Author Archives: Keith Garlington

RETRO REVIEW: “Bloody Mama” (1970)

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Roger Corman’s exploitation crime thriller “Bloody Mama” was the filmmaker’s second-to-last feature for American International Pictures and it was a far cry from his best. Though moderately successful, the film was handcuffed by Corman’s steadfast desire to milk the recent success of Arthur Penn’s Oscar-winning “Bonnie and Clyde”. His efforts in “Bloody Mama” were so apparent that it prompted Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin to label it “Mommie and Clyde“.

While the film was lambasted by critics, it earned enough of an audience to inspire Corman to fund “Boxcar Bertha” and hire a young Martin Scorsese to direct it. But that doesn’t mean “Bloody Mama” is a good film. Despite its wealth of young on-screen talent, the movie struggles under the weight of its own inconsistency. While Corman’s inspiration is clear, it doesn’t seem like he’s at all sure about the kind of movie he wants to make. His tonal hodgepodge is maddening, hopping from lighthearted to dark on a whim and unwisely mixing such things as rape, murder, and incest with elements of comedy.

“Bloody Mama” is very loosely based on the antics of Kate “Ma” Barker. While Barker’s reputation as a hardened crime matriarch have been debated over the years (J. Edgar Hoover called her “vicious” and “dangerous” while those who knew her said she had no role in her sons’ many crimes). Corman sticks with the pop culture interpretation, even taking it further by portraying Ma barker as an absolute monster. She’s played by a tempestuous Shelly Winters who fully commits to the role.

Set and filmed in rural Arkansas, “Bloody Mama” takes place during the Depression as Ma Barker leaves her husband George (Alex Nicol) and takes her gaggle of unruly twenty-something sons with her. Her pack consists of the unhinged Herman (Don Stroud), the more reserved Arthur (Clint Kimbrough), the masochistic Fred (Robert Walden), and the drug-addicted Lloyd (Robert De Niro). The five set out on a crime spree across 1930’s Arkansas, picking up a few tag-alongs and killing more than a few along the way.

There isn’t much in the way of character development as Corman is far more interested in the luridly violent exploitation that helped solidify his legacy. The lone exception may be De Niro’s Lloyd, the troubled outcast of the backwoods brood whose inner turmoil resonates the most realistically. He’s very much a part of the family, and his sociopathic bend takes him down some rather sinister paths. But he also comes across as alienated and alone which only fuels his self-destruction. Stroud doesn’t get nearly as much to work with, but he does make the psychotic Herman a terror.

As for Ma Barker, she mostly comes across as a collection of character types. We get some early flashes to her incestuous and abusive childhood which somewhat explains her own vile deviancy. But the bulk of the film sees Winters as a blustering swirl of anger and resentment. Her Ma Barker lives up to the sensationalized portrayal that has found its way into many movies, songs, and stories. It’s a performance that’s both fascinating and frustrating, much like “Bloody Mama” as a whole.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

The “Alien: Romulus” Movie Poster Campaign Continues to Build Excitement

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From their earliest announcement that “Alien: Romulus” was on the way, 20th Century Studios has delivered one killer movie poster after another. And they haven’t slowed down, as evident by the release of several eye-popping new sheets today. A collection of incredibly talented artists have helped put together one of the better promotional campaigns for a movie in some time.

Check out the poster art for “Alien: Romulus” below. It is the seventh installment in the Alien franchise which began in 1979 with Ridley Scott’s original space horror classic. “Alien: Romulus” releases exclusively in theaters on August 16th.

REVIEW: “Sting” (2024)

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With “Sting”, writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner uses one of the most common fears shared by people of all shapes, sizes, ages and colors. For many it’s a petrifying fear that trumps all others. I’m talking about the fear of spiders. My own family isn’t immune from it (neither my wife or daughter would stay in the room after hearing what “Sting” was about). So right off the bat, Roache-Turner has the kind of material that will automatically get reactions.

But “Sting” isn’t some lazy attempt at cheap scares. It’s a self-aware creature feature that knows its audience and caters to their appetites with plenty of skin-crawling frights and nearly as many laughs. It’s a movie that wears its inspirations on its sleeve and tips its hat to several easy to spot properties (fans of James Cameron’s phenomenal 1986 classic “Aliens” will see its influence all throughout “Sting”).

