Moose And The Movies

Hell House LLC, 2016, directed by Stephen Cognetti, Prime Video, 3.5 stars. Hell House LLC is a top-notch found-footage film from 2016.  This was a Video On Demand release from writer and director Stephen Cognetti , making his feature-film debut. It was successful enough that Cognetti has been able to make a career of turning out Hell House LLC movies. His fifth one, subtitled Lineage , landed in August 2025. In Hell House LLC, a young entrepreneur and his staff go to work converting an abandoned hotel into a haunted-house attraction for the Halloween season. The plot is framed as a documentary crew's investigation five years later into an unexplained "malfunction" on opening night that killed 15 people. The story is told through video shot by the crew while setting up the attraction -- as well as clips from TV news coverage of opening night and an interview with the crew's only survivor. Let me interject here: We all know there are two kinds of movie fans, right? ...

  Haunt, 2019, directed by Scott Beck and Brian Woods, Prime Video, 3.5 stars. A group of college friends leaving a Halloween party make their way to a haunted-house attraction in a remote area. They're greeted at the entrance by a guy in a creepy clown outfit who has them sign liability waivers and lock up their cell phones before they can go in. Of course, we know that's a flashing red beacon of danger. But our heroes pay it no mind. They're just here for some chills and thrills to cap off their evening. You know what's coming. Our heroes get a couple of jump scares early before they get lost in a maze, and the operators of the haunted house start messing with them. The fun and games that aren't so fun and playful get increasingly chilling and violent. Haunt has the potential to be just another of a gazillion claustrophobic psycho-slasher movies out there. But it does stand well above the crowd with some truly tense, white-knuckle moments and enough surprises to k...

The Substance, 2024, directed by Coralie Fargeat, Mubi blu-ray (2025), 4.5 stars. I spent the first half of this movie nearly hyperventilating, covering my eyes and gasping for breath, trying to decide if I was loving it or hating it. I spent the last half nearly hyperventilating, squirming and cursing out loud at the screen, completely overtaken by this brilliant piece of filmmaking. Part of what was going on is that I am not, never have been, a fan of body horror. That stuff always gives me the heebie-jeebies. I have never been able to rewatch The Fly, the David Cronenberg masterpiece. Don't even talk to me about stuff like Saw and The Human Centipede. I have no interest. Hell, I remember freaking out for a few seconds in every episode back when I binge-watched Nip/Tuck. But The Substance I was kind of forced into. I got caught up in the buzz last fall about Demi Moore winning all those awards and about how this little horror film was making noises about Oscar nominations. I jump...

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, 20th Century Fox blu-ray (2012), 3 stars. I'm thinking the historical accuracy might be a little iffy ... I was surprised to learn that this Tim Burton-produced gothic-horror flick was not an original concept but was adapted from a 2010 novel. It's an interesting concept, a sort of fantasy-action biopic mashup. The ruse is that Abe, at about 8 years old, witnessed his mother being killed by a vampiric plantation owner and grew up vowing to get revenge. He trains as a young law student in the vocation of vampire hunting and becomes fairly proficient. He eventually gets himself elected president with a mandate to put down the confederacy of slave-owning vampires rising up in the South. It's a slow-burner of a story that explodes with some spectacular, stylish CGI action sequences. I found the tale interesting enough and the set pieces glorious enough to stay entertained, though the movie did have its dead s...

Back To The Future Part III, 1990, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (Back To The Future: The Ultimate Trilogy box set, 2020), 3.5 stars. Two out of three, in the end, ain't bad, I suppose. As disappointed as I was with Part II, I really was pleasantly surprised with Part III. I was dreading watching this but decided to soldier on and be done with it. And I wound have having a blast with it. We got a little too much fat in the first and last 10 minutes of Part III -- mostly having to do with revisiting and doing some cleanup with Part II. But with the 100 minutes or so in the middle, Part III was a fantastic homage to the great Western movies of the past -- with some big nods to Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of the 1960s. Marty McFly adopts the Clint Eastwood alias, dons The Man With No Name's trademark hat and poncho. And the showdown in the street between Marty and Buford Tannen was straight out of A Fistful Of Dollars, as telegraphed on a TV scre...

Detained, 2024, directed by Felipe Mucci, streamed on Paramount+, 2.5 stars. Detained is a micro-budget, twisty-turny, direct-to-streaming crime thriller that's perfect for when you really want to turn off your brain for an evening. Australian actress Abby Cornish, who gets a producer credit, plays a woman detained for questioning about a hit-and-run homicide that she doesn't remember. That's about as much as I'll say about the premise. You don't get much time to get your bearings before this single-set, dialog-driven mystery starts with the sharp turns. There isn't a lot of linear logic or well-plotted storytelling happening here. A lot of the small reveals are predictable. But we get enough tension and good acting performances and bursts of violence to keep this ball rolling through a quick 98 minutes. I'll probably forget most everything about this movie within a week. But it was a fine way to pass the time. 

Back To The Future Part II, 1989, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (Back To The Future: The Ultimate Trilogy box set, 2020), 2 stars. Dare I say it? I did not like this movie at all. It isn't the worst movie I've seen, even in the past week. But it's the most disappointing one in quite a while. I did see this on opening weekend back in November 1989. I didn't remember much about it at all. I have always remembered that George McFly was only in one brief scene, and he was upside down for some reason. That happened, I knew, because Crispin Glover did not return for this movie. The other thing I've always remembered about Part II is that it was underwhelming and not particularly memorable. I learned tonight that my impression was spot-on. I went into it this time, though, with high hopes. I had just seen the first Back To The Future, and I was floored by how much I enjoyed it after all these years. So I came back to Part II fully expecting to u...

Back To The Future, 1985, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (Back To The Future: The Ultimate Trilogy box set, 2020), 4.5 stars. I hadn't seen this since its opening weekend 40 years ago. I am astonished at how well it held up to my critical and skeptical eye. I enjoyed it this time around much more than I expected. I went into it with my intellectual, critical eye wide open. But, I'll be damned, it found its way straight into my heart within about five minutes. I really did not expect that. Four decades on, Back To The Future is still damn near a perfect movie. That anticlimactic, sequel-forward ending slipped it a notch off its perch. But until then, it was still a marvel. I came out of this viewing with two big impressions: 1.) Christopher Lloyd was born to play Doc Brown. He was absolutely perfect. I can think of no one else who could have played that part. 2.) This movie was much funnier than I remembered. Most all the gags landed brilliantly -- and...

Cabin Fever, 2016, directed by Travis Z, streamed on Paramount+, 1 star. The premise: Five college-age kids head to a cabin in the woods for a week, only to have party ruined by some sort of flesh-eating virus. Sure, worth a shot, I told myself. Well, I loved the cinematography. This movie looked great. But there were some early warning signs that this wasn't going well. Let's just cut to the chase: Everything else about this great-looking movie was refried dog vomit. The plot, the characters, the acting, the score, the sound design, it was all crap. I learned after the fact that this one is 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. I wish I knew that going in, but I wasn't too surprised afterward. And worse, I learned that this was a remake of a 2002 movie with the same title, produced and written by the guy, Eli Roth, who made the first one. I know next to nothing about Eli Roth. I've heard the name. But I now have zero interest in learning any more about him or the movies he makes. Lor...

The Night Clerk, 2020, directed by Michael Cristofer, streamed on Paramount+, 2.5 stars. This indie crime drama is watchable for the strong performances of its lead actors, Tye Sheridan and Ana de Armas. Unfortunately, it didn't stand much of a chance, getting a limited theatrical release right about the time Covid sent everyone scurrying for cover. Sheridan plays Bart, a 23-year-old autistic who works the graveyard shift as a hotel clerk. He places hidden cameras in one of the rooms so he can study people in hopes that he can learn how to function in social settings. He gets into trouble when he sees an assault happening and ends up a murder suspect.  The crime plot is fine, it's just kind of there moving along at a snail's pace in the background. The heart of this movie is Bart's character arc as navigates his predicament without admitting to the crime he did commit. De Armas enters the picture as a hotel guest who catches Bart's attention and tries to coax him ou...

Mary Poppins, 1964, directed by Robert Stevenson, Disney/Buena Vista blu-ray (2013), 3.5 stars. Several months after the family gathered around the TV one Sunday night in February 1964 to marvel at those Liverpool boys on The Ed Sullivan Show, we piled in the car for a trip to South Twin Drive-In in Mehlville, MO, for a look at another cultural wave-maker. I don't remember that night with Mary Poppins as vividly as I recall the evening with The Beatles, not even close. All I can really say for sure is that I did see the movie one night six decades ago. Most of the songs from Mary Poppins have stuck with me through the years, but I haven't remembered anything else about it. Purchase at Amazon I saw Disney's 50th-anniversary blu-ray on sale at Amazon for about $6 a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to give it a go, mostly to find out if it's still as fantastical as legend has it. I'm happy to say that it is in a couple of segments. I'm unhappy to say that there ar...

Disquiet, 2023, directed by Michael Winnick, streamed on Paramount+, 1 star. Guy gets into a nasty traffic accident, is wheeled into emergency surgery, wakes up connected to a lot of tubes and machines, calls for a nurse, no one responds. Sits up, disconnects all the tubes and machines, goes looking for help, the hospital is abandoned. A couple of weird things happen, you kind of guess where this is going, and then random people start appearing and attacking and disappearing again and the guy can't find his way out of the hospital. And you start thinking how stupid this is going to be when we get to where we know we're going. And you sit through about an hour of unexplainable things happening and you hear some character spouting claptrap metaphors about life and death, and we finally get to that stupid place we knew we were headed. This movie is not good by any stretch of the imagination. I'm kind of embarrassed to tell you that I sat through the whole thing. Fortunately, i...

The Sugarland Express, 1974, directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (2024), 2 stars. A swing and a miss for Steven Spielberg in his first theatrical film. I really disliked this movie, found it really frustrating. I was pretty much checked out about two-thirds of the way in, just waiting for it to end. The movie looked great, as all Spielberg's movies do. We got a couple or three decent action set pieces. But other than that, The Sugarland Express just sat there spinning its wheels. The Sugarland Express, based on a true story, has Goldie Hawn breaking her husband out of jail to help her reclaim their young daughter from the foster system. The couple carjack and kidnap a state trooper, lead dozens of squad cars on a slow-speed chase across Texas and become folk heroes in the process. It's an exciting premise to start. But the movie never seems to gain any real momentum before it devolves into over-the-top silliness. I think a big problem is that Spielberg re...

Duel, 1971, directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (2023), 3.5 stars. For a guy so well-known for making big, stupendous, seismic spectacles, Steven Spielberg sure knew how to deliver a small, straightforward, simple but thrilling horror film. Duel, technically, was Spielberg's feature-film debut. It started out as a quickly made, micro-budget TV movie that produced some pretty good numbers for ABC in viewership ratings. It did so well that Universal Studios had Spielberg shoot a few more scenes to pad out its 73-minute runtime for an international theatrical release. And that, dear readers, was how Steven Spielberg's movie career started. I just watched the theatrical release, re-edited and remastered with the added scenes into widescreen aspect ratio. I really didn't expect much from this movie. I thought it would be a glorified dumbed-down TV movie with mini-cliffhanger commercial-break fadeouts every 12 or 15 minutes. Man, was I wrong. Duel is a bang...

Winter's Bone, 2010, directed by Debra Granik, streamed on Paramount+, 4.5 stars. I guess I just wasn't paying attention. I can't think of any other reason why I missed this film in its day, or even why I had never even heard of it until now. I stumbled across it browsing through the menu at Paramount+ and put it in my watchlist because Jennifer Lawrence is prominent on the poster. But I am thrilled that I discovered it now. Better late than never, right? What a fantastic little indie film, and what a fantastic star-making performance by Ms. Lawrence. I didn't know until after I watched this that this was her first starring role -- and bagged her first Oscar nomination. I also learned after-viewing that this movie was a Best Picture nominee. Who knew? I didn't. I loved this movie start to finish. Lawrence brought the goods as a poverty-stricken 16-year-old girl raising her two younger siblings in rural Southwest Missouri, near my collegiate and young-adulthood stomp...

