Menu

Questionable Taste Theatre

King Arthur

,

thatsthemovie3
In a year in which everything is absolute garbage, there was one bright light, one burst of true art: KING ARTHUR. I tweeted about why. It's a terrible movie. This is not in dispute. It is also, however, easily in the top ten of movies that made me laugh the most. Here's why. — Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine) September 15, 2017 The opening shots of KING ARTHUR. (It's a mage's tower. The mage is busy.) pic.twitter.com/Zh1asSkYki — Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine) September 15, 2017 Prince Vortigern (you remember him) is jealous of Uther's giant sword! All he has to stab his wife with is that little dagger. pic.twitter.com/5If0OxO6Fn — Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine) September 15, 2017 Vortigern, obviously, has been hard at work building a new, thicker, longer Mage's tower. pic.twitter.com/v5TXqYHWmS — Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine) September 15, 2017 But how will he pull it? "Hands on the hilt, stupid," says D. Beckham. "10 digits…Give it a tug." (Actual line, I couldn't make this up.) pic.twitter.com/0s8QadWqUP — Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine) September 15, 2017 King Arthur (2017), oil on canvas… Read more »

Ten Things You Should Know About I, Frankenstein

,

frankensteinheader
Every year, in darkest winter, the cinemas are largely filled with leftover awards contenders and a studio’s awkward also-rans that got bumped until there was just no space left. But amid those disparate offerings lurks B-movie gold: the January Gem, which can occasionally come out in February depending on how many technothrillers a movie studio has to burn off first. That’s the kind of laid-back attitude we want in a January Gem. Last year, the amazingly bad Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters gifted us with Missing Children posters on medieval milk bottles and absolutely no introspection at any point despite the fact that they’re a witch’s kids and Gretel’s actually a witch but just ignores it. This year, the January Gem is I, Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein gets caught up in the war between gargoyle angels and demons (you know the one) until he’s a man unsure of his place in the world, drawn to a comely scientist, treated very rudely by a selection of supernatural beings, and left with nothing but his own convictions… Read more »

TV Movies and Other Accidental Horrors

, ,

harvestmoon4
Sometimes I tell friends to watch things that are awful. It’s harder if the only recommendation I have is, “No, you can’t imagine how bad it is until you see it.” It gets more awkward if it’s something I found during one of my down-the-rabbit hole Netflix fugue states, where I snap out of it the next day and realize I’ve watched seven movies, each worse than the last, until I nearly rewatched Blood of Beasts, a “Viking” Beauty and the Beast story where the only part that ever stays with me is where she offers to help her bear-suit captor wash up by pressing a damp washcloth gingerly to his shoulder three times, the end. (Actual scene.) But sometimes a movie just needs to be talked about – say, Dancing at the Harvest Moon. Officially, it’s a movie about a divorcee who returns to her hometown hoping to reconnect with her first love. He’s dead, so instead she restores the dance hall they used to frequent and makes out with his son. (Actual plot.)… Read more »

The Sharknado Drinking Game

,

sharknadoheader
So, everyone experienced Sharknado the first time around, I hope? I know some people didn’t, because they were asleep, or locked in barns by prankster friends, or staying in major hotel chains that don’t even offer SyFy and leave you in the dark for 72 hours. The good news, for those who missed it: Sharknado was so popular that they’re airing it again today at 7pm Eastern! The good news for everyone else: Sharknado is always happening. It has always happened. Look up at the sky. Know that the gathering storm will rain disparate species, spitting them out violently on the streets below. You will look into their eyes. You will see only yourself. This is how it has always been; this is the Sharknado of which none may speak. We probably need a drinking game for this. Or a review. A drinking review. Drink every time: There’s shark POV. This is a story about the sharks, too; displaced, violently disrupted, desperate to get home by sliding through the viscera of those they have torn… Read more »

B-movies/Byzantium

, , ,

byzantium1
This week, I had the opportunity to write an editorial essay for Clarkesworld that was meant to be something of a personal take on my approach to movie reviewing, with an undercurrent of, “Because sometimes you like bad movies a lot and you should probably explain that.” I ended up writing a love letter to the wide swath of things that get classified, could be classified, and want to be classified as B-movies, because damn, there is a lot going on under that umbrella. “My Own Private B-Movie” is up now! (And no disrespect to The Warriors, but someday I will write about Streets of Fire, because it deserves something all its own.) And it is super timely, because this weekend I saw Byzantium. Obviously, Neil Jordan is no stranger to bloodsuckers; he directed Interview with the Vampire, which has become the unexpected but indisputable model for urban vampire films in the nearly two decades since its release. The unabashedly over-the-top adaptation of Anne Rice’s already over-the-top novel about a dysfunctional vampire family walked a… Read more »

Stoker

, ,

stokerheader
“Did you ever stop to think that a family should be the most wonderful thing in the world?” Stoker, Park Chan-wook’s superlatively beautiful film, is billed as a thriller, but isn’t quite. It’s more a style-heavy meditation on things not actually present in the narrative (it’s a vampire movie with no vampires), and a ruthless dissection of the thing that is (family, family, family). Case in point: in the movie’s first moments, we meet India. She tells us she’s wearing her mother’s blouse, and her father’s belt, and a pair of stiletto heels her uncle gave her. We know nothing else about her. By movie’s end, everything in the shot has been given context, until the outfit is both a symbol of the family influences that take such a permanent toll on a child, but examples of a heightened, surreal specificity that characterize India throughout. It’s difficult to go into some of the specifics, both because laying out plot points makes the storyline sound a little soapy (and hearkens perhaps too closely to Shadow of… Read more »
1 2 3 4