Image Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment

Roache-Turner wastes no time kicking things off. As a meteor passes dangerously close to New York City, a tiny fragment crashes into a rundown brownstone apartment building. The small egg-like fragment hatchets a tiny spider which is discovered by an unruly 12-year-old named Charlotte (Alyla Browne). She puts the spider in a Mason jar and names it Sting. From there she slips her new pet into her bedroom, hiding it from her loving mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell) and her hardworking step-father Ethan (Ryan Corr).

Over the next few minutes we’re introduced to several other tenants who will soon find themselves in a B-movie nightmare. Among them is Helga (Noni Hazlehurst), Charlotte’s elderly grandmother who is struggling with dementia; Heather’s battle-axe great aunt, Gunter (Robyn Nevin); a grieving young window, Maria (Silvia Colloca); and a nerdy biology student, Erik (Danny Kim). Throw in a local exterminator named Frank (Jermaine Fowler) who adds some well-tuned comic relief.

As Charlotte feeds Sting a heavy diet of cockroaches, the spider begins growing at an alarming rate. Before long it has busted out of its jar and made its way into the building’s vents. And as its appetite grows, the massive space arachnid goes from munching on roaches to feasting on people. Its insatiable craving for flesh and blood leads to some squirm-inducing scenes that are sure to have people with spider phobias covering their eyes.

Image Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment

The movie does struggle to maintain a consistent tone. In between the gory creature kills and comic self-awareness is a family drama that has its poignant moments but never quite has the impact it clearly wants to have. It leads to some tender interactions and it manages to add some emotional weight to the film’s big finish. But sometimes it feels at odds with what the rest of the film is going for.

Still, Roache-Turner deserves a lot of credit for both recapturing and poking fun at the throwback creature features of old. He’s able to have us laughing one minute while making our skin crawl the next. And the wizards at Wētā Workshop do a superb job with the creature effects, making something that is effortlessly terrifying whether spiders scare you or not. “Sting” in available on VOD and home video.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

REVIEW: “Oddity” (2024)

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2024 has been a surprisingly rich and diverse year for horror movies. We’re only in July yet there have already been strong entries into nearly every possible horror movie sub-genre. Writer-director Damian Mc Carthy adds another gem to this year’s catalog with “Oddity”, a spooky and atmospheric Irish chiller that builds some genuine suspense while keeping us guessing right up to its final frame.

“Oddity” is a cunningly crafted indie feature that adds a supernatural spin to a surprising straightforward murder mystery. As compelling as it is disquieting, Mc Carthy’s story is one of human wickedness and paranormal retribution. His direction is shrewd and methodical, often embracing elements of the horror genre but never held captive by them. That’s a big reason why “Oddity” stands out as unique despite its familiar dressings.

Image Courtesy of IFC Films

The movie is anchored by a brilliant dual performance from Carolyn Bracken. She plays Dani Timmis, the wife of psychiatrist Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee). The couple recently invested in an old country house which they are in the process of remodeling. While Ted works the night shift at an area asylum, Dani decides to spend the weekend working on and enjoying their new home.

Dani is startled late one night by her husband’s former patient, Olin Boole (Tadhg Murphy). He appears at her door frantically claiming someone has slipped into her house while she wasn’t looking. A frightened Dani is confronted with a critical choice. Does she believe the man outside her door or does she stay locked in her house until Ted can get home? Her decision proves to have heavy consequences as she is violently murdered.

A year later we’re introduced to Dani’s blind and eccentric sister, Darcy (also played by Bracken). She owns and operates a small shop that sells oddities of all kinds, many of which she claims are cursed. She also claims to be psychic which keeps Ted at arms length. Meanwhile Ted has a new girlfriend, a co-worker named Yana (Caroline Menton) who just recently moved in with him. They’re caught by surprise when Darcy shows up unannounced, determined to stay the night. And that’s when things get really uneasy.

Image Courtesy of IFC Films

While Ted is off working his night shift, Yana is forced to stay at the house with the suddenly more hostile Darcy. To make things even eerier, Darcy brought Ted and Yana a present – a ghoulishly life-sized wooden mannequin from her shop, marked by its uncomfortable frozen scream and five finger-sized holes drilled in the top of its head. What’s the mystery of the wooden man? Is its agonized face telling a haunting story of pain? Is the carved creation housing something malevolent? Or does it represent something else entirely?

