Phantom Galaxy Review: Candyman 2021, Swim, Superhost, The Last Matinee, The Green Knight, and more

Detective, thrill me. Scream! Scream for your lives! You're going out there to destroy them, right? Not to study, not to bring back. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Oh, I know this creature of yours. When a dragon gets this old, it knows nothing but pain. Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted. Welcome to Soundcare Board, gentlemen. Open the pod bay doors, pal. I'm sorry, Dave.

I'm afraid I can't do that. So? Celestial event? No words. You really shook the pillars of heaven, didn't you like it? What's the boogeyman? As a matter of fact... It was. Hello everyone, welcome back to the Phantom Galaxy podcast. I'm your host Nathan Bartleball and I'm joined as always by my co-host Bill VanVegel. Bill, how are you today? I'm doing wonderful.

And when this records, I've been spending the last few days getting my classroom ready. And so by the time you hear this, I'll be exhausted and swearing already because the little buggers are back in class.

We do have a guest tonight and our episode is a weekly review. We haven't done one in a while. We're going to try to get back in the saddle on this. And we wanted to be able to bring in somebody who has, you know, actually seen a good number of the movies. To be honest, she's seen more of the movies than I've seen.

Me as well. In terms of new releases. So I'm really excited. We're going to bring in Amanda Lee now. She is going to introduce herself and tell everyone a little bit about herself. And then we'll jump right in.

Hey, guys. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Amanda Lee, and I watch a lot of movies, as you probably already do. That's an understatement. She, at this point... has seen more than i for this year so when i'm cramming 18 movies into the last three days of the year she used to be sitting out having a glass of milk on her kitchen but amanda we are very happy to have you here and

We're going to go around where we have several movies. Each of us has several movies. We'll do that. And then we're also going to have a VOD roulette with Billy. Give me the drum roll, please. Neil Perk drum solo. we have a Tubi exclusive. A Tubi exclusive. Yes, Tommy would. A Tubi original film with an actor, whoa, that you will have heard of. But only just.

Only just, but only just, I mean, the actor involved is, I looked at his curriculum vitae and he actually has done quite a lot, but really only one thing that I had heard. And the movie is Swim. The actor that we were referring to is Joey Lawrence. Now, you take a look at Swim. honest to god how I found out about it is through my trolling of Tubi all of a sudden it comes up a Tubi original and they've had Tubi originals before

And they're usually not so hot. But this one involved a shark. It looked like it could be, it said, from the producers of Sharknado. And you're like, oh. There's your vote of confidence. Oh, baby. So I thought, you know what? I've done a lot worse with 85 minutes or whatever long it is. What a crazy thing to say. I've done worse things in 80 minutes. I went to the IMDB and it gets a 3.3 rating. That's never scared me before. So here's the synopsis of Swim.

A family gets trapped in their storm-flooded vacation rental, tries to escape from a hungry shark that made its way into the house. Does that sound like another film that was out about two years ago that Mr. Greg Morgan really liked? Well, yeah, it does. But... That's not similar at all. Those were alligators, Bill. No similarity at all. No. It's directed by Jared Cohn, who...

I looked up what he had done. It's interesting. Like he did like shark season. He did one called, get this, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill. which is a take on the faster Pussycat Kill Kill, I'm pretty sure. But he also did the recent movie Street Survivors, the true story of the Leonard Skinner plane crash. So...

I haven't seen that one yet, but I do intend to because I am a Leonard Skinner fan. Stars Mr. Joey Lawrence of Blossom fame, but I didn't realize he's also been on Hawaii Five-Ole TV show. And he was in Urban Legends Final Cut. The main female lead actress that gets the bulk of the screen time is Jennifer Field, who has been on Robot Chicken.

And I think it's the Prime series, Bosch. Andy Lauer, who was in Iron Man 3. Brett Hargrave, who was in one that, Nathan, you and I both loved that we watched, Weegee's Halloween Night. Loved is an extreme term there, Bill. At least for my part. No, it's a full moon film, whatever. And David Hutchinson, who was in the 2021 version of Wrong Turn. And has done stunts for many, many films and TV shows, including the current show, Stranger Things.

so it has some people involved in it that have some credence to the movie industry so i'm not going to spend a lot of time on the plot on this it's from the producers of sharknado now on the positive side It was shot in letterboxd. So if you're a film purist, at least it has that going for it. So I'll try to sum this up in about 30 seconds. Joey Lawrence and his family rent a beach house. A storm is coming. Sharks are in the water.

Okay, so the family's going to this cottage that they've been renting forever. There's a wife, a daughter, a son, and they're at this cottage. The kids are, one is going off to college. The other one is a little bit older. Not so super old. So the family always rents this cottage. And it's their last get together before the daughter goes off to college. Lawrence is trying to meet them up at the family house. And he's driving there from work. But the storm is coming.

So he can't fly there, he gets to rent a car, he drives there, and he runs into problems because the weather is not cooperating. Let me just say right now, the acting is not great. But Jennifer Field I didn't find was too bad. As the lead wife who gets the bulk of the screen time, I thought she was passable. I mean, we're not talking Oscar or Emmy award winning stuff. But for an Asylum style film...

You couldn't ask probably for much more. You know, it's the saga of will Lawrence make his way to the house? Will the family survive? Will they get out? There was an interesting character. Andy Lauer plays a grandpa. And they obviously age him for the role a little bit. And he's kind of an interesting curmudgeonly, almost a Mickey Rooney kind of character. And he plays a retired doctor. You know, the CGI...

It's awful, okay? I'm not going to beat around the bush. It's terrible. And the key to this is you watch it for Joey Lawrence because you know the name. He's the biggest name by far of all of them. He's not in the damn movie all that much. You see him for about five or 10 minutes here and there at the beginning. And then at the end, he comes swimming in like Lassie trying to save the day.

Like Lassie. Oh, Timmy's in the well. Let's go get him. That's basically Joey Lawrence with his family across the water, you know? It mimics a movie called, that you might know, Crawl. You know, Shark vs. Alligator. But it's essentially ripping off Crawl. Families stuck in the basement.

People in bystanders along the way are getting killed. Will they survive? Will this giant storm overtake them? It even goes so far as they crawl onto the roof. And here's my takeaway. The whole thing, my takeaway is... Cable antennas can be useful weapons when dealing with sharks. That's what I got out of it. Great? No. Have I seen worse? Yes.

Do I want to see this again? No. But I'm proud of Tubi for putting out this film. A movie. It's a movie. As Mr. David Becker would say, it's a movie. So this is, to me, I don't know, four, four and a half out of ten. Somewhere in that range. You're so generous. I am being a bit generous, but I do think they made a concerted effort to at least try to string along a plot. As flimsy as it is...

It's not a TNA film. It's not a gore film. There is tension built to whatever level that they did. I felt strung along. I'll agree there. Amanda, what did you think of this one? Oh, boy. Okay, I'm going to try to keep this positive as much as I can. You don't have to. You can be as negative as you want to be. I thought it was fun. I mean, it's not the greatest movie in the world, no, and I probably will never watch this ever again, but...

I had fun with it. And I'm a sucker for shark movies, so there you go. So, of course, I was going to get to it eventually. Yes, the CGI is terrible and the acting is cringy, but... You know what? I had fun with it for what it is. I enjoyed that guy at the beginning that was like the handyman. Oh, the caretaker.

The guy that owned the property that didn't fix the pipes, he got some comeuppance for not fixing those pipes. I just think when you're going to copy a movie as recently as something like Crawl, and... Let me be fair to the Australians who made bait.

about 10 years ago. I don't know if you guys have seen that, where a shark swims into a convenience store or a grocery store. That movie is a lot more fun than this one. And I think... uh swim rips off some of that one as well but yes primarily it's crawl you would think that when they're doing it in that close proximity that you want to at least change some things up or aim

Aim within your boundaries for things you can achieve. I think the thing about these Asylum movies that initially makes them kind of fun to watch a little bit, but then also makes them frustrating, is they barge in there like they're the big special effects movie. It only underscores why Crawl was so successful. You know, there's a lot of great cinematography. There's a lot of...

Even though the special effects are not seamless in that film either, the way the effects are used, the acting, you know, you see how hard it is to make a movie like that successful. The lighting here was so bright and washed out, it looked like they were in a hospital ward a couple of times. When they're in the interiors of the house, it's just that.

bright where it looks like you can almost sense that they have like 10 spotlights on this scene and then you've got your dark dimly lit cgi shark that looks like a cardboard cutout sort of zooming along the waves I, you know, it just didn't do anything for me. It wasn't painful to watch.

The Joey Lawrence thing was kind of ridiculous that, yeah, it's just like waiting for Godot, but it's waiting for Joey Lawrence. I would have enjoyed it better had Lassie actually been involved in this movie in some way. But, like you said, it's a Tubi exclusive. Now...

It took Netflix a while to work their way up, you know, to get where we are now to Prime, to get where they're releasing these essentially, you know, movies that will be theatrical. Will Tubi get there? Remains to be seen. Remains to be seen. You know what? I'll give them this much. They gave it the old college try. Go hire Charles Band. He's available, I think, guys. Just saying. So is Roger Corman, probably. Is Roger, what's he, mid-90s?

Yo, Raj can still turn out a few movies, I'm pretty certain. I don't think he'd have any problem with it. The other thing is with Crawl and with Bait, and even with the movie as silly as Piranha. You cared somewhat about the characters. Like there was a backstory. That's my problem here. I just don't care. It's all shark bait. Like if Joey Lawrence has his head bitten off in the first five minutes, it's inconsequential really to the plot of this.

Yeah. You know, like, there is no character. The only character I liked, as I said, was Andy Lauer as the grandpa. And I just found him kind of curmudgingly funny. It's a two. Oh, you give it a two. See, I... I give it a two. I give it a two. I would... You know what? I give it a four, four and a half because... They tried their best. This might be the zenith of Tubi Originals. So how about ratings? So you give it a four for Swim, huh? I'll give it a four out of ten, yeah.

I'm going to go two out of 10. I'm sorry. I know the, like the get off my lawn guy, but, but you know what? I'm going to say, uh, Gabe Conway from real talk. You're going to want to watch this regardless because it involves a shark. It involves a shark. So many movies involve a shark, though, these days. There's one coming out, or it is out now, called Sharks of the Corn. Please don't make us review that one, Bill. If I can't find it streaming, no, I won't.

Oh, but I bet you will find it streaming. It may be another Tubi exclusive. Maybe Tubi, it would be funny if Tubi only did shark movies. But are they now cutting in on the sci-fi channels? Sort of like, the sci-fi is still... traffic with asylum or is now to be, you know, is that going to be the new Faustian deal?

You were telling me before we recorded that Asylum was involved in this. I didn't realize it was. This is Asylum production, yeah. So 2B has now, it was a 2B and Asylum double team, you know. Wow. Amanda, what's your rating on this one? Well, I'm gonna be generous as well. I'm gonna give it a three, but only because we get to see grandpa beat the crap out of the shark with his cane. That was very entertaining.

That was, yes. It wasn't as good as if it had been the Johnny Knoxville bad grandpa, but it was still fine. It was funny. His makeup was about the Johnny Knoxville grandpa level. Yeah, because Andy Lauer is not that old a guy. No, no. It would have been funnier had Mickey Rooney still be alive to see Mickey Rooney fight the shark. But because he probably would have, you know, even at 90, whatever. Or Peter Boyle.

Yeah, yeah. Peter Boyle doing anything, honestly. But anyway, now I just feel sad. And... Swim is out there. It's a sci-fi original. It's just now a Tubi original. You're not going to find a lot of variation. It's not on the wilder end. This is really one of those mock blusters where they're...

Did I say that right? Mockbuster? Where they're copying directly a movie that was popular a year or two ago. This is a good movie to watch on a Sunday morning if you're hungover. Or a Sunday morning and you're just getting up and you want something on in the background. Or if you really don't want to think.

You've been shot in the legs and you can't find the remote. It's perfect for that. Okay, so I have one that I actually saw this past weekend. I had heard a lot about it. It had just made its rounds on the festival scene. And there was a lot of buzz around this movie. And it's a little movie from Argentina. It's called The Last Matinee. It came out in 2020. It's just now getting a wide release now here in the States.

It is available on BOD, which is where I watched it. It's directed by, and this is a really cool name, Maximiliano Contenti. So that's a really cool name to say. Just kind of rolls off the tongue there. so this one is in spanish and it's with english subtitles so i thought that was important to mention because some people you know that's a real turn off for them the subtitles but to be honest once you get into this

Because of what I'm going to describe here, it's worth it, even if you don't like subtitles. So, as you can tell, I really enjoyed this one. It's a love letter to retro slashers and Jollos. It takes place in 1993 in a movie theater where a mysterious killer and rain slicker begins to stalk a small group of theater goers during the final screening of a trashy American horror movie.

And it's one of those really cool art deco theaters that you don't really see so much of nowadays. And there's a particular scene in the beginning. where a child is leaving the theater and as he's walking down this grand staircase, he drops a bag of gumballs and the camera just follows them as they bounce down the stairs. And it's just such a gorgeous shot.

And this is set you up for pretty much what's going to be the rest of the movie. You're going to see some really like terrible things done in such a beautiful way. And I know that's really odd to describe that, but this is just such a gorgeous movie. And I have to say, I love the poster. Yes. The poster is very cool for this one. And the killer, he's referred to in the credits as the eyeball eater. And that tells you all you need to know about this guy.