The Great Escape, 1963, directed by John Sturges, Criterion blu-ray (2020), 3.5 stars. I've never been much on war films, period pieces, historical dramas and the like. But I do like to get out of my comfort zone and visit with the classics now and again. I first saw The Great Escape about 20 years ago, with a DVD blind buy, and I enjoyed it quite a bit -- especially the Steve McQueen motorcycle chase through the German countryside. This was my second time watching the film. It's a pretty entertaining epic based on a book about a group of British airmen who tunneled out of a German POW camp during World War II. I gather the historical accuracy of the event is questionable, heavily reframed to appeal to American audiences. But I'm not concerned about all that. Taken on its own terms, this movie is a fine way to spend about three hours. The ensemble cast is loaded with recognizable faces -- McQueen and James Garner stand out. We also get a look at Charles Bronson, David McCal...

Took a few days off from the movies to check out the 10-episode Dexter: Original Sin, which just wrapped on Paramount+.  In case you don't know, it's a prequel, taking place 15 years before the first season of the classic Dexter series with flashbacks to another 15 years or so before that. It all serves to flesh out Dexter's backstory -- how he ended up in that blood-soaked storage container as an infant and how he honed his craft as a vigilante serial killer. I was pleasantly surprised by it. It was much better than I thought it was going to be. Original Sin, with Michael C. Hall's voiceover narration, does a fantastic job of bringing back the feeling and atmosphere of those first three or four great seasons of classic Dexter -- before the original series lost its way. Irish actor Patrick Gibson is the new, young onscreen Dexter. He looks enough like Hall physically and is able to easily pull us in without too much distraction, with a big assist from Hall's familia...

A Clockwork Orange, 1971, directed by Stanley Kubrick, Warner Bros. Blu-ray (2007), 5 stars. It had been a long time since I watched A Clockwork Orange. This is the second or third time I have watched it start to finish. It has never ever been better than it was this time. This movie is unmitigated brilliance, the third straight masterpiece delivered by Stanley Kubrick (following Dr. Strangelove in 1964 and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968). Of course I remembered three or four iconic scenes from A Clockwork Orange, cinematic images that always will be stuck in my brain. The revelation this time around is the astonishing performance of Malcolm McDowell. I didn't remember that he carried the entirety of the 136-minute film on his back, and he didn't flinch for a second. Everything about A Clockwork Orange worked perfectly for me -- the startling cinematic imagery, the multidialectal poetry of McDowell's voiceover narration, the philosophical absurdity of the story arc. It all l...

The War Of The Roses, 1989, directed by Danny DeVito, streamed on YouTube, 2 stars. I saw this 35 or something years ago in the theater, and I remembered finding it a little weird with a little bit of dark humor. I guess our sense of humor does evolve over time -- at least mine has. I found absolutely nothing funny about The War Of The Roses this time around. And to be honest, I didn't like it much at all. I just found it mean-spirited and hateful. I've been a fan of all three of the principals -- Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner -- for a long time. So I was a bit shocked this evening that I reacted so negatively to The War Of The Roses. I found nothing to like about either of the Roses, played by Douglas and Turner. Oliver Rose was a two-dimensional self-involved humorless yuppie lawyer. Barbara Rose had a little more depth and heart as a dutiful homemaker who took control of her own life against Oliver's wishes after the two kids left the nest. The Roses ...

