getting into their cryo-chambers to continue the journey on its merry way towards the original destination. Not-Ripley realizes it’s David after she’s already in her cryo-chamber and its too late.

David files a report about more dead crew members after he kills Not-Ripley and Kenny Powers. Somehow this information no longer exists when the crew from Nostromo in the original Alien shows up. It reminds me of the shitty ways George Lucas tried to connect his prequels to the original Star Wars movies. How do you do so much fan service and get it all so wrong? Anyway, David puts on the Wagner piece that Guy Pearce made fun of him for/with in the opening scene and then plants some xenomorph embryos in with the human embryos and we’re done.

SCALE OF 1 TO 5 STARS, WITH MORE STARS MEANING A BETTER MOVIE: Holy shit did this movie fucking suck and I’m a little disappointed in myself that I sat through the whole thing.

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