He enters the theater in the beginning wearing a raincoat, and he's carrying a huge duffel bag, which there is no way you could get away with that today. No kidding. No. No, they pat you down like for... jujubes and for water and this guy has a gigantic uh duffel bag full of tools and whatnot so uh the audience now the audience because this is the last showing it's a very big theater

And there's just a small group of people in there. And they're all kind of spread out sparsely throughout the theater. The audience is made up of an old man, a couple on a first date, a bunch of rowdy teenagers, and a little boy who happened to hide under the seat.

from the movie that was playing previously, which was a children's movie. Because what it was is this is one of those old retro theaters where they only play one movie at a time. And the movie that was playing before that was a children's movie about dinosaurs. So that little boy stayed after that film had ended. He hid under the seat so he could watch the scary movie. I was going to say, I'm looking at one of the photos, and it looks like, you know, when they distribute it to...

other countries and what happened. And in one of them, it's called red screening. It's a couple of different titles with, with a gloved killer holding eyeballs. Bill, this sounds right up our alley. Like it totally sounds up our alley. It sure does. It looks like almost a love letter to giallos. And to the movies. Go into the movies. So they got me on that one and they got you on the giallo. So I'm sold. I love movies that take place in movie theaters, honestly.

I do too. I like it. You know, mix up a little bit of demons. Do you guys remember that 90s movie, Popcorn? Popcorn, yes. Early 90s? That movie? Yeah, Popcorn. This one really reminded me of Popcorn because you get a film within a film. in this one which i absolutely love very cool yes and what's the one where robert england was the theater manager

There was one where Robert Englund played and he was killing in the theater after hours. I feel like I should know that. Matinee springs to mind too. Joe Dante's matinee had movie within a movie. Yeah. Anyways, Amanda, who do you think would be the intended audience for this kind of film? Us. Us. Or is there anything that somebody going in, just as a horror fan or a fantasy fan, can you walk in cold, not knowing anything about it and just enjoy yourself?

I think that if you love slashers, if you love horror in general, don't let the fact that it's a foreign movie scare you away. Because once this gets going, it's awesome. I mean, the kills are fantastic in this. There's one in particular. that takes place in the projector room. And he uses a film projector to kill somebody. And it's a very creative kill. And it just looks really cool because you see the blood being projected on the screen.

I just can't say enough good things about this film, and I'm hoping that people are going to go out and see it or rent it. It actually, Vinegar Syndrome just announced yesterday that they're putting out a Blu-ray release. on the 1st of October. And one of the special features is they're going to be featuring the film that they showed on the screen in the movie. Oh, that's cool. So I thought it was really cool.

I already own this on a digital copy, but I'm probably going to double dip just so I can get my hands on a copy of that movie. It's actually a really trashy movie. It's like a Frankenstein knockoff.

But it's so entertaining when you're watching all the kills and everything on the screen. It's entertaining to see what they're watching because the killer, he actually times most of his kills to what's happening on the screen. So that's why it takes so long for anybody in the theater to even figure out.

you know, that something is going on. This sounds like a lot of fun. It really does. And then where did you say this is, this is from, this is a, she was an Argentinian movie. It's from Argentina. Very cool. And right now it's only on VOD. I did buy the digital copy sight unseen. I just heard so many good things about it. So I just took a chance and bought it and I absolutely love it. And you can't recommend this enough.

Yeah, and you can't second-guess Argentina here, but they've been putting up... Dave Becker will back me on this as well. They've been putting out a lot of great horror movies. In fact, some of his favorites in the past few years have come from there. I believe that the... Terrified. Yeah, Terrified is an Argentinian movie, and it's exactly what you said. You don't even, you know, yes, you have to read a little bit.

But the intensity of the movie builds in such a way that if you're someone who, for whatever reason, is a little adverse to the subtitles, you don't really notice it because the movie grabs you in such a way. And it's not... excessively dialogue heavy, you get into it. These are visceral movies and you're able to get in them viscerally and you kind of stop paying attention to the subtitles after a while. I mean, you don't stop reading them. You just...

I find with the subtitles, it just becomes part of the movie watching experience. Your eyes automatically go down to the bottom to the... uh dialogue but at the same time you're paying attention to what's going on so i personally don't find that a lot of people do and they will base you know what they're going to watch and whether or not they're subtitles. And I used to be like that. And then I saw Train to Busan and I never looked back. I will say there, I won't watch one of those if...

It's late at night and I'm tired. Yes. Because that's double the effort. But as long as you're, you know, it's not 1130 at night and you've worked for 10 hours that day. Well, it's different when you do have a very dialogue-heavy film. There certainly are movies. And early on, I mean, if you remember... Theaters wouldn't even release movies with subtitles in them. They were always dubbed up until...

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and then I believe the year after Brotherhood of the Wolf helped prove the fact that you could release a movie with subtitles into the theater here in the States and it would still do well. Those movies obviously had enough stuff going on beyond the subtitles that they drew the audience in. I'm just curious if you or Amanda would know, did they release the host in American theaters?

With subtitles or was it dubbed? With subtitles. You're talking about the host from 2006? Yes, subtitles. The Korean host? Yes, 2006, yeah. We were pretty much, we were far along at that point because the same time the host was in theaters. Clint Eastwood had released a letter from Iwo Jima that was entirely in Japanese with subtitles. You know, there's an American filmmaker doing it into theater. So by 2006, we were kind of, we were there in terms of the audience.

being able to accept, hey, here's a movie with subtitles, you can take it or you can leave it. Didn't stop them from making remakes of everything, like The Departed from an Asian film, but you know. Exactly. So Amanda, what would you give this for a rating? I would give it a solid nine. I really enjoyed this. And I have a feeling it's going to hold up on multiple views that I'm just going to keep coming back to it. So without any real spoilers, as...

As a monster, as a heavy, as a slasher, how does the eyeball eater stack up? Pretty iconic or iconic enough? Well, the thing is, there's really not much to him. They don't really go into his background. He's just a standard crazy guy that just wandered in off the streets. The way he kills people and the fact that he uses an ice cream scoop. He keeps that with him in his little duffel bag to remove the eyeballs. And he also, this is not really a spoiler because you see it in the beginning.

Beginning of the movie, he's sitting in a car outside of the theater, and he was eating what I thought were pickled eggs from a jar. They're not pickled eggs. All right. Yeah, I'm totally sold on this. And I suspect a lot of the...

of our audience, particularly the horror contingent of our audience, probably are sold on it as well. But, you know, I'm just as sold on it by your description of the little boy dropping the gumballs and the shots of the kind of big Art Deco theater that I'm sold on that as I am all the... the eyeball scooping and eating. Well, I mean, is that an ode to the battleship Potemkin? It might be Bill. I'm sure. I'm sure it is. And by the way,

By the way, that movie with Robert Englund, I couldn't remember. It was The Last Showing. Oh, okay. That was the film, The Last Showing. It actually isn't bad, but I'm sure The Last Matinee is much better. Very cool. Well, that was definitely going on the list. And it's available right now on, is it like a VOD where you can rent it or buy it for? It's a rental. You can rent it for about $6. You can buy it for $9.99.

which is what I did. And it'll hold me over until the Blu-ray comes out on the 1st of October. It's going to be loaded with extras. It's actually going to have everything that this director's ever done as far as short films and the film within a film.

This one. So I'm really looking forward to that. That is cool. I'm definitely going to have to check that out and see it soon. And I'm glad to hear that it's good because we really don't... I enjoy slashers, but I... tend to be disappointed a lot of times when we have the modern takes on them particularly when they try to be retro sometimes they're not as effective as that so i'm happy to hear that this one is good

Yeah, I was going to ask, I think in the last 10 years, the most iconic serial killer slash slasher that's come to the screen is Art the Clown. So how would the matinee ice cream scoop... match up against Art? Well, that's hard. I think Art the Clown has a little bit more personality. Ice cream scoop guy just runs around in a raincoat.

With the scooper chasing you, so... But tell me the movie's better. See, I'm not an Art the Clown fan. I'm not a Terrifier fan, actually. I didn't think very much of the movie. This movie is much better than Terrifier. Great, great. Okay. Good. So... All right. So, Nathan, what are you bringing to us today? I think what I will do is start with a movie that is brand new, brand new. I just saw it this afternoon, and it is a movie called Superhost. It's a 2021 movie, and...

And it's very interesting. It's directed by Brandon Christensen. Brandon Christensen has done two other movies. One was Still Born, Still slash Born. And then he also did one called Z, which I believe also... debuted on Shudder. And it might be a movie that fans of the genre of horror have seen. If you need kind of a refresher, Z involved a little boy who sort of had an imaginary friend.

that he kind of keeps referring to. And his mother also had some experiences from her youth with this same imaginary friend. And it was kind of a... creepy boogeyman sort of story i didn't think it was entirely successful but i did enjoy it uh i don't think i saw stillborn so i can't come in on this one this is his third feature and It's got three actors that, interestingly enough, at some point in time, all appeared...

on Supernatural, the TV show. So, in fact, the three leads, the only other actor in the film beyond the three leads is Barbara Crampton, and we all know where Barbara Crampton's from, from Re-Animator, and she's recently in a really fun horror movie that's also on Shudder called... Jacob's wife. Now, please tell me she's in an S&M gear league. No, no, Bill. She's not in this one. I'm sorry. It's a reasonable expectation, truthfully, but...

Not in this one. The setup of this is kind of basic. You have two travel vloggers check into a vacation rental with a host that will do anything for a good review. That sort of covers it, but the style in which the movie is done. So you have Sarah Canning, who plays Claire. And Sarah Canning was in Supernatural. She was also in the Vampire Diaries. Osric Cho had a reoccurring role in Supernatural. He plays Teddy.

And then together, they go around and they have this show called Superhost. And what they do is very basic. They have a YouTube channel. with a ton of subscribers and they're constantly putting out content that involves them going to bed and breakfast and

reviewing the bed and breakfast in a very kind of, you know, your typical colorful YouTube way. I think a lot of this would be lost on me if it was not for the fact that my children recently become sort of like YouTube addicts that were trying to sort of wean off of it. So I see sort of all the... inane ways people.

fall into this trap of how do I get more subscribers? So, hey, smash the like button and do this and buy our merch. And, you know, suddenly you recognize all this jargon that you kind of wish you didn't know at all, you know? So them throwing a little clip art of like. explosions and cats flying at the screen and they do all of that in this movie to show these two vloggers and the way they just turn their personality on to this very sort of you know it's a very specific very poised

personality that doesn't look anything like real life. In fact, if you acted like this in real life, you would have no friends because you would be totally obnoxious. The movie starts in a found footage sort of bent. It looks like found footage, but very quickly we see that the world and the way the film shows us the world exists beyond.

the cameras and the characters looking into the cameras, which is a good thing because usually when they're on the camera, initially they're in that I'm a vlogger mode. So you see very quickly both Teddy and Claire, uh, and how they really interact in real life and they go to this they're heading up to this house uh it's a big

Airbnb rental place. In fact, it looks creepily like one that we actually stayed in back in the spring. And I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this. Another thing, having recently stayed in one of these places.

you know, they can be kind of odd. Anytime you're renting from somebody and you don't really know them, it's always interesting to see what people choose to have in the house when you get there. I always like looking at the video collections because it always seems like they always have the same 10 movies and you finally realize...

who owns copies of The Negotiator with Sam Jackson. It's because they must be bought just to populate the shelves of these Airbnbs. And when they get into this Airbnb... There are video cameras everywhere, like in every perceivable place that a video camera can be. There's one there. And they run into... the host of this B&B pretty quickly. She's played by Gracie Gilliam, and her name is Rebecca.

Immediately the moment you see her, even the way she's introduced into the film, it's clear that she is a little off the chain. And... Nutty, but potentially in a harmless way. It's hard to know. First, she has a lot of exuberance. She has unmistakable crazy eyes, and she's just all over everything the minute she walks in. And almost every sentence she says is... Finished with, I hope this doesn't mean you're leaving a bad review.

And of course, you know, she seems like trouble right from the get-go. There are ominous tones. The movie keeps building these ominous tones. And we realize that there's also something going on with a previous host that...

they had a bad experience with, they left bad reviews, and this host seems to potentially be stalking them. When she eventually shows up, she is played by Barbara Crampton. And so then you have that entire cast. You have the two vloggers. There's also a sort of subplot where Teddy... Teddy and Claire are together. At least that's what Teddy seems to think. Claire, you know, it's not so clear. Is there a real relationship going on here or is there not?

Right from the beginning, we understand that he is planning something kind of behind the scenes for her. She's uncertain about it. The way that interaction plays out is interesting because it keeps underscoring the basic... theme, at least to this point.

Which is how people behave when they think they're in front of a camera. People behave when they think their main goal is to have an audience watching them. Not so much about the fame or about anything else, but the way people behave when they believe that someone else is... And that theme runs through the film and it allows the movie, I think, to make some interesting notes about...

about the entire YouTube and social media culture and the culture that we existed, you know, where we're reviewing things constantly. We're making commentary on things. We're looking for other opinions on things and what kind of world that sort of creates without.

it seeming preachy or heavy-handed because the whole time, and it's a very short run in time, we're talking about an hour and 20 minutes, the whole time it's barreling down this path with a Gillum character where she's getting more and more unsettling.

This isn't a question of, do you think she's okay? No, she's not okay. And it's pretty clear. There's tones of the movie creepier, but I think this is not... pitched at that same level there's less subtlety in this movie which i don't think is a bad thing this movie almost plays like a comedy but not because it's potentially comedic it's a horror film But the main character here is so twisted and so twisted in the way she behaves towards these characters. And in the last half of the movie...

that you're laughing at it in a sort of cringy, like, oh my gosh, here we go sort of way. And the movie does escalate. The movie, for anyone who's wondering, we do eventually get some gore. We do eventually get some intensity. And again, I think a large...

Part of why this movie is successful is down to Gillum because she totally freaked me out. You know, as good as everyone else is, as good as the overall movie is in establishing the tone and the mood and sort of ribbing that social media culture.

It's her show, and she takes it and kind of runs with it. There's not a lot to the movie beyond that. It kind of goes where you think it'll go. But even when you think it's going there, it does so with an intensity that I really enjoyed, and it does so with a kind of streamlined efficiency. Sounds like the kind of film that even though you kind of know the end result, it's an enjoyable ride. So you just kind of want to see how it plays out.

Yeah, this is all down. This is one of those. It's about how it's done. And it's all about that character. This is a character who her crazy eyes are going to stick in your mind. What I like about it also is it's an 82-minute film. So many horror movies these days are like two hours plus. This is a tight, efficient kind of film. I haven't seen it, but the way you describe it makes me want to see it.

which makes me happy that I can get in a 2021 film and not really have to invest the whole afternoon. And if it's good during the 82 minutes, I'm on board. You sold me. i'm on board as well um this one i was a little bit confused when i saw it reviewed a couple of times today And one review said it was a comedy and another one said it was a psychological horror. So I'm glad to hear your review. So you kind of cleared that up for me. So I know that it's kind of a little bit of both. Yeah.

Definitely going to be watching that one this weekend. Yeah, she's really, they're all good in it. She's really good in it, and you'll see that as you go along. And the thing about this, and this is something that was true of the movie Creep, too, with Mark Dupless. Dupless plays this character, and you spend... a lot of the movie wondering where exactly things are going, but...

They capture mannerisms. Maybe I just hang around crazy people. I don't know what it is. But I think the reality is – yeah, present company excluded, I think. But, you know, the – I think what it is, is these actors actually manage to capture certain idiosyncrasies that exist in lots of different kinds of people, but they've paid attention and they exaggerate them slightly. And what works about that...

is it's creepy because as you're watching the movie, you think, I kind of know that person. You know, I know not, not maybe when we're in the full height of when things go wrong, but there's enough initially that it just sets you at unease. And I'm watching this character. I'm thinking. man, I know people, this is a type, and I know this type, and I know this type that maybe I need to change the locks on the house. Did we give this person a key? I don't remember.

I think that's what works about some of these performances. Some of these characters, they don't just go for the straight, crazy eyeball eater or whatever. And she's got to make this person imposing, right? Why do we look at the Kane Hodders and these bulky slashers? They're imposing. We realize they could break you in half.

Here's somebody that doesn't look imposing on the outside. So you've got to do everything you can to flip the tables. And that's what's really effective here. So I give this one 7.5. Nice. Is this also a subtle shot? I always ask it when they have these kind of films. Is it a subtle shot at our modern society and our take on the social media?

I don't think it's subtle. I mean, I think it's built in there. It's not over the top. It's not heavy handed. But what it does is it effectively what I think it does is it presents it as is. And that's what's interesting is the way that. these characters are presented and there's some interesting scenes where they think they're on camera when they're not and you see how their body language and their behavior and even what they tell

the other person about themselves changes based on that. And that's... what's really effective about it. I think there's a lot of nuance to that. It's not lampooning anyone. It's not shooting fish in a barrel. It's sort of just trying to present and say, this is the way things are. Gotcha. So you would advise people go out and check it out? I would say check it out. It's on Shutter right now. For me, I personally enjoyed it more than host the, you know, which was the kind of quarantine.

you know, zoom horror movie, you know, it's not, again, this isn't a full blown found footage. And I like the fact that they kind of, they allow those sequences to exist, to make a point. but they don't feel enslaved to it because I think there's been a lot of good movies. There's plenty of found footage movies I like. There's also been plenty that I think have died at the hands of...

Let's be slavish to this film footage concept when it didn't necessarily fit. So I'm glad that they use it sparingly here in a way that makes sense. Cool. I look forward to seeing it. So Bill, how about you? What do you have up on the roster for us?

Well, next on my roster list, the other night I had finished some work getting ready for the next school year and I was laying on the couch. It was about, I don't know, 1030. I didn't want to have to think too hard. So I went into YouTube and put it on the smart screen. And I just said cult films. And I didn't mean cult as in devil worshippers. I just meant films that had a funky following. Because that can be just about anything.

And YouTube had a collection of films that were under cult. And I saw one, honestly, that it looked like the film quality was half decent. And so I went with it, basically blind, just to watch it while I'm laying on the couch. As it turns out, it's by a director that we all know and love, but it was an early film. This is the 1976 film and true to PG style, it doesn't have to fit into any one category. This is a comedy slash drama.

that has a good sense of humor to it as well, called Kenny and Company. And I had never heard of it. Obviously, a lot of people of a certain age, if you're around in 76, especially if you were a kid in 76, You probably really enjoyed this. It was directed by one and only Don Coscarelli. And if the name Don Coscarelli comes to mind, it is the person who directed the Phantasm series, among other films.

Husker Lee went on to do a whole bunch of other notable films. But I think Phantasm is probably the one that people know the best. Now this film stars a bunch of actors that... really don't have a lot of other film credits other than Phantasm films. Dan McCann plays Kenny, and it was his only acting credit. A. Michael Baldwin was in all five Phantasm films as a character called Mike. Reggie Bannister was in all five Phantasm films. As a character named Reggie. Reggie.

Yeah, so obviously he pulls a Brian De Palma or a Rob Zombie where they get people that they like and they trust and they put them in. Now, this is... I hate using this term, coming-of-age buddy film, but it's about kids that are 12 growing up in the suburbs in Middletown, USA. And what life is like. And their comings and goings of being 12. There isn't a huge long story arc to this. There isn't like any big penultimate.

ending to the film or some evil character that they're trying to come back on. No, it's how did I write this down? It's about Kenny and his two friends, Doug and Sherman. a few days before Halloween, and their life growing up in the suburbs in the 70s, and they're in the seventh grade.

So what happens when you're in the seventh grade? You like to skateboard. You like to ride your bike. You like looking at girls. You got your hormones and your bodies changing. You play baseball. You get ready for Halloween. You mess around in the garage. You do like your own scientific experiments. That's what these kids do for essentially 90 minutes. Kenny narrates the film as it goes on. So it kind of has a little bit of first-person perspective.

I like the fact that sometimes there's a tendency in films towards the 80s and then the 70s to kind of over-sexualize kids at that age. This one doesn't do that. This is more in... Oh, what's the one where there's the neighbor, Mr. Wilson? What's that film? Yeah, it's Dennis the Menace. Dennis the Menace. The Bad News Bears. The Bad News Bears, yeah. Exactly. Like, they're innocent kids.

They're just doing their thing, you know? I wrote it down as I called it an earlier, younger version of Dazed and Confused. This is Dazed and Confused for 12-year-olds. Without the drugs. Without the drugs. That's why I said it earlier and younger. There's no paddy wax. There's no driving around trying to pick up girls in pickup trucks. This is them trying to... Hold hands with a girl who he's never had the guts to talk to. That's what this film is about. Getting ready for Halloween.

Everybody's heard about the prank about stepping on dog crap and you light it on fire. This is the kind of stuff they do. Putting a dummy in the road to see who runs over it. Yeah, there's elements of horror to this. This isn't... Like, you know, my horror roots didn't get into this. It's around Halloween time. One of the pranks they pull is they put a stuffed dummy in the middle of the road at night. And this is 1976. This amused them. And seeing as cars drove over them, like...

holy crap, did we just run over somebody? Yeah, there's an interesting bit where you see the different reactions and you hear one lady say, drive slowly, you're going to run over their head, you know, as they try to go around the body. But at the same time, you know that this is a 70s film. You know, obviously greeny and the makeup and the fashion and such. But I did notice there's a liberal use of kids being around guns.

from one particular father. That wouldn't cut it, I think, in 2021. But you also deal with themes such as bullying. and how kids at that age deal with it, at least as portrayed in the 70s, which honestly isn't that far off than the way they do in 2021. You also had me being a teacher. You know, you had the cool teacher, Roger Bannister.

He was the cool teacher that wanted to get involved with the kids. And, you know, he was sliding around on his office chair. That scene where he's like, he wants them to take the new exchange student around. And he literally starts from his desk and he swivels his wife.

all the way back and they have to keep following him because he just keeps sliding. I can imagine my principal slapping my hand for just winging around on my sliding chair. It seems unconventional even for the 70s as a teacher. Even for the 70s. Reggie does. He's cooler than... Donald Sutherland or any other of these teachers. He's right on there. So there is a particular scene involving a Spanish exchange student if you want to watch the film.

It cracks me up. It was a funny, funny scene. You know, there's a lot going on, but there's no true plot to the film, other than being 12 in 1976 in middle America. It's kind of like... A stand-by-me feel without the heavy dramatics and the morality play.

It's a slice of life movie, and it's kind of, it was one of his very early films. It wasn't quite a student film, but it wasn't far off from that, and so it does have a very relaxed narrative feel to it, but I don't think that necessarily hinders it. No, it kind of reminds me of like, if you look at like, I keep bringing them up, Brian De Palma, if you look like his movie Sisters.

You know, it's the second or third film. It's pretty good, but you can tell there's quite a bit of refining needed. But you can tell the kernel of something is there. And that's kind of what this film does. It kind of lays him. And it also shows that he doesn't have to do horror. He doesn't have to do sci-fi or fantasy. This is strictly a comedy drama.

feel good family. As I said, boy, buddy film as 12 years old. A PG film. I watched it with my kids and they quite enjoyed it. They liked it quite a bit.

At first, they were like, what is this about? And they realized it's about kids out there. They... behave differently than the kids that they're used to now but I think they were concerned why these kids were so mean to even their perceived friends you know there's a point and I was like yeah it's kind of a thing that happens particularly with young boys when they decide to put like a

mousetrap in a bag and offer it to one of their buddies and the other thing it does is and uh nathan i'm curious your kids reaction to this was how much fun they all seem to be having without any technology It shows that... I mean, I'm not going to be Grandpa Get Off My Lawn. I embrace technology as much as anybody because it allows us to do a lot of things. But it does show that with a bit of creativity, you can't do some things in life without having to be plugged into...

you know, what's going on in Fortnite. Yes. And a couple of those things look life threatening though. I will throw that out there. There's the one thing that my kids were like, that looks fun to try was where they did the tandem skateboards and they just like formed, they held each other's arms and legs and just.

rode it like one the two skateboards together like it was one vehicle down the center of the highway i was like yeah maybe not no yeah and there was at one point where they were working on like soapbox derbies and they crash it and like you know There's certain stuff that we did as kids, and there's certain things I'll make sure my daughter doesn't do.

It's a fun movie for this time frame because it does have a nice sense of the fall about it. It's probably almost the centerpiece of the movie is Halloween. They keep talking about it. They build up to Halloween and they have the night of trick-or-treating. It's probably the best scene in the movie.

movie. It really is. It's the centerpiece of the movie. That's the thing. It's kids going trick-or-treating. There are no monsters in this movie. There is a weird sort of early fascination with death where they want to know...

well, what is death exactly? And there are moments where they encounter death in these small ways that, and some larger ones, that aren't, they don't capsize the movie, but they're there, and they, again... partially because A. Michael Baldwin does play one of the kids here, and Reggie is the teacher, you get these pieces, you can see how phantasm, even though it's about a completely different set of things, and it becomes almost this Wizard of Oz.

horror version dealing with death and and mortality how it springs out of a movie like kenny and me and uh there was an episode of a fandom galaxy that we're still kind of working on with um with our buddy brian carlson that's based uh Coscarelli wrote a book, and it...

details his memoirs uh with working in the film industry and he talks a lot actually there's a lot in there about this movie because it was one of the very early movies and you know it wasn't they tried to they put it out over here and it

just didn't really connect. What Coscarelli learned is that it was big in Japan. In Japan, it was a bonafide hit. When they went to Japan, the cast and everybody was met with... throngs of japanese fans the teenagers who loved it because it was exactly what you said the slice of life that they'd never seen of american culture

And for the horror fan out there that's going, why am I listening to this? There is a really good scene of how to set up your garage on Halloween night. Yeah, it's a fun movie. super cool and i mean 35 40 45 years later i would still love my garage to look that way so there is something in there between dummies on the road poop on the front and a garage

There's something for everybody. I gave this a 7 out of 10. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, I'm right there with you, Bill. I agree. Amanda, have you seen this film? No, I haven't, but it sounds like it's a lot of fun. You had me at Don Coscarelli, so I'm in. Yeah, it's on YouTube. That's where I saw it anyway, and it's a decent copy.

Yeah, I was going to say, this could be one where one of the companies could clean it up, and I'd love to get some back-behind-the-scenes kind of information on it. Yeah, and like I said, when we get around to doing the longer... the show that deals with the book, we'll get into more about that movie specifically. But it is, it's a fun one. It is one that you can watch with your kids for the most part. And yeah, and it is a precursor to Sense of Phantasm. And I agree.

It'd be great to get it on a disc somewhere. I don't know if it exists right now on a disc separate from anything else. All righty. So, Amanda, what are you bringing next? Okay, my next movie. It's one that I found on Amazon Prime. It's from 2021 and it's called Doors. This is a very interesting movie. It's made up of three short stories that tell the story of what happens when one day millions of mysterious alien doors begin to appear in random places all over the world.

The first story takes place during the first day the doors show up, and it's about a group of students who get stuck at school during a lockdown. And while they're trying to flee the school, they end up encountering one of the doors. in the hallway and have to figure out a way to get around it. The second story takes place a few weeks later and it's about a group of regular people called knockers and they help scientists collect data.

by volunteering to go into the doors. This is when you actually get to see what's on the other side of one of the doors, and it's really cool. This particular door is located inside of a house. And once the group passes through the door, they find themselves inside of a bizarre alternate version of the house. And this was actually my favorite segment.

of the movie and it reminded me a lot of um i don't know if you're familiar with the show channel zero yes they did a season called no end house yes that's exactly the minute you said that i thought of no end house Yep, this reminded me so much of it because it had a lot of just bizarre, creepy imagery. The third story takes place several months later.

And it's about a disgraced scientist living in the woods that discovers a door of his own. And he begins studying it by himself. You're supposed to alert the government as soon as you see one of these doors. But he decides, because he wants to make a name for himself again within the scientific community, that he's going to experiment and just try to learn whatever he can about this door on his own.

He learns how to communicate with it through sound and actually becomes friends with it. That's when we find out that all the doors are not the same and each one has a particular purpose.

at one point one of the characters talks about that some of these doors all they do is just murder people other doors they take you to your fantasies which you've always wanted to see And this particular door, what it's supposed to do is just communicate with us and try to get as much information about us, the human race, as it possibly can.

So everything goes well with the scientist and the door until he makes the mistake of telling somebody about it. And you can pretty much guess what happens from there. Everything goes to hell. I really enjoyed this movie. I think that it was an interesting idea and a different, you know, to make it three different stories. I thought that was kind of interesting idea.

I would have preferred if they just took the second story and just went with that and just made the whole movie about that group of just normal, regular, everyday people going through the door and their experiences. But, you know, I was surprised that this one had a lot of negative reviews. I think it has like a 2 on IMBD. Yeah, like a 3.3. But everything you're saying about this sounds all... This is a Phantom Galaxy movie right here.

Yeah, it sounds like it. I was going to say... It's very beautiful. Sorry, I was just going to say, why do you think people rated it so low? Well, I think the reason why is it's beautifully shot. It's just because the ending... We get a brief like outro where they try to explain the reason for the doors.

And the explanation is not really clear. It's very vague. And they leave it up to your own interpretation. And I think a lot of people, especially nowadays, they don't like that. They want you to just spell it out for them. tie it up neat with a bow and you know the end that kind of thing but I appreciated the ending I like the fact that you know it's kind of up to me to decide why they're there and why they're doing what they're doing

And you know what's funny is this movie, if it sounds familiar, there was actually a movie that came out in 2018 called Portals. I was about to ask you. I was like, this sounds like Portals. Yes, it's the exact same writer. I don't think it's the same director, but it's almost the same premise. I haven't seen it, but I heard that it's a bunch of different stories. But that had different directors for every episode, I believe. Yeah, but this one is worth seeing.

Just for that second segment. Because it's just so cool. The imagery and just, you know, the atmosphere. So, yeah. So, Amazon Prime. I mean, if you have Prime, it's free. Sweet. Just go and check it out. And what do you rate this one, Amanda? I would rate this one probably like a seven and a half. I would have gone a little bit higher if, you know...

if they had given me more of the second story, which is what I really wanted to see. Yeah, yeah, and I hear you. And that tends to be the problem with anthologies, particularly if they have, if there aren't that many stories, you know, sometimes you'll have a really strong...

segment, and then you sort of wonder, hey, why couldn't that have been the whole movie? I probably need to go back and rewatch Portals. I remember Portals being another deal where I think there was one story I liked more than the others. There was a bit of a... uncertainty about what was going on to the overall story. But that one did have a segment directed by Eduardo Sanchez, the director of The Blair Witch Project.

And whose interview you can catch over at right now at the Real Talk podcast. It's a friend of Phantom Galaxies. And they have a great interview with Eduardo Sanchez right now. I don't know if he mentions that movie or not. Doors is now, I literally am adding it to my Amazon watch list right now as we speak. Great. You'll have to let me know what you think about it. I'm curious. Yeah, I'll have to get to it because...

I'm always looking for a decent sci-fi to watch, and that looks like it's very intriguing. Watch this before the next Asylum 2B movie, Bill, I'm just saying. Depending upon Swim's... there might not be a next one. That's very true. Okay, so I guess it's back in my court, and I want to talk about a movie that's been out for... Several weeks now, theatrically, it's also just come to VOD, lots of different places, Vudu, Prime, different places where you can rent it. And this is...

David Lowery's The Green Knight, the 2021 movie that was supposed to come out. Last year, last summer, actually, in 2020, of course, because of the pandemic, there are a lot of films that got pushed back. The Green Knight got pushed back a whole year. I think in getting pushed back... Perhaps this was different for some movies where they basically just got shelved and...

We're finished but waiting around to be released. The Green Knight went through a bit of a retooling process from what I understand. And so Lowry got a chance to kind of work with it. And I think the movie that is released this summer was in some ways significantly different. from the movie he had at the start of, say...

the beginning of last summer. And so this is a fantasy retelling of the medieval story, really the epic poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is part of the Camelot legends. And for anyone who ever, you know, probably took... Any sort of medieval literature course has probably come across at least a mention of The Green Knight. It is a medieval sort of romantic poem. I remember reading the poem. It follows a...

A structure that begins on Christmas. So in a sense, The Green Knight as a film also follows that. And is so, I guess, a Christmas movie, depending on how you look at it. But it begins on... Christmas, in fact, with a game where we are in Camelot, we are in the court of King Arthur, and we are following, Dev Patel plays Gawain, who is... Arthur's nephew. And Alicia Vikander is Essel, who is his... She's his girl, but she... This isn't...

Their relationship is sort of low-key because she is part of the peasant class and he is not. Joel Edgerton is in the movie as well. He shows up later on. It's a very interesting cast. Chowdhury plays Patel Dev Patel's mother and Gawain's mother in, at least the way it's presented here in the film, is Morgana Le Fay. So if anyone remembers movies like Excalibur and some of the cinematic tellings of Arthur, here she is Arthur's sister.

And also a force of magic that sort of exists on the sidelines. We don't really have a Merlin. We see a wizard who may or may not be Merlin show up in the court in this film. But all of those characters are on the side. And this is really... focused on Patel as he's kind of making his way through the court, through this city on Christmas Day, and you get a really down in the dirt, down in the grime, kind of lived-in feel.

to this medieval world, you know, the same way, although in a more satirical sense, you had that in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you get just about the same kind of grimy feel here initially, but the movie's beautifully shot. And the minute that it begins, every... that Lowry puts into the film is...

built to create this sensibility that you're in another time, you're another era, that this is a fantasy world, but it's also a picture of what it might have been like to live in medieval times. You can just about smell the... smell the characters, and you...

are not spared really any kind of sensibility of what it would be like to live there. But at the same time, as in the epic poem, there's a sense of chivalry that the characters all believe they possess. Lowry kind of juxtaposes that because we see... the lived-in-ness of this world. We see the reality of it. We see the danger of it. And it starts right there in that court because on Christmas Eve...

who comes in seemingly summoned by otherworldly forces, but the Green Knight. And the Green Knight in the original legend is a supernatural character, but his armor is green. He has a sort of...

woodland feel to him. It's even sort of suggested in the original poem. But in this film, they kind of go more towards the Celtic image of the green man. You know, this is a knight that's made up almost of the tree roots, of the earth, of the... soil he seems to have sprung right from nature itself and he is carrying an axe and he rides right into the court and the challenge he makes is that

Is there any knight brave enough? He throws the challenge out. Arthur himself was saying, is there any man brave enough who will come forward and strike him? But any blow that's delivered to him, he will deliver. The same blow in kind back. And so Arthur even reminds Gawain, who ultimately offers himself up to try, says, just remember, this is a game. Beware, it's a game. And Gawain picks up the axe and the knight doesn't do anything to defend himself. And of course...

Seems to be the thinking is, well, if I strike him in such a way that he can't strike me back, then the game is over. And so he swings and beheads the knight. The knight picks his head up, puts it back on, and lets him know that he has one year from the day.

to come to a place called the Green Chapel, where he can find the knight, and the knight will deliver that blow back to him. And that's essentially the setup, both of the poem and of the film. At this point, you're set off on an epic journey. It is... The expanse of the story is vast. It really does become a... fantasy film, but it's not the kind of fantasy film that if you're thinking Lord of the Rings, even if you're thinking Borman's Excalibur, it's not that kind of movie. The tone...

And the nature of the characters and the pacing of the film are not like that. It is epic in scope, but it is also very... personal in nature it's very sort of contained in each of its segments much of the way that the the poetry was going goes through each of these segments and he is having a different part of himself tested each time he basically even mentions in the beginning he doesn't know if he's up to this task if he has the ability to be a knight if he can embrace this role if he can

follow the Chevrolet code. And the time this poem was written, Chevrolet code was an actual thing that people were expected to live by. It's not like that anymore. So Lowry changes some of... the emphasis of things. So if you're looking for something exactly like the poem, it's not, but it's a trippy...

and rich and engrossing movie in its own right, and the characters he meets, each segment has a different feel to it. So when he sets off into the forest in the very beginning, he encounters... magical foxes he encounters brigands on the road yeah it one really creepy moment that probably comes closest to being like the horror film that this movie was marketed as you know 824 sort of gave it a very sinister sort of spin in the in the initial market

marketing there's a scene where he comes to a cottage that may be sort of haunted by a specter that's trapped there and there are at one point there's a crazy mushroom trip and there are giants and Eventually, before he arrives at the Green Chapel, he comes to a...

manor house where this is where Joel Edgerton and Vikander shows up in the story as a different character at this point, as the lord and lady of the house. And what occurs there... mirrors what happens in the poem but again in a very different way we see uh again we see gawain's morality

tested and tried. And that's about all I really want to say. The movie is impressive beginning to end. The knight himself, who's played by Ralph Ennison, is also visually impressive. There's really nothing about this film I find that isn't impressive in some... It is a very...

methodical film. It's going to take its time. It's lyrical. I know that sounds kind of like a pretentious thing to say, but it really does, down to the sound design, which has a very ambient feel, but then there are also a lot of medieval tunes. in sort of songs and lyrics that give you a feel of being in a very specific place at a very specific time, and yet there's a dreamlike sensibility to it.

And I felt like I was watching. It's been a long time since I sat in a movie and thought, hey, this is I feel like I'm watching a true masterpiece, a movie that really is sort of something special. And I felt transported the entire time from the beginning of the film. very last scene of the film, which I thought was spot on perfect. It ended exactly where it needed to in exactly the right way. And there's nothing about this movie. I just...

didn't love. Is it challenging in some ways? I do think it is. I think that it's not going to be for everyone. It's not up front. It's not a film. for kids or probably your typical fantasy enthusiast. But I loved everything about it. I think it's a great film. So is this more of an adult-themed fantasy movie? Yes, yes. Okay. And how was Sean Harris? I noticed he's in it. He's King Arthur, if you believe it. Is he pulling off?

Yeah, well, you know, that's one of the things about this film. We look at Patel, who's amazing. I really should have emphasized that. Patel and Vikander are great. Everybody in the cast is great. That Sean Harris' Arthur is a perfect example of what this movie does. It demythologizes these characters, but it keeps them in the context of the mythology. It's not trying to show King Arthur, you know, we had years of those movies that tried to...

take the legend part away. It's not that. It tries to make the legend feel real and lived in. And so to cast someone like Sean Harris, who's that creepy guy in the movie Possum, right? He's the creepy villain in Mission Impossible. Here's a King Arthur that you should have 100% experienced.

explicitly trusted yet you can see the frailness of arthur underneath of him and i love that about it this is not a sean connery arthur you know uh or any of the other arthur's we've had over the years this is very different and he's he's a side character for sure yeah Having recently rewatched Possum, I wondered, you know, this is a very different kind of role. And Amanda, you saw this. What were your thoughts? I did. I saw it.

I agree with just about everything you said. I think visually it's stunning. And like you had mentioned to me earlier, it is an experience. When you go into this, you just you feel totally immersed. in this world that you're seeing on screen. And I am kind of upset at what they did with the marketing because they really mis-marketed this movie. And a lot of people went in expecting either a straight up horror movie.

or an action blockbuster and it's neither of those things it's just an epic story that you just go in you enjoy and you know just enjoy the ride And I don't know what else more to say about it. I know that I mentioned to a friend of mine that I saw it and he said, you know, I saw it too. And I'm...

really thought it was going to be a horror movie. I guess I should have paid more attention in 10th grade English class. You know, the thing with that kind of film I find is that if you're not into, you know, quote unquote fantasy films, you might get turned off. You know, you don't want to watch it. Or if you think of a night film as one that involves Richard Gere. I hope no one thinks that. That's like the worst one. Yeah. Well, we mentioned Sean Connery, who did play, right? He played...

King Arthur in that movie, right? First Night, the movie you're talking about. But there was a movie in the 80s called The Sword of the Valiant. I don't know if either one of you remembers it. Sean Connery played the Green Knight in that movie.

Oh, wow. No. Complete with... I mean, he was basically almost naked wearing little leaves and whatnot and he rides in. Oh, geez. And he gets his head cut off and picks it back up. But I haven't seen that movie in years. I think Miles O'Keefe was in it too. It's not a... It's not a classic, but I feel like I'd like to revisit it, particularly after watching this one, which is miles away, very different.

from that this is definitely this definitely an art film i think up front it's you know it's a fantasy film it's also an art film but you're there will be things i think that image wise You'll think of things like Guillermo del Toro. You'll think of things like images will remind you of things like Terry Gilliam. But you'll also think of Ingmar Bergman and, you know, Louis Maul and some of these other directors who had a very different approach that would.

And even like a Terrence Malick, there's images in this film. That it's a fantasy movie that's sort of unlike things that you've probably seen before. And a good gauge is if you look at some of David Lowery's movies, this is more a ghost story than it is Peach Dragon. Although I love both movies. As we were saying before, it suffered from being mismarketed. Because a lot of people, they just thought it was a horror movie and that's not what they got.

And like I was mentioning to you earlier, this movie hasn't even been released in the UK yet. Which is where you think it would probably, you know, potentially it would... you know, benefit or maybe play the best. And, you know, the other flip side is I agree, Amanda, and yet I feel like particularly in previous years, you know, a decade or at least two decades ago, this movie would have been hard to find at all.

You know, this would have been a thing that Miramax or somebody would have bought and then kind of buried and dropped onto video somewhere. So it's, it is, you know, I think of that Snow White film with Sigourney Weaver, where she played the evil queen that was marketed also. I think it even. tagged a tale of terror onto the end of that movie. And, you know, it was just kind of dropped on DVD or VHS. And I think that's what similarly would have happened to a film like this, you know.

maybe a decade and a half ago, but now, thankfully, we're a place where someone like A24 will put it out. I think a good companion piece to this might be... Gretel and Hansel. I'd say those two movies, they do share some DNA. And so, Nathan, what would you give this for a rating? Oh, it's a 10 for me.

And you know I don't give those out very often. It sounded like I'm going to have to watch this for our year-end other category. Oh, yeah. Once enough people have seen this, we're going to have to talk about this one again. Yeah. I gotcha. Well, it sounds like... Sorry, where did you say it was streaming, Nathan? So right now, it may still be in theaters. Honestly, I think it played at my theater for about a week and a half. It wasn't very long.

But it is on Amazon right now. Amanda saw it, I guess. It's a pretty steep rental price right now. I think it's $20 just to rent it and you don't get to keep it. Oh, yeah, $20. And my thought would be probably given the reception. of the film in a small art film like this it was always going to be out on streaming probably to buy

Very shortly. I'd say within the next three weeks or so, you probably will be in a position where you could purchase it digitally. For me, I'm going to wait and get it when it comes out in physical media. But I think that... Yeah, $20.

for just renting a film, I still feel is a little, little on the steep side, but if you can't find it anywhere else and you don't want to go out right now, it is a, I think they do have it in the 4k, uh, medium there as a, as a rental. So it is high def, but Amanda, what was your, rating on this one if you if you have one um coming quite as high as you i'd probably give it a nine because i was thoroughly entertained and i did enjoy it

And they did announce today that it is going to be available on physical media October 12th, I believe. And it's going to be in 4K. And I really recommend if you're going to buy it and you have a 4K player, pick this one up. Yeah, I just got one, so I'm super excited about that. That just made my evening right there. October 12th. That's soon. Perfect, too, for the fall. It does have that kind of sensibility. Is that a subtle hint to your wife, Nathan, a Christmas present?

No, because I've purchased it by October 12th. It'll be here along with the legend. special edition that they're releasing. I saw Arrows releasing a special edition of Legend, not the crime movie from a few years back, but the fantasy Tom Cruise, Tim Curry movie. Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha. So Bill, what do you have for us? Well, I wanted to make sure in all this, I've watched a lot of horror, obviously, and a lot of just here, there, and everywhere movies, but I did want to make sure that...

I kind of stuck to a bit of sci-fi because that's what this podcast is at heart. And so if you're familiar with my other... podcast Land of the Creeps. The episode that might be out by the time this is we focused on movies from the year of our birth. I was born in 1974, and I have seen, to be honest, a whack load of 1974 films. But I wanted to find one in the sci-fi genre that I hadn't seen. And trolling on YouTube, I came across one that I...

subsequently told Nathan about a made-for-TV movie called The Disappearance of Flight 412. Now, this was a... NBC, made-for-TV movie. I couldn't find out when it exactly aired. It was directed by Judd Taylor. Now, I looked up Judd Taylor's credentials. He has an interesting resume, as they might say. He did 10 episodes of the Dr. Kildare show. He did five episodes of the original Star Trek.

and he did, amongst other things, he has a whole bunch, and amongst others, I didn't know they had this, there was a great escape to the untold story, which I'm assuming is more factual-based, almost documentary style. It stars Glenn Ford, who you all probably know. He's been around forever, since Dearly Departed. But he was in the original Superman, oh, in the 70s Superman. Yeah, I always think of him as Pa Kent. Yeah.

Exactly. He was in the original 310 to Yuma. He was in the war film Midway. He was in a whole whack of Westerns back in the 50s and 60s. As soon as you look at Glenn Ford, you know him. You've got Brad Dillman, Bradford Dillman, who was in some films that I'd seen that I actually quite enjoy. He was in Chosen Survivors. Have you ever seen Chosen Survivors? It's not a bad little film.

The Iceman Cometh he was in. He was in a couple Dirty Harry movies, Sudden Impact. And the one and only, the song and stylings of Mr. David Soule was in this. who we all know from Startsky and Hutch, but he did have a... And Salem's Lot. Salem's Lot and an infamous, you might say, recording career. That's true. So... It opens with a video of a UFO from California in 1966.

and eyewitness accounts of it basically putting the seed in your mind that the military has known about ufos going around for years and they're covering them up, and the public isn't getting their voice heard and knowing what they need to about UFOs, all right? And they also use a narrator to kind of explain what's going along, at least at certain points. And at a certain point, I found it kind of dropped off. At the Whitney Air Force Base, Glenn Ford...

plays Colonel Pete Moore. And he sees a flight of a crew taking off flight 142 in a military plane. I guess the plane had had some... electrical problems and they wanted to fly it out to make sure the plane was still running properly. So this crew gets out and David Soule is the lead pilot amongst the crew.

Now, as they're flying, you get shots of the grounds crew and the people back on the mainland that are watching for what's going on. You know, you've got, you know, the radar and you've got all the... stations running and two blips sorry two unaccounted for spots show up on the radar

And two marine planes go out to investigate. They find these little blips. They don't know what they are. They could be an electrical storm. It could be an anomaly. They could be other ships or birds for all they know. And when the Marine planes go out there, they disappear. So the people in the Flight 142 witness...

These marine planes going into a cloud and they don't emerge. They don't come out. And immediately they are... told to go down but not down to their own base to a secondary base run by the military intelligence group digger one and they land there And they don't tell the Whitney Air Base. And Glenn Ford doesn't know what's going on with his crew. And it's his job. He feels the impetus.

to figure out what happened to his men and why aren't the lines of communication open because he's not quite sure what happened up there but he knows somebody isn't saying something now

There's a lot of stock footage used in this. Yes, there is. Of military planes, okay? So you're not like, you know, it's not like Top Gun where you can feel like you're on their tarmac. No, no. Well, it doesn't help that you'll see one shot of a plane being loaded, the next scene of a plane on a runway, and then the third scene will be the plane in the air, and every shot is a different plane.

There's not a lot of continuity, as they might say. And the radar control stations, they look pretty hokey. It's almost kind of like airplane that... it was made as a takeoff this one tried to do it straight and it it came off quite badly so what ends up happening are these soldiers get taken down to digger one and they're brought into this excommunicated military facility excommunicated. It's not a Catholic church, but it's a military facility that isn't used anymore.

It's been decommissioned is the word you're looking for. Decommissioned. Very good. It's basically been, it's persona non grata among the military, but it obviously hasn't been blown up. So there are people from Digger One that interrogate these. pilots that genuinely are telling what they think happened and are not being believed and this digger one is trying to cover it up.

or at least, at the minimum, mislead the public as to what happens. Now, it's got overly dramatic music when the action heats up, quote-unquote action. You really don't know who Digger One is. And if you know Glenn Ford from his Western days, Ford, like the gunfighter, goes in to save the day. You know, he comes down there. Now, watching it, the one highlight I found in the film was I was watching it and one of the interrogators from Digger One, I go, that's Captain Flagg from MASH.

and it was edward winter who and i was like i had to look it up i'm going yep yep that's flag yep also in porky's was it porky's or porky's too i can't remember it's hard to keep those separate keep them track and the irony of this is that of it being a sci-fi ish film there was very little talk about UFOs

Oh, there was lots of talk. There was lots of talk. Not much in the way of... You don't even need physical evidence, but it was almost glossed over. Yes. To get to... the dramatic parts well and what year was this 1972 74 74 okay so it's a little bit ahead of like close encounters and we do have that kind of the time life era where everyone was getting into the paranormal and the supernatural

again but you're also just sort of coming out of like the saucer movies of the 60s so yeah i just don't think they knew what to do with this as a concept no because you know it's very much like you used to get those time life Almanac books with the pictures. And there is some factual basis to it. But you also weren't quite sure whether you bought into it all. Same kind of feel with this. But I will say this.

I was going to say, I will say this, conspiracy theorists will eat this up. You know, the people that are looking for the conspiracy, this will be right up their alley.

Conspiracy theorists probably ate it up in 1972. And then we had a little show called The X-Files. And, you know, those scenes in The X-Files that you start to feel are tedious where the characters meet at some... you know military cafeteria and sit down and talk and in vague hushed tones about you know military experiments and uh

shapes in the sky and stuff like that. Now imagine that for about 90 minutes, except without any of the other stuff. I saw what I was marking this on Letterboxd. I saw someone who left a review that said, brought to you by lunch, the meal. And that feels about right. It feels like there's just a lot of scenes of characters either sitting down and eating or discussing something while eating or, you know, it's a thinly...

It's clearly cheaply made. It seems like it was thrown together to satisfy that zeitgeist of the tabloid... the tabloid sensationalism of are there UFOs out there and is the government involved? But this is about the most like boring version of that. I think I, and I, like I say, I just, you know, I'll, I'll sit through a film.

They can run for hours about any subject if it's interesting, but this just lacks interest. You know, it's not a terrible movie per se, but it might have been able to get viewers.

interested maybe in in 72 you know but there's just not enough there i think for a modern viewer when you're watching us through the lens of a a story that wants you to take the concept of ufos and of extraterrestrial experience seriously or even take the idea of the government in colluding seriously with something like this and I just don't think it really amounts to much you know it's just it feels very much

like a bad 70s TV movie. It's not the level. At this point, we would have had movies like The Night Stalker and some very good TV movies, and this one just isn't quite there. No, but you know what? Strangely, and I guess sadly, You know, you kind of found yourself rooting for Glenn Ford at the end there. Well, I knew that whatever he was trying to do would end the movie, so yes.

Yeah, and on the plus of it is the brevity of the movie. It's only 72. Yeah, it's not long, and it isn't awful, but it's not really exceptional either. No. I mean, you get the impression that, you know, everybody remembers this show, especially who are sci-fi and fantasy fans. Amazing stories.

You know, this is something that Steven Spielberg could have cleaned up a little and made an interesting 45-minute story. Or it could have been an Outer Limits episode, throw in a bug-eyed monster, and it could have been an Outer Limits episode about five years earlier. Yeah, I gave it... I wrote down six, but I don't think it's quite a six. I'll give it a five out of 10. It's watchable. It's not horrible. I'm a 4.5. It's the same thing. Lowered expectations is good here.

It's not one that you're going to rush out to see, but I have seen worse. Yeah, I wouldn't really recommend it. There's a lot of TV movies that are better. Bradford Dillman has made worse movies, though. Yes, Bradford Dillman. Yeah, for sure he has. Absolutely he has. So, yeah, Amanda, have you ever had the chance to see the disappearance of Flight 412?

No, I've never heard of that one, but I'm interested because I really like made-for-TV movies, so I'll probably check it out at some point. And Peter and Gilman, if you're listening, oh, you guys will be all over this. Now, should they be? That's a different story. But, you know, if you're trying to fill your bingo card out for 70s TV movies, you're right. It's not the worst one, but there are ones, I think, that are far superior to it. Go watch Duel before you watch this.

Yeah, eat gargoyles. Yeah, there's a whole whack of them. But it does have that fake Rod Serling narrator at the beginning, you know? Yeah, yeah, that kind of heavy... Heavy voiced. And do you have the knowledge that the people... I thought he was going to narrate the whole thing. He'd be like, no, it's a Caesar salad with...

blue cheese crumbles or something. As they sip on their water, will they make it out of the commission? Like hobbits, now they're having elevensies. It was like they're going to eat again. So I've saved the best for last tonight. I have the movie. It's 2020 Meander. And it's a red box movie. And I just happened to get this one because the cover looked cool. It's a French film. It's directed by Matthew Turi.

It's in both English and French, so there are some sub-subtitles, but not a lot, so I think it's very accessible. Now, the way I've been describing this one to people is, imagine if the movies Saw and Cube. had a baby, and throw in some heavy sci-fi influences. And let me tell you, if there was ever a movie... That sounds cool. If there was ever a movie that was made to talk about on this podcast, it was this one.

Okay, so the movie, it opens up with a young woman named Lisa. It's late at night. It's in the middle of nowhere. And she's lying in the road when a car approaches. A man pulls over and he asks if she's okay, if she'd like a ride. At first, she tells him no, and she's hesitant, and then eventually she accepts. So the two start having a conversation while they're driving, and we find out that Lisa had a daughter who died on that exact same day.

been her ninth birthday she hears on the radio that there's a murderer on the loose and he has a tattoo of cross on his hand she looks at the man driving he has a tattoo of a cross on his hand so they get into a little scuffle He knocks her out. She wakes up a little bit later and she finds herself in a room. She has a lighted device on her wrist.

A door then opens up revealing a narrow tunnel. The device on her wrist sounds an alarm and a timer starts. The tunnel is divided into different sections and she has 11 minutes to get through each section while having to avoid various traps if the timer runs out she will be incinerated this movie is incredibly disoriented you have no idea what's going on you know about as much as the character does

It's incredibly claustrophobic. If you thought the descent was bad, this one, much, much worse. And these tunnels are no joke. She has to crawl on her hands and knees to get through them. And at one point, she comes across the decomposing body of someone who didn't make it. And it's all gooey and gross. And the only way for her to get by is to crawl on top of it. And, you know, you really find yourself rooting for this girl.

Because in the beginning, she's somebody that had totally given up on life. And then when she's put in this situation where she has no choice, but either you fight your way out of this, or you're going to die a very horrible death. So, yeah, this movie, I've been recommending it to everybody. I really don't want to give away any more because I want everybody to go out and see this. The traps are really cool. The gore is on point.

This is definitely one of my favorites of the year and I can't recommend it enough. I think there's something in there for everyone. Right now it is in Redbox and on demand. I purchased it. a digital version on demand for $9.99 immediately after renting it from Redbox because I liked it so much. I can definitely see this getting picked up by a streaming service like Netflix.

But if you have the means and, you know, check out your red box to see if it's available, it's definitely worth a watch because this movie, I can't even do it justice by talking about it. I enjoyed this movie so much. I have to say, I have looked into it. I just haven't gotten around to watching it. And this just lets me know that I should. And it sounds like a nice little cute family drama, right?

Yeah, exactly right. I compared it to Saw and Cube, and it is like those, but this movie has a lot of heart to it. There is a lot of sentiment to it because the only thing that's getting her through this tunnel is she keeps having visions of her dead daughter. And it's very touching to see her interact with the daughter and come to terms. with the daughter's death. I'm totally, yeah, I'm totally in for this. And I remember you reviewing it kind of on Facebook, just posting something about it.

that's when it first struck my interest, when I first became aware of it. And then I sort of forgot about it, honestly. So many movies come out all the time. And so right now, yeah, you can rent this for $5 on Amazon, or you can... buy it for 10 and when you have that level of difference

where it's $10 to buy it, and I've got people who are recommending it. Yeah, just buy it. I'm usually like, I'll buy it. The one thing that's always tricky, though, is what you just mentioned. Usually, I'll buy a movie like this. I did that with Train to Busan, and in a month, it was on...

on every streaming service that you could, you know, imaginable. But I am... I think this is worth owning a physical copy. Yes. And I'm really interested in it. It looks... look sounds great based on just on what you said and looking at the poster and then a little bit of the trailer and i love this kind of movie usually i'm not a huge fan of the saw franchise outside of the original

But even, you know, I took my kids to see the second Escape Room movie and I sat there thinking, man, this is the kind of movie I love, not Escape Room. I didn't love Escape Room, sadly, but I was, it made me long. for a movie like you just described. A movie I saw earlier this year on Netflix that I actually did enjoy was Oxygen. I don't know if you saw that, Alexander Aja's Oxygen. Yes, very good. And that had some of the qualities, I think, based on what you just described.

in that film as well. And the claustrophobia was very high in that film also in a different way. But it is on the top of my list as well. In fact, I'm going to try to get to this one.

this weekend um so meander yeah that sounds awesome and what was your rating i give this one a 10 awesome yep that is definitely on my list it does i was gonna say it does not remind me of one i recently watched on tubi called escape puzzle of fear why did you do that well i was again sometimes you get a good one laying on the couch tired like uh kenny and and some and and company and sometimes you get

escape puzzle of fear as soon as the logo for uncorked entertainment came on i was like oh no yeah that's a sign of quality right there and the and the fact that it had nicholas turturro And who's the other one that was in that? Omar Gooding. Omar Gooding. He was only lacking Don Swayze and, you know, Frank Stallone. Casey Affleck. Right, Joe Estevez. So, yes, stay away from that one, but I definitely want to check out Meander. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then I guess...

I guess we'll be rounding this episode out soon. There's one more I want to talk about, and I do want to do a... Very brief review. We didn't quite mention this yet, but we do have Amanda also got a chance to see Candyman 2021, as did I this past weekend, the newest Candyman film. So I do want to talk about that.

But before we do, I have one more. And then I think you have one more too, Bill. Is that correct? I just didn't know if we'd get to it, but I could. Sure. And so the one I have I wanted to talk about is currently streaming on... HBO Max, but it is also in theaters right now. And it is called Reminiscence. And I saw it, I actually saw it when we were on...

Vacation, we turned on HBO Max and did get a chance to check it out. And it stars Hugh Jackman. And it is also a movie that would essentially be, I think... right at home here at the Phantom Galaxy in the sense that it's got elements of a noir thriller detective story, and it also has quite a bit of science fiction in it. And I have to say that...

Even just looking at the trailer of the film, when it came out, you know, we hear it a lot, but this definitely feels like a movie that would have been released, I want to say, at the last three or four years of the 90s, and maybe... early 2000 2001 you know uh despite being a 2021 2021 movie it really has that feel of coming from i think the late 90s which is not necessarily in my uh

purview a bad thing because that's when we got movies like the dark city and matrix and strange days and films like that and reminiscence i think has a lot in common with those movies. It's directed by Lisa Joy, and Lisa Joy's primary thing that she's known for at this point, she wrote and directed this film, is that she worked on Westworld, the TV show that is also on HBO, and that deals...

It is based off of the Michael Crichton novel, Westworld, and it's also based off of the film that came out earlier from the 70s. But this one... Kind of expanded the story. Deals a lot with our sense of reality, what it means to be human, our technology versus our humanity. All the same elements that we see played out in movies like Blade Runner. All the movies I just mentioned and things of that nature. Movies like... uh,

Minority Report in Ex Machina. And Reminiscence has some of those similar traits. The basic plot line, this is from IMDb. You have Nick Bannister, a private investigator of the mind, who's played by Hugh Jackman, navigates the alluring world of the past when his life... changed by new client may and she is played by rebecca ferguson a simple case becomes an obsession after she disappears and he fights to learn the truth about her this

The plot is very basic. I'm not going to get into the details because in a lot of ways, it's the boilerplate noir detective story. This is something you've seen characters like Sam Spade and others play out a thousand times. You have the femme fatale. You have the kind of...

of beleaguered gumshoe with... a kind of checkered past that's left him sort of sad and desperate and this woman comes into his life and things change but really it's just a way for him to spiral into greater dangers and he has that kind of erstwhile constant uh friend who's there for everything to help him back up and uh

who cares deeply about him but doesn't know quite how to get him out of trouble all the time. In this case, it's played by Thandie Newton, and she plays Watts. She's really good in the film. I think her character is the one that maybe shines the most, who feels the most like a fully fleshed out.

person a lot of the other characters feel just about like the the types or the archetypes that you're expecting even though Hugh Jackman and I think Rebecca versus excuse me, while I think Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson do well in their roles, they don't really bring a lot to this that...

that would exceed what you'd expect from seeing these characters on the page. You have the mysterious woman who comes into Jackman's life, and we learn, of course, that there are myriad levels to who she is and things that she's done that he wouldn't have expected. wrapped around all this because what i've just described is your basic detective plot you know the story doesn't need any vestiges of sci-fi or

technological thriller to operate, but it still has them nonetheless. And the primary technology here is a technology, and I kind of like the way they visualize this technology with cameras that sort of end up, you're hooked up to machinery. They peer into your brain and we're able to replicate a memory. And the memory also is visually restored in front of those who are running the equipment. They put you in a tank, not unlike Minority Report. And then what is...

what is kind of placed on these curtains of images are your memories. And you get to relive those memories in a very real, vital way. And people are paying money to go in and relive a happy moment. with their pet, or a time before there was all this...

you know, devastation and uncertainty because we're living in this film. They're in a very uncertain world. You know, we find ourselves in an uncertain world. This world, you know, the waters have... started to flood everything those floods have created situations and a greater disparity between the haves and the have-nots entire areas have been flooded out and people have died as a result of some authority figures making decisions not to evacuate people and some other figures.

putting people in a situation where they would be purposefully wiped out. And so all of this backdrop makes no one, no one wants to live in this world. So they're retreating to the past, even small moments of the past. And we get to see how that machine works.

That technology is sort of interesting, but I don't know that it's mined for everything that we could do with it. It ends up being just sort of a plot device overall. However, my favorite scene happens early on when we get the idea... that one character has shown up to uh because jackman's

Business sort of runs upon the idea that I'll run the machine for you, you come to us, and we will let you relive a memory. So you have people that show up and watch the same memory every single week, but you have one person who shows up because all they want to do is figure out where they left their keys. And I think that scene is my favorite because it sort of...

interjects a moment where you think, oh yeah, there's a nuance there. Here's how people would probably end up using that technology. It's not necessarily intended for that, but you have a person who seemingly wants to use it for the mundane purpose of Where did I leave my keys? And of course, Jackman explains, well, are they lost or did you misplace them? Because if you don't remember where you put them, then if we can't find them in the memory...

then you might be in some trouble. But that was almost my favorite scene. The rest of it plays out just about how do you expect. There are double crosses. There are a couple of twists. There are some action scenes. If you enjoy noir detective stories, as I do, All of this boilerplate will seem familiar. It'll also feel a little comforting if you enjoy the science fiction elements that are sort of placed on top of this. They're not done in an elegant way. And Lisa Joy has a lot of ideas here.

that she just sort of piles on top of one another. I don't think they're really fleshed out the way they might be on a television show. So the feel of the movie throws a lot at you without really accomplishing much in terms of giving you this fully realized world. But I still...

enjoyed myself it's kind of almost the marginal recommendation where I would recommend you watch it because it's fun and engaging but I'm not sure that it sticks the landing when it comes to this as a solid sci-fi thriller I can think a lot of movies in this vein that are much better and unfortunately this movie is so similar to those that you end up thinking about those other movies I think more than this one but see it for the the kind of

interesting visual world it creates. There's a lot of great images in the movie and Thandie Newton's performance. And again, it's a passable, fun, enjoyable way to spend the time. I give it a six out of a 10. Now, I see that IMDB has... is mystery and romance. Is there a romance aspect to this? Yeah, for sure. Like I said, the femme fatale, I didn't want to get deeply into that because the movie is a mystery and it's layered with lots of sort of reveals.

They also play with displacement of time because sometimes maybe you're in a memory, maybe you're not. The more you try to explain about the movie, the more you sort of unpeel it. And honestly, my perspective on it is this movie and its secrets, and once you've unwrapped it...

That's sort of the fun, you know? You wrap it, and what you're left with is an empty box, kind of. So the experience of unwrapping it, though, was fun, and I don't want to say too much about that. So yes, it is a mystery. It does have romance. I love Rebecca Ferguson. I thought she was fantastic in Doctor Sleep. And she is good here. I just think that you'll watch this movie and recognize you've seen it mostly all before.

And the only other question I really wanted to ask is I noticed Cliff Curtis is on the cast and Cliff Curtis almost always gives a pretty solid, if not above average performance. Sometimes. tending to be even great how was he in this he's good too he does he comes to the story a little bit later another one i want to mention too much about because he sort of when he showed up i didn't realize cliff curse was in the movie and it's like oh and so yes he he's not a throwaway character

And Amanda, have you seen this? I went into this one with zero expectations and I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I'm kind of sad that I didn't get to see this on the big screen because I think I really would have enjoyed it seeing it that way. I thought the movie was gorgeous and there were a lot of interesting set pieces.

And I really enjoyed the cool overhead shots of the flooded cityscape. Yes, they were very well done. Yeah, I enjoyed the whole world that they created in this movie. It was a little predictable, but... I don't mind. I enjoyed it. I had a good time with it. Yeah, it's like one of those sweaters. I've worn this before, but that just makes it more comfortable.

Now, Hugh Jackman is known from time to time to do a little bit of overacting. Is there much evidence of that in this film? No, I didn't think so. Okay. Because, you know, Hugh Jackman is known primarily for most audience and listeners as Wolverine, but he has a long resume of films. So those who only know him as a superhero will see him in a different light. Well, here he's a rugged, surly guy pining after a redhead he can't have. So I don't know. It might not be that so far from Wolverine.

I guess there is that aspect to it. So what would you rate this, Mr. Bartabaugh? I gave this one a 6 out of 10. All right, so it's 6.5. Okay. And Amanda, what do you think of this? What would you give it? I'd probably come in at about a 6. Okay. Now, Nathan, did you want me to talk about a flashback briefly? Yeah, if you guys have time, yeah, we'll do flashback and then wrap it up with Candyman. Sound good? All right. Sounds good. Oh, yeah.

Alright, so I'm going to bring it back to one final review. And normally I wouldn't go this far into the reviews, but I think this one is of note. And especially for the listeners that like the sci-fi... throwback, trippy, nonlinear, basically WTF movie, this is right up your alley. If you like Jacob's Ladder, if you like Donnie Darko, if you like The Endless, if you like those kind of films, you're going to really enjoy 2021's flashback.

Now, flashback, the IMDb synopsis is, after a chance encounter with a man forgotten from his youth, Fred literally and metaphorically journeys into his past. Okay, we'll go with that. this is a film that honestly I love a trippy film I love a drug film I love a time travel element to a film that's the aspect of sci-fi that I really enjoy This one I enjoyed, but honestly, the first 25 minutes, I was like, what the heck is going on here? Because it jumps around, and I'll get into that.

It was directed by Christopher McBride, who did a film called The Conspiracy, but that's pretty much the only thing by him that I never heard of. Lisa Repo Martel. who's from Toronto, so I always got to root for her. She was in The English Patient. She was in Unforgiven. She was in Cocktail. Some of those are pretty small roles, but she has been around for a while. Dylan O'Brien.

who most people will know as the main person in this, who's in all the Maze Runner movies and the TV show Teen Wolf. You have Hannah Gross, who is in Joker and Mindhunter. And you have Donald Berta, who is in Suits, who a lot of ladies especially will know, and All My Children. And there's a large class of characters. They're all younger character-type actors.

So it has a very slow, convoluted opening, okay? A guy has his mom in the hospital who's had a brain injury, I believe it is, and a very pretty wife and goes back. two flashes of himself in high school so he opens up his mom is in the hospital she's obviously not too far from death's door I'm unsure if it was a brain injury or if it's a cancer situation, but she's not long for this world. And he flips back to high school. A common theme in this, hence the title, is flashback.

from the current to the past. And it goes back to his peer group in high school, where he hung out with a certain crew where they take a drug and it... called Merc. And this Merc, he takes it as like a pill form. And it just takes him to another place. And what ends up happening is he's with this crew of friends and... In the present day, Fred wants to find out what happened to one of his friend, Cindy, who back in high school, they went out one night and then she went missing.

So he's flashing back to try to figure out what happened to her while at the same time currently trying to figure out what happened to her. And you get back into his life as to what happened back then. and to what's happening now. And what I like about the film is it seemingly flows back and forth, that at any moment you're not quite sure at what point in the linear timeline of this film you're at.