Star Trek, 2009, directed by J.J. Abrams, Fandango At Home digital library, 2.5 stars. I stumbled across this in one of my digital libraries, didn't realize I had it. I have no memory of acquiring this, must have gotten it as some sort of promotional giveaway. Having enjoyed the original Star Trek series about 50 years ago and having seen a few of the early theatrical films -- and being a bit of a fan of J.J. Abrams -- I decided to give this a whirl. And I enjoyed this movie for awhile. The film looks spectacular, and I enjoyed getting the origin stories of James T. Kirk and Spock. I had no idea what was happening in the early battle scenes, didn't much care about them. But not a problem. That wasn't what I was interested in. And then we get to a scene about an hour in where Kirk discovers Leonard Nimoy hiding in a cave or something -- obviously as a senior-citizen version of Spock. And he starts going on about some time-traveling gobbledegook and the meaning of friendship ...

Blue Steel, 1990, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Lionsgate Films blu-ray (2023), 3.5 stars. Jamie Lee Curtis gets top billing in this gritty, intense, deliberately paced psycho-thriller about a rookie New York City street cop who finds herself the object of a serial killer's crazed, kinky obsessions. Ron Silver, who was in what seems like eight out of every 10 movies in the 1980s and '90s, is the formidable yuppie psycho who just can't quit her. Blue Steel isn't a mystery. All of its secrets are revealed right away. Rather, it's a simmering cat-and-mouse chase that keeps us tantalized pretty much start to finish. Kathryn Bigelow isn't afraid to brandish her influences in this, her third directorial effort. Blue Steel plays as an updated 1970s-style cops-and-crazies action thriller with more than a pinch of 1980s-era slasher-stalker vibes mixed in. It all blends together very well into an exciting, edge-of-your-seat ride. Of course, you know the whole time you'...

Red Eye, 2005, directed by Wes Craven, streamed on Paramount+, 2.5 stars. Wes Craven took a break from his normal fare of slasher humor to turn out this psycho-thriller set on an airplane. The setup is a bit convoluted. An assassin-for-hire needs a hotel manager to assign a Homeland Security official to a specific room so his murder team can target the victim from an external vantage point. Assassin-for-hire corners hotel manager onboard an airplane to force her to call her hotel to arrange the room assignment. Now, in order for this to work, a series of coincidences and accidents need to be arranged to happen precisely as planned in the first 15 minutes of the movie. I was calling bullshit on this setup almost from the beginning, and what turned into a tension-filled airplane ride could not get me all that interested. In short, I couldn't buy the premise and the movie couldn't capture me. We did get a couple of pretty good action scenes in the predictable third act. Craven...

Popeye, 1980, directed by Robert Altman, Paramount Pictures blu-ray (2020), 3 stars. This was Robin Williams' second film, his first in a starring role, made just as he was becoming a cultural superstar with "Mork & Mindy." He was a great choice for Popeye, especially in the way he could perfectly mimic the cartoon character's distinctive mumble. I remember running to the theater to see this movie, being a big Robin Williams fan at the time and having spent countless hours in my childhood watching Popeye cartoon after Popeye cartoon. I don't remember being disappointed in the movie, but neither do I remember being all that thrilled with it. Fast-forward 44 years and some change, and I was fairly impressed, at least for awhile. I found the live-action replication of the old cartoons brilliant, and I did get a kick out of the musical-theater approach. The set design was fantastic, and the choreography was a blast. The big problem became apparent about 40 minutes...

Arctic, 2018, directed by Joe Penna, streamed on Prime Video, 4 stars. This movie is not complicated. A guy has survived a small-plane crash, is stranded in the Arctic and is living in the wrecked aircraft. He finds a crude map of the ice-covered terrain and discovers there might be a refuge station within a few days' trek. This movie is that trek. The trek is harrowing, it's distressing, it's freezing cold, it's painful for the duration of the film's 97-minute runtime. The cinematography is breathtaking. It's really white. There is a lot of white. And there is a lot of Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, who carries this film all by himself and makes us feel every deep breath he takes and every ache he feels. Arctic is an excellent tale of desperate survival. Check it out.     ---------------------- Purchase at Amazon on DVD or blu-ray (I am an Amazon affiliate, and your clicks help support this blog.)

