I went into Slotherhouse mostly blind, knowing only the title and a vague hint that the film featured a killer sloth. I hadn’t even seen the trailer. With only very little information there were things I expected to see in this film. I expected to see a slow-moving animal that probably kills people. Things I didn’t expect to see were a sloth driving a car, taking selfies on an iPhone with its victims, or fighting for control of a handgun. This ain’t your parents’ sloth. Also, why do your parents have a sloth?

The sloth in question is captured by a poacher from its natural habitat and smuggled into the US to be sold as an exotic pet by a guy who is totally not Joe Exotic (his name is O-Exotic). The sloth ultimately ends up in the possession of Emily Young, a college senior who quickly learns that the cute, furry animal brