Showing posts with label Nicholas Cage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicholas Cage. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019)

"Maggot dick."

A family (wife, husband, two teenage kids and one younger son) live way out in the fucking woods. One evening, a meteor lands in their front yard. Just a few feet from the well where they get their water. A hydrologist, who just so happens to be wandering by, tells them that the water (which is now oily and icky looking) is contaminated, and that they should stop using it. No shit. They keep drinking it anyway. Morons. As the viewer would expect, drinking deep space meteor piss isn’t healthy for humans. Or llamas.

It’s been a few hundred years since I read H. P. Lovecraft’s original “The Colour Out of Space” short story that was published back in 1927, but I do remember it being creepy and awesome. This 2019 film adaptation was neither creepy nor awesome. Right from the beginning I felt zero connection to the family, other than find them annoying. I wouldn’t care if a giant Slor took a giant Slor shit right in their well, but even worse than annoying characters is the alien invasion stuff starts almost immediately. Very little build-up or character development. Just…BAM! Family, woods, aliens attack.

Zero nudity, zero gore, very little blood, zero sense of self-preservation, annoying dialogue, multiple characters completely leaving the contamination zone and then returning, Tommy Chong as a burnout hippie squatter (how original), zero tension, a house with excessive outdoor lighting (most likely purely for the fact that it would look neat in the wacky alien-vision scenes), disappointing ending.

I went into THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE hoping for an extremely creepy story full of inescapable dread and mind-breaking cosmic horror. Instead, I just got a bleh, PG-13 level, yawn-inducing snoozer. Worth watching, I guess, if you're like super bored, but you’d probably be better off reading one of the hundreds of pulp horror novels with a similar story.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

8MM (1999)

Private dick Nicholas Cage is hired by a wealthy widow to discover the origin of a seemingly one-of-a-kind snuff film she found in her recently deceased husband’s private safe. Following the lead of the physical film stock itself and some missing persons resources, Cage soon finds himself in the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. While there he teams up with porn store cashier Joaquin Phoenix. Together, Dick Cage and Porno Boy visit multiple top secret underground porno flea markets and watch pornographic VHS tapes together. Eventually, Cage ends up in a house by the cemetery that is decorated inside with not one, but two Danzig posters.

For an older film, 8MM has aged alright. I originally saw it opening weekend and remember smirking at Cage’s over exaggerated cringes when he first watches the snuff film and the goofy sanitized portrayal of porn.  But, I guess, my handsome brain has chilled out over the decades cuz this time around I found the film to be a solid 6 / 10.

Medium pace, promising mystery plot device that fizzles out, impressive cast, disappointing final act that isn’t even close to being as fucked up as it should have been, drug out ending that goes on for too long, surprisingly very little nudity, incorrect subtitles on the blu-ray, questionable musical choices, a small amount of blood, zero gore, no cheerleaders, a Jane’s Addiction shirt, good acting that sometimes teeters on overacting.

There are many ways that 8MM could have been a better film, but for what it is, it’s an okay time-waster. I double-featured it with PRETTY WOMAN (true story, just in case there's a Las Vegas betting line on what my next review will be), but it’d probably make a better double-feature with A SERBIAN FILM or even season 1 of True Detective.