It's not a buddy-buddy film, but there is an interplay among characters that comes into this film. You've almost got a sense of... Some of your favorite drug films. What do I call it? It's a total mind blank WTF drug trip. You've got elements of Lynch, you've got elements of Jodorowsky, you've got elements of Brandon Cronenberg, all kind of wrapped into it. His high school life parallels his work life.

You know and he gets made fun of in high school and then he takes this drug and he's strong in his real life He's got a job that he gets kind of crapped on at work, and then he kind of just shows his true characters The last half hour, you're hopping all over the place. It's kind of like train spotting in a sense, where, you know, those deep drug scenes and train spotting. You kind of get that with this.

Because he takes this Merc and it just lets your mind wander. Now, those people that don't like this kind of film are going to absolutely hate this film. If Donnie Darko is not your bag, if Jacob Ladder is not for you, if train spotting made you cringe over the worst toilet in Scotland, you are not going to like this film. And it's a Canadian film. It's actually paid for by my tax dollars, so I'm going to support it. But at the end of the day, are you going to understand it all? Absolutely not.

You'll notice by the way I'm talking about it, I didn't take a lot of notes. Because if you try to follow it linearly or structurally in terms of the characters, you're not going to... That way leads madness. That is absolute Mad Hatter, Alice Down the Wonderland. You're not going to figure it out. But if you take it as a film, like if you enjoyed The Endless, if you enjoyed those kind of films.

you're going to really dig this film. I give this a 7.5 out of 10. I love a trippy film, and the characters were substantial enough for me to want to watch it. I know, Nathan, you saw it. What did you think of this film? I'm going to jump over. Amanda, you saw it too. What are your thoughts on it? I didn't realize she had. Yes, I did see it. I thought it was really trippy as well. I enjoyed it.

I need to give it a rewatch because there was a lot going on. And I think this kind of movie benefits from multiple viewings. It did remind me a little bit of the butterfly effect and a little bit of synchronic, which I both love both of those movies. And I love movies that have alternate timelines. I think that they're a lot of fun. There's just so many possibilities. Absolutely.

i i agree with you i'll watch it a second time i'll watch it a third time i may watch it a fourth time because it's one of those films that you're not going to catch it all the first second or third time And these movies really, they are my kind of bread and butter. All those, you know, you say, if you like a trippy film and all those movies you mentioned initially, Bill, back when we were in college, my...

circle of friends called those Nathan movies. Because they were the only kinds of movies I seemed to... Everyone would come over for a movie night and I would show them this and they would say, you don't get to pick again. And somehow I would inevitably get to pick again. You're the guy that brings a clockwork orange. City of Lost Children or Donnie Darko, like you mentioned. And, you know...

I think it's funny you have the statement that if you don't like a trippy movie, you probably aren't going to like this. That's actually true. I think, though, if you were a trippy movie aficionado... This movie's still good, but you might have been there, done that feel to it. Not to the extent of reminiscence. It felt like it was built out of pieces of other movies. But this does, you know...

You mentioned the butterfly effect, Amanda. Definitely, there's elements of that here. There's elements of a movie like The Jacket with Adrian Brody. It's not that the same things are happening. Even movies like Sliding Doors, which was an early Gwyneth Paltrow movie that probably... was one of the earlier movies to do that alternate realities alternate realities in the sense of opportunities that were taken or not taken and this movie flips back and forth with a greater

speed and dexterity in some ways than those movies. It resembles also a movie for a few years ago that also got very strange with Jared Leto called Mr. Nobody, which I recommend if people haven't seen that one. That movie goes a little bit more out there. I think it was maybe a little more ambitious than Flashback, but Flashback keeps you kind of connected, I thought, with the characters to a degree. Some of the flashy photography, some of the very...

You know, it felt like it was trying to announce itself every time it did some of those flips from one element to another. And going back and forth like that, it almost felt like it was trying to be a little too...

arty or too stylistic i enjoy style particularly when it's maybe a little bit different than what we typically see but here sometimes it felt like a minor minor bit but it felt almost a little bit like a crutch like some of the style choices that were made in movies like saw were after a while wow, that style just starts to sort of irritate you. And I'm sort of like, throw that away. Just, you know, give me some more organic trippiness. And...

But I still really enjoy the film. Part of that is Dylan O'Brien. I think he's a really likable presence in these sorts of movies. And I had turned the trailer on a day or two ago, Bill, after you had mentioned the movie to me, and I was just glancing at the trailer. And it was on for a second. And my daughter walked through the room. It's not a movie I showed my kids, obviously. But she looked at it and said, oh, that's the guy from Love and Monsters. And she was absolutely right. I forgot.

But Dylan O'Brien was the lead in Love and Monsters. He's just right off the bat. My kids will like that. Although, look, that's the guy from whatever. And he also made it. He was very likable in that film. And he kind of ties this movie together. This is another movie that's the journey, not the destination. You can enjoy this journey, go on this journey, and the destination doesn't fully feel like it...

comes together for you, I think that's okay. It's almost by design in a movie like this. It's intended to make you think. about life and about how all these moments play out for us and what do they measure and what do they mean to us and how much is it in how we interpret the things that happen to us versus

the effect that they have on us. And I love that kind of a movie. There's a movie from 2005. I don't know if anybody's seen it. Another one of those movies I recommend to some people and they're frustrated and mad that I did it. And others are like, hey, I went and picked that movie up after you recommended it.

It's called Stay from 2005. It's got a younger Ryan Gosling in it and also has Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. Have either of you seen this movie? I may have. I can't recall. I think I did. I just don't remember it.

You've got all these characters that are smashing into each other and... in ways that are unclear they're not sure how they're connected and they almost seem to be supernaturally connected and as these pieces start to intertwine where we ultimately end up you're sort of like oh i've been there i've seen this but again it's the journey is almost so fascinating

that you sort of forgive the fact that the movie ended up here. It's like, where else could it have gone? It's painted itself into a corner, and I think Flashback paints itself into a corner, but... The road getting to the corner is pretty darn entertaining. I'm kind of with you, Bill. I'm not quite as high, but I'm not far off. I'm a seven for me for this one. Amanda, what would you give this?

Yeah, actually, I'm probably going to come in as a seven as well. But one thing that I noticed when I was looking for this movie, it has another title. Yes. The Education of Frederick Bitzel. That's the one I found first. and I wasn't sure if it was the right movie. I ended up watching that one, and then I found Flashback, and I started to watch that one, and I was like, okay, it's the same movie. And one title is definitely more, I think, the...

that second title is what it would have been called if it were a short story, right? And if it was a short story, I don't know if it was a book, that would have been the title. And it is probably more, it's probably a better clue to unraveling the film. flashback which is very generic the other thing about it that I didn't mention was I kind of like there's a kind of a strong soft ambient musical score to it yes

which I really think kind of, I wouldn't say, you know, you're not talking about Grease or something like that, where the score runs it, but it does kind of add to it. And I think people who enjoy those sorts of ambient scores, a score I love for a movie, the Darren Aronofsky movie, movie the fountain you know it's got that sensibility to it i think it's one that i i did note the score and thought hey this might be worth picking up on its own separate are you listening dave wa

All right, so I think the other two here, Nathan and Amanda, have one final little talk about a film that a lot of people have either seen or are very excited to see. Yeah, and Amanda, did you want to set this one up? It's one we can't say too much about, I think, plot-wise, but I definitely... Because I haven't seen it. One, because Bill hasn't seen it, and there's probably quite a few other listeners out there I haven't seen. So, listeners...

You can be promised that this will be a spoiler-free review because Bill the Butcher will murder both of us if it's not. I want to be scared and surprised as much as you guys. Well, it is difficult to talk about without giving away spoilers, but I'm going to do my best. I went into this one with very low expectations, and that was a really hard thing to do.

I absolutely adore the original. So I was really worried with this one. And I purposely avoided all of the trailers. So I went in completely blind, not knowing anything about this movie. So...

It happens, it takes place in Chicago, current day, and it takes place in a gentrified Caprini Green. And now it's taken over by a bunch of like... bougie hipster type millennial people and one particular um he's an artist his name is anthony him and his girlfriend have just moved into a very nice apartment And he has a little bit of writer's block. And they have a dinner party one night. His girlfriend's brother comes over and he starts telling everybody the urban legend of Candyman.

Anthony becomes obsessed with this, and of course he goes to Camprini Green. During the day, like the old site, they still have the old project area. It's abandoned, and it hasn't been knocked down yet. He goes there and he starts taking pictures and he starts looking around. And before you know it, he becomes obsessed with Candyman. And just the act of him looking for Candyman, just like...

Helen Lyle in the first one brings Candyman back. This movie was beautifully shot. It has death scenes that are just done so beautifully. it really does pay tribute to the original. I was worried that the original, you know, what was going to happen with it. And going into this, Nathan, I don't know if you had the same thing where I wasn't sure if this was a reboot.

or a sequel or redo, or I wasn't sure what I was going into. And I know that Jordan Peele, he refers to this as a spiritual sequel. And after you see it, You totally get it that this is a spiritual sequel. It really does have a lot to do with the first one. It takes that mythos of the original Candyman and it adds its own unique spin to it. They really took some risks.

in this movie and i think it paid off um nathan i don't know um what did you think about it do you did you like the new direction that they took this story Yeah, I did. And one of the things that's interesting is what you just mentioned. I had seen the trailers and had heard a little bit, you know, a buzz, no pun intended there, you know, since there's bees all over the place in this film. But, you know, I'd heard a little bit of buzzing.

This might happen and that might happen. But I tried to tune as much of it out. And again, I was having a harder time as it came closer to the release. Being excited for it and yet trying to temper expectations. Because I'll be honest with both of you. While I do think it's a decent movie, I was... let down by Halloween 2018.

Again, not because it was terrible, but because it just didn't quite live up to this image that it kind of built in my mind. You know, we're heading towards this, and I want it to be a very specific thing. I also really love Candyman, and I think it's one of the best horror...

horror films of the 90s, honestly, right there for me with Jacob's Ladder, that it's a psychological horror film, but that first movie had elements in the way Tony Todd portrayed that character. He was almost a universal horror monster more than he was a supernatural slasher. It was a mistake.

to make him that in the second and third films. And of course, Clive Barker's influence on that story, the original story, it's slightly different, but has a lot of the elements that find their way into the movie.

Parker plays with the psychological and the supernatural, the blood and the gore, but also with this sort of almost existential kind of dread. And I just didn't think... or was concerned that a modern movie would skip all that and have Candyman doing his thing in the new modern setting, and again in a...

in a world where the social setting is sort of unfortunately it's come back around and a lot of the problems that we've seen before that we thought maybe we had overcome to some degree are happening again The way that's built into this story, and this is really, this is Nia DaCosta's movie. You know, Jordan Peele did have a co-writing credit with her. But this is her creative artistic vision, and she does an excellent job with it. I think you're right.

that when you started, Amanda, you're not quite certain. And I kind of like that uncertainty. Is this a reboot? Is it a remake? Is it a sequel? They... They do something very interesting here that is completely true to the Candyman source material that sort of makes it all three at different points. You know, there are some moments.

where we have, you could call this a reimagining, where you could call it a reboot, and yet it is, don't be fooled, it is a sequel. This is taking place in the same world.

that the story with Virginia Madsen took place in. And it underscores that in lots of very interesting ways that I don't want to talk about too much here. But let's do talk about the visual style because that, as much as anything else, I think... the way da costa films the puts the movie together and it includes the acting and the and the nature of the shots and the way in which the nightmare terrors of the candy man are sort of laid in with the real world terrors

That visually matches up completely with what Bernard Rose did in the 92 film, I feel. Like the shots of Cabrini Green, which it does look different now. Most of that... area that you know in in the 92 film they're kind of referring to it as the ghetto that run down feel it's It's vestiges of it are there. Ghosts of it are there. But it looks very different. And yet you feel the presence there sort of underneath it. There's an opening. One of the opening shots of the film features these new.

as you put it, bougie sky rises, but they're shrouded in fog and filmed upside down. And it creates a sort of alien landscape.

that you're looking at here there's one shot involving something that happens and you draw back and you just see all the individual almost like a rear window shot uh you see all the individual apartments of of this place and there's one thing happening in the middle all of it and it just feels isolated from everything else the way it's shot the way we see images just like images of the bees images of the candy itself that wrapped candy

and they're peppered all through this film with some really good performances. I think that this movie is very well executed, and it's done in such a way that this... feels very much a piece of the original Candyman, and it's telling a psychological horror story. It's about things the same way that original story was. And in fact, there are elements of this story that kind of...

Remind me of other works of Barker's. I don't want to get into it too much because that would almost spoil some of it. But the original story came from the Books of Blood. And there are a lot of other short stories in that Books of Blood collection that Barker writes about sort of these things about. Immortality meets...

infamy and meets legend and the way these things play out in these characters. And Barker's a big, he's an interesting guy because he writes about things that are existential, that are beyond the body, that are spiritual in nature.

But they work themselves out through the flesh. He is very much a... bloody splatter kind of horror physical horror guy as well so you do have the elements that would rear up in a Cronenberg movie there's some body horror in this film and I thought that Yahya Abdul-Mateen Second, I thought he was very good in the movie. In his role, really, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that, as you were pointing out, Amanda, he kind of ends up in the role similar to Helen Lyle. He is the...

the investigator he's the person who's finding himself into this world but the way they show the art world and the way they show the art critics in the art world the critics in general you know i don't know how well we make out in this particular film however i think that it's handled better

than it was in a movie like Lady in the Water, where I think Bob Balaban got mangled by a grass wolf or something. But this... movie is so well handled that there is a there's only one minor complaint i had with it which is that's endemic to the original Candyman, there is a little bit of a hole left that's not filled by a presence like Tony Todd's. And I can't say too much more about that because what they're going for in this film is different. So they're not going for the...

same thing so it's not that they they swung for something and missed it's just that being a sequel to that film you sort of yearn for that because you remember the power and the vividness of it and that's just that's the only part that i feel I was left wanting a little bit more. Otherwise, I think this is an excellent follow-up. And it's a follow-up that re-energizes the...

The horrors and the terrors and the passions of that first movie. It makes me want to go back and re-watch Candyman again, honestly. Yeah, I actually re-watched that one before I saw this one. And I'll tell you, it holds up. It really does. For it being as old as it is, it holds up very well. My only issue with the new one is I feel like the final act was a little bit rushed.

And I actually wouldn't have minded if we had an extra half an hour to this movie. And I don't say that very often. I think this movie would have benefited from maybe an extra 30 minutes or so. Particularly because of the body horror, how it just escalates so quickly. I think that maybe if it was spread out a little bit, it...

Might have had a better impact. As you begin to get the arc of the horror, this is no real spoiler, I think, to say. As you get the arc of the horror, you suddenly realize there's not that much of the film left. And I do appreciate a kind of very live, 90-minute sort of film.

But I do agree with you that where we are, I actually thought the movie would be a little... I suddenly kind of realized, oh, wow, I think we're headed into the final stretch here. And I just wasn't quite ready. And I think that does speak to what I'm saying a little bit. that the moment when I thought we've kind of reached this crescendo, I wanted them to play that note a little longer. I wanted that impact to be a little bit more.

That's not the worst complaint you can have about a movie, that you just wanted a little bit more of it. Yeah, that's actually a good complaint. So all I have to ask is, I don't want you to spoil anything. But are there some fun kills? Yes. Yes. And creatively shot, which I appreciate because that was the thing about the original Candyman. The original Candyman and me, and I don't know how you feel, Amanda, or you, Bill.

When I saw that movie, and I was a bit younger, I was actually in middle school, I was used to Freddy, Jason, fun kills. The kills in Candyman are creative, but I would say... They're not so much fun as they're a little bit disturbing and unsettling. They're fun in that sense of a... haunted house kind of fun and i think you get the same thing here there's a little bit disturbing they're a little bit unsettling even when you're not seeing what you think you're seeing

Yeah, they really utilize mirrors in this one a lot. You see a lot of the kills, you just, you see somebody being held up in the air, being massacred, and... You can see the actual person doing it in the mirror, but when you're not looking in the mirror, it just looks like a person that's just being kind of flung around. All right, now... How was the actual acting? Was the acting strong? Or is this carried by the effects and by the storyline? No, the acting is strong, and I think that you...

It kind of has to be... We're not... There's nothing in this movie, I think, that because of the way it's sculpted and created, there's nothing...

As virtuoso as what Tony Todd was doing as Candyman. But that's not really what most of the acting in this movie is. It's just different. And I like that. Because to me, last year's Invisible Man... the kind of the newest iteration of the universal monster that movie felt a lot like the to me the original candy man in terms of how you've got a person being framed for things that they didn't do and

So I thought to myself, well, we kind of just had a retread that in a lot of its external beats felt like Candyman. Here's a movie that spiritually has the same things in its heart, but feels, plays differently than that last movie.

which I like. I like that this is not just replaying the steps of the original Candyman. And all that to say, what that means is you might not have this one... performance that stands out and say that was amazing but everybody's solid and everybody and there's certain performances i can't even talk about uh for fear of sort of of spoiling things and they're probably not the things you think i'm spoiling but

There's moments here I think everybody gives their all, and it's a great production from beginning to end. So what would be your overall rating, YouTube? Amanda, what? I'd probably come in at a nine. But one thing I did want to ask, Nathan, was what did you think of the score? To me, the original, the score made such a big part of the original movie. What did you think of the score on this one?

So I like the score, although I think liking the score, there's a point in, again, I've only seen the movie once now. And I've got a friend who's seen it three times and he keeps bringing new things to my attention. And he's like, oh, well, did you notice the reflections on the police door and this thing and this, that thing. So for me, it was hard to differentiate the score in some ways from the overall sound.

which I thought seeing in a theater was phenomenal. Like that sound design and the way the score is utilized. I think the score is good, but I agree with you that Philip Glass score for Candyman is iconic and beautiful. And I've had people who I've let them listen to that soundtrack and then I tell them what movie it's from and they're like, you're full of it. That's not right. I'm like, no, it is.

You know, it was very classical, it was very elevated. I don't think this one will be as iconic. I just don't, you know, and when you hear the tones, and they do find ways to pepper some of that original score in there, when you hear it...

It just serves to remind you that I don't know that I would be able to place any of the music from the new movie, and again, it's only after a single watch, off the bat, but none of it felt... strong in that same way it didn't even but but in some ways i don't think they even they weren't trying for that you know i don't feel they were trying to replicate another great score or build a score from the original

Yeah, but you felt it didn't take you out of the movie, though. No, I didn't think so. Did it take you? I didn't really notice it either way. One of my biggest concerns is because I love the original so much. The score. I was afraid that they were either going to try to do something similar. Or they were going to do something maybe modern. Like a lot of modern music. That just would not have worked. I agree 100% on every.

I think they avoided trying to just remind you of the first one by doing a beat from the first one that you remember. The way they remind you of the first one is by expanding that movie's story, by expanding what we know about what happened in that movie. That's the way it should be. And the score was good, but not intrusive, I think.

And it may grow on me. You know, I mean, honestly, I didn't remember the Candyman score being as beautiful as it was until one day I heard it and someone was like, well, that's the score from Candyman. And I thought it's been years since I've, you know, I need to go back to it. Yeah, so what would you come in as your rating? I'm going to go 8.5. I think I would say it's an 8, but this is a movie, like some of the others we mentioned, I really want to see it again.

and i actually want to see it in the theater again and i think you know could could go even higher than that but i'd say 8.5 uh i feel pretty solid on that Yeah, I agree. And I can't wait to see what else Nia DaCosta does. I believe she's going to be doing the Marvels next. Yes, yes. So she's got a big one up. And I hope that we see that level of artistry here where we didn't see her absorb.

absorbed by a franchise. She wasn't sucked in. I think she brought some of her own to it. And she did a movie before this called Little Woods, which I highly recommend. I think it's a very good movie. And it is the calling card of her style and her directorial.

abilities are in that film. You can see that film and you can see why she was chosen for a movie like this. And this is far away better than the two sequels. There are things I liked about Bill Condon's Candyman Farewell to the Flesh. I think the third movie was absolutely terrible. But this is in a different league than those movies. Yeah, we just pretend the third one doesn't exist. That one never happened. No, yeah, that's too bad that Tony Todd...

Broad is game, but there wasn't anything to play when he got there. And I noticed that because this movie is doing so well, I think they announced it today, that Jordan Peele... is going to be doing a lot more reboots and a lot more remakes is going to be involved in the writing process. The People Under the Stairs, I think, was mentioned at being possible, you know, his next project as far as reboots and remakes goes.

And that's what I'm really excited for, because if there's anything that I think could be updated a little bit, I think that one. See, I was just about to make a joke, Amanda, about, well, I guess they're going after People on the Stairs next, but I guess that's a little... My issue, though, is those movies, particularly when they came out in Candyman and People on the Stairs, like, that was sort of, you know...

There was a volatility felt in those movies. At that point, cinema was just getting around to sort of dealing with what in the 90s they would consider, you know, they would... use terminology like the ghetto and things like that and talk about those sorts of racial inequities and those things were just being sort of uh

touched upon in actual horror films you know to see those things in a movie like people under the stairs and then candy man i mean i remember seeing those movies being younger and thinking that was the first time i'd really seen it to that extent you know I just wonder if Jordan Peele will, I mean, I really despise, you know, stereotyping people. But, you know, in the back of his mind, is he going to redo New Jack City?

No, I mean, I don't think it's like that. I mean, the thing with a movie like People Under the Stairs is, and that's kind of where I was going with this, at the time that it was created, we're in a time where bringing some of this back... Makes sense. And I will say this. If they find a way to do it interestingly. The problem with people under the stairs. Is different than I think Candyman. Is that Candyman had a lot of layers to it. And while I love people under the stairs.

You know, can they really make that a sequel? I mean, that's going to have to be sort of a remake. And would a remake really work? as well because that movie is that's got a lot of very operatic neo-gothic sort of stuff going on and on in it you know it is very like hyper real and you just wonder if some of that stuff would even work now you know

But think of this. They bring back New Jack City. Wouldn't you love to bring back Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Chris Rock, and the still-acting Mario Van Peebles? I mean, come on. I love New Jack City, but I just don't let those movies be where they belong in the 90s, and I can revisit them at my leisure. Candyman was a gamble. I'm glad it paid off, but I don't want to see them...

I'd rather see Jordan Peele go, you know, Anita Costa and everybody else go to something new and fresh. And not remake the movie fresh, by the way. Just making sure I'm clear on that. I totally hear you on that. So that could be a whole new episode. What movies can today's director maestros rehash?

Well, the thing always comes up, why not remake the movies that weren't that great to begin with? Like, let's get Highlander 2 The Quickening. No, I'm just kidding. Let's remake that. Let's get Chud 2 remade. Chud 2 remade, right? I'm sure Warlock, one of the Warlocks, we can get going. I still like the original Warlock. There's nothing wrong with that. The original's good, but once they got into the third and the fourth one or something.

Well, I think that's just about it. Amanda, did you have any other movies or anything else you wanted to mention? No, I think that's all I have for now. No, the only other thing I wanted to mention was that I finally saw A Quiet Place Part 2. And I know I'm six months behind everybody else, but I did enjoy it.

I didn't think it was quite as strong as the first one. I know some people liked it more than the first one. I didn't find it quite as strong, but it still had some interesting characters, and I like the use of subtitles in it. So I give that a 7 out of 10. I say go out and watch it on Prime. If you have Prime, it doesn't cost you a darn thing. Yeah, I thought it was good, too. And I think that, you know...

to the extent that it was, it was kind of one of those kick the can movies where you're going to kick the can and the character is a little further down the road, but not too far down the road. You know, we don't get too ahead of ourselves, but I thought that it was effective. It's hard, I think, to be as effective as that first movie. was because so much of it is similar. And the mystery behind it is kind of gone.

But Amanda, thank you very, very much for coming on. You were absolutely phenomenal. Is there anything you want to share, promote, tell the world about yourself that you haven't already? Just that, you know, I really enjoyed being on the show with you guys. Thank you very much for inviting me. You can find me at the, I'm always hanging around the land of the creeps.

facebook group so you can always find me in there i'm always sharing whatever movies i've been watching there i am in the process of getting a podcast together it's a slow painful process because you know i have a full-time job, so it's just something I'll be doing in my spare time. I know that song and dance. Once I do get it... I know. Once I do get it going, you know, I'll share all the info, and I would love to have you guys on.

Okay, so we're going to be doing extreme horror, right? No, just ignore him. This is not Land of the Creeps, man. This is Phantom Galaxy, Bill. Get your podcast straight. We'll be covering all the American guinea pig movies. How about that? How about this? Extreme trippiness parallel universe. If we cover anything involving American guinea pigs, it's going to be literally videos of guinea pigs having those tiny tea parties where people set them up.

up meticulously and then film them that's what it's going to be which is maybe worse but still which could be worse but you know what I'd be honored to be on if you have it on, so just give us a shout. We're not hard to come across. And yes, and this was great fun, and you are welcome back here anytime if you want to pop in for a weekly review show, because honestly...

This was twice as long because you've seen more movies than most of the time we're trying to scramble. What can we talk about? I'm pulling my Wayne's World to Alice Cooper because I can't keep up with all the new films that you do. So, Nathan, do we have anything coming up you want to tell the audience? Well, we do have the long-awaited, well, two things. We have the Facebook group that is finally put together and will be out.

shortly and we also have the anniversary episode which is finally being pieced together which is truly a frankensteinian quilt of things but it was really worth the time we had a lot of people that uh contributed that so it's going to be a lot of fun and that'll be coming out very shortly this month and then we very soon bill we'll be heading towards halloween so

We have to have a discussion here soon. We've got a lot of great ideas. Yeah, we have a few tricks up our sleeve. We just have to unravel our sleeve. Yes, and Amanda, we'll definitely pull you into some of that. as well. And if memory serves, we all also might have something coming out with our friends, Pastor Matt and Jeff. Yes, that is imminent, and you can hear the pastor and the son actually argue.

Are you against one another on that episode? It's a thrill a minute, ladies and gentlemen. You're not going to want to miss it. If you've ever heard Pastor Matt and his son Jackson on Father and Son Watch Horror. They are absolutely phenomenal. Jackson brings the youth side who knows about the old stuff. And Matt brings his use of knowledge working in Hollywood.

as well as being a dad and a horror fan. Which usually begins when he starts to break into his Hollywood knowledge. It usually begins with some line about one of my favorite stars or directors, and it begins with, he was... He was a notorious drunk. Usually the sentence starts. Either they're way better than you expect. They're about what you expected. They're not exactly what you expect.

Uh, is there anything else you want to finish? Yeah. Just, uh, if you want to head over to, uh, please find us at, you can find us at Apple podcasts and most places, uh, pod catchers. where podcasts can be found. You can also go over to Apple Podcasts and we would love it if you left us a...

five-star review. And it's one of the ways we can get word about the podcast out and kind of increase the audience on that. And until next time, this is the Phantom Galaxy signing out. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye. If you've been enjoying the music here on Phantom Galaxy, the opening theme and the closing theme are both brought to you by synth pop artist Ares Beats.

He's done a lot of really cool stuff in the world of synth pop, a lot of very interesting genre-based retro themes. You can find more of his work over at ariesbeats.bandcamp.com. And until next time, we are the Phantom Galaxy.