Companion, 2025, directed by Drew Hancock, saw at cinema, 3.5 stars. Companion is a movie that wants you to believe it's important but in reality is simply a rollicking joy ride. Companion will crumble into dust if you think too much about what it's trying to say about unbalanced relationships, abuse of technology, fem power and a couple of other trendy topics. Don't worry about it. There's not much below the surface. Just go with it and enjoy the ride. There's a lot of fun to be had here if you just slide along the surface. It takes awhile to get the momentum going. It starts out as a story about a guy and his insecure girlfriend hooking up with some friends for a weekend retreat at a wealthy acquaintance's home. The homeowner gets inappropriate with one of his guests about 20 minutes in, and chaos ensues. Companion delivers some nice thrills for the rest of its runtime, with a couple of good laughs along the way. I don't want to give away much because a lo...

The Longest Yard, 1974, directed by Robert Aldrich, streamed on Paramount+, 3 stars. Funny how memories can play tricks on you over the course of a half-century. From the time I saw this movie on its opening weekend, I have remembered this as much more a comedy than it actually is. There is one laugh-out-loud scene in the back half-hour that I remembered vividly, but other than that, this was straight-ahead 1970s-style action/redemption drama. Maybe part of my misremembering: A good number of the situations in The Longest Yard that we might have found funny back in the day now are cringeworthy and downright revolting. Physical breakups with girlfriends, dangerous car chases through city streets, violent encounters with cops, Trumpian prison wardens. I do kind of remember that maybe I used to laugh at those kinds of things. I don't now, and I hope you don't either. That said, The Longest Yard is a pretty good relic of the kinds of entertainment we enjoyed 50 years ago. The first...

The Fog, 1980, directed by John Carpenter, streamed on Prime Video, 1.5 stars. That was painful. Movies that begin with an old sea captain telling tales about shipwrecks and ghosts and then, a few minutes later, have a character read a journal entry aloud to explain the convoluted back story do not work for me at all. I was zoned out of this from the get-go, and I never could find my way back. I had a hard time staying awake through this slog of a movie. I gave this one a shot, knowing it was a John Carpenter entry that came between Halloween and Escape From New York. I thought it would at least be interesting. It wasn't. Some credit because it was cool seeing Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh in the same movie and because the cinematography was a great leap forward for Carpenter. But it really was quite boring.    ---------------------- Purchase at Amazon on DVD or blu-ray (I am an Amazon affiliate, and your clicks help support this blog.)

The Little Hours, 2017, directed by Jeff Baena, streamed on Prime Video, 4 stars. OK. This is the second time in a couple of weeks I stumbled across a Jeff Baena/Aubrey Plaza collaboration, and the second time I spent the better part of 90 minutes giggling like a schoolgirl. This movie was funny. Odd, because I would never have thought I would find anything at all amusing about nuns in a 14th-century convent. But I could not stop with the giggling. Here's the deal: The supervising priest (John C. Reilly), the mother superior (Molly Shannon) and the community of sisters (Plaza, Alison Brie and Kate Micucci the three central characters) at this medieval nunnery spend much of their time doing unsanctioned things to, for and with each other. And in everything they do, they act and speak as if they grew up about six centuries later. Everybody brings 20th- and 21st-century sensibilities and attitudes to the party. The whole scenario is weirdly off-balance, the source of much of the sly h...

I went 31-for-31 in January -- 31 movies in 31 days. Nine of them were rewatches, which I wrote about here . The rest were movies I saw for the first time, most all of them streaming on Prime Video. I bought a subscription early in the month to see Abigail, which I had heard so much about. So while I was there, I decided to pick off as many watchlist entries as possible before my subscription expires I have a few more days and movies on my Prime watchlist. I'll finish that up soon and move on, back to Paramount+ and my still-growing disc collection. In the meantime, here are my first-watches from last month, ranked bottom to top: 22. Dead End, 2003, directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa, streamed on Prime Video, 0.5 star. This is the worst movie I've watched in quite awhile. It fails as comedy, it fails as horror, it fails as mystery, it fails completely. It earns a half-star because it's the minimum rating on Letterboxd. 21. The Calendar Killer, 2025, directe...