With his pieces in place, Mc Carthy begins playing with our minds by patiently revealing truths that were hidden right in front of our eyes. At the same time he does a good job ratcheting up the dread, often by something as a simple as a static shot of a door or through his clever use of lighting, shadows, and deafening silence. As you watch “Oddity” you’ll notice there’s a simplicity to Mc Carthy’s approach yet he is remarkably sure-handed. That, along with some pitch-perfect performances, helps make this another stand-out chiller from 2024. “Oddity” is now playing in select theaters.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

REVIEW: “The Last Breath” (2024)

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Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the cinematic waters, along comes another shark movie. “The Last Breath”, from director Joachim Hedén, taps into what has become a popular and well-traveled horror sub-genre. It seems like each year we get multiple shark movies of all makes and models. 2024 has been no different. But to Hedén’s credit, he gives his film its own unique spin while still delivering the thrills and kills people look for in shark flicks of its kind.

Written for the screen by Nick Saltrese who works from a story by Andrew Prendergast, “The Last Breath” is a surprisingly exciting and suspenseful thriller set mostly underwater. Historically, shooting underwater has been a challenge for filmmakers with the cinematography often being dark and murky. Not so with “The Last Breath”. The brilliant photography from Hedén and DP Eric Börjeson is clear and sharp, using various sources of light as well as deep shadows to create a forbidding and immersive setting.

As far as the story goes, in 1944 a German submarine sank the USS Charlotte battleship near the British Virgin Islands. Fast forward 80 years where a treasure hunter named Levi (Julian Sands) and his deckhand Noah (Jack Parr) discover the wreckage of the Charlotte buried deep in the sand on the ocean floor. Levi has spent several years and practically all of his money in search of the Charlotte. Knowing his boss’s financial strain, a well-meaning Noah convinces Levi to do something that proves to have deadly consequences.

A group of Noah’s old college friends reunite for a few days of partying and reminiscing. Among them is Sam (Kim Spearman), a nurse from New York and Noah’s ex; the rich and pompous Brett (Alexander Arnold); the pothead, Logan (Arlo Carter); and the easy-going Riley (Erin Mullen). Noah lets it slip that he and Levi have found the Charlotte leading Brett to offer an absurd amount of money for Levi to take the group on a dive to explore the sunken battleship. A desperate Levi reluctantly agrees. He delays reporting his find to authorities and takes the friends to the site. Bad idea.

Noah and his friends are all certified divers, but that doesn’t prepare them for lies below. As they descend deep into the belly of the ship they lose communication with the surface. But that’s nothing compared to the biggest threat – ferocious and extremely territorial man-eating sharks. And that sets up Hedén’s central tension. Who (if anyone) will make it out of the wreckage and back to the surface without being turned into chum? Disorientation, depleted oxygen, fear turning to panic – it all factors into this tense and claustrophobic experience.

Though it tries, the movie doesn’t offer much depth with its characters. And with the exception of Levi, you could make a case that they’re closer to character types than fully-formed people. But you could also brush that off as needless knit-picking, especially for a movie that has such a good grasp of what it wants to be. Its main focus is on building suspense (which it handles well) and submerging us in its impressively realized deep-water environment. And it does it all while incorporating some gnarly shark kills that should delight any genre fan. “The Last Breath” hits select theaters and VOD on July 26th.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

REVIEW: “Deadpool & Wolverine” (2024)

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By all indications “Deadpool & Wolverine” looks to be the massive moneymaking blockbuster the laboring Marvel Cinematic Universe desperately needs. After a run of big budget flops in theaters and on streaming, Kevin Feige and Disney have looked to a movie that caters to the easiest targets. And from the looks of things their not-so-risky “gamble” is about to pay huge dividends.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” is a movie filled to the brim with fan service which it uses, along with an assortment of gimmicks, to draw in a variety of fans. There are those who love Ryan Reynolds’ schtick. They get plenty of it here. There are others who are giddy for more R-rated superhero movies. This one works REALLY hard to earn its R rating. And of course there is the ultimate act of fan service – paying Hugh Jackman a boatload of money to return as Wolverine. But that only scratches the surface of this movie’s pandering for reactions.

I’m not knocking anyone who is drawn to those things. But for me, Reynolds’ routine can be exhausting and a little of it goes a long way. And I don’t think I’ve ever rooted for a movie to have a specific rating (whatever fits the film). But since its beginning, many have embraced the Deadpool series for its R rating as much as anything else. As for Wolverine, Jackman’s character arc reached a perfect conclusion in 2017’s “Logan”. Yet the MCU creatives play the cheap multiverse card to bring him back (and more importantly, to sell more tickets).

Then there’s Deadpool. I’ll always prefer the early version of the character that existed before Marvel Comics started using the crutch of “mature content” to sell his books. The movies have leaned heavily into the ultra-silly and endlessly foul-mouthed version and it’s no different in “Deadpool & Wolverine”. New director Shawn Levy (who recently worked with Reynolds on “Free Guy” and “The Adam Project”) teams up with a total of five (!!!) screenwriters. What they give us is a series of Deadpool skits, stitched together by yet another bad MCU story.

Image Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

From the very beginning the filmmakers go for the nostalgia jugular, hitting us with endless waves of meta gags, surprise appearances, and absurd needle-drops. There are countless callbacks to Fox’s Marvel era. And of course it spends a ton of time lampooning superheroes, superhero movies, and pretty much anything else that comes to mind. In essence it’s the same Deadpool movie formula, only cranked up to 11 and now with MCU baggage to lug around.

Yes, Deadpool is now part of the MCU, grafted in through yet another multiverse convenience. I have no idea how such an exaggerated and self-aware character will fit with the other Marvel films. But since “Avengers: Endgame”, I’m not sure the MCU heads have put much thought into things like continuity or cohesion. And as this movie proves, there’s not much interest in plot either.

Good storytelling was never a strength of the first two Deadpool movies. But there was a semi-intimacy between Wade Wilson and his friends that at least kept their stories focused. “Deadpool & Wolverine” is hampered by one of the laziest scripts I’ve seen in a superhero movie. So much of the story feels patched together. Things routinely happen with no real explanation, and the quintet of writers seem perfectly content with skating by on comic mayhem and the buddy chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman.

After a silly but funny opening credits scene, Levy waste no time throwing us into Marvel’s multiverse, almost immediately bogging the movie down with vaguely defined and uninteresting mumbo-jumbo about the Sacred Timeline, plot contrivances such as “anchor beings” and a contraption called the “Time Ripper”, and so on. It’s almost as if there are two movies fighting for time – an obsessively bloody and vulgar Deadpool rehash and another messy MCU post-“Endgame” misfire.

Image Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

While celebrating his birthday with his friends, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is apprehended by the Time Variance Authority (TVA) who take him to their leader, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen). Paradox informs Wade that his timeline is rapidly deteriorating. Why is it deteriorating you ask? Because the timeline’s “anchor being” has died and apparently timelines die as a result (don’t ask any questions because the movie doesn’t offer many answers). It turns out that the “anchor being” who died from Wade’s timeline was Logan aka Wolverine.

Desperate to save his friends, Wade swipes a gadget that lets him travel the multiverse. His plan: find and retrieve a suitable replacement Logan from another timeline and bring him back to his world. He settles for a grizzled drunken Wolverine (Jackman) and returns to the TVA only to discover that he has broken a few rules. As a result, Paradox (who has nefarious yet paper-thin plans of his own) banishes them to a place called the Void. Once there, Wade and Logan fight, we get some cameos, they fight again, we get more cameos, and so on.

This time around, Reynolds pushes his wisecracking semi-sociopathic anti-hero farther, mechanically churning out one-liners and on-the-nose profanity in nearly every breath. Jackman falls in line. Chiseled, moody, and forced to drop f-bombs on cue, he brings a certain grit and gravitas the movie needs. It’s too bad he spends so much time being the straight man to the scene-gorging Reynolds. Even worse, it’s tough to see the supporting cast from the previous Deadpool films relegated to the sidelines – replaced by attention-getting cameos and new less interesting characters.

We do get one particularly fun surprise appearance, a couple of good though nonsensical action sequences, and occasionally a joke will hit its mark. But much of it starts to feel like recycled material. Meanwhile the story is clearly a secondary concern. We get no menacing villains, absolutely no suspense, scenes of boring exposition that don’t say much, and plot holes that are impossible to miss for anyone slightly looking. It eventually leaves “Deadpool & Wolverine” resembling a fan service cash grab from a cinematic universe in desperate need of a big box office hit. Well, it looks like Disney has one.

VERDICT – 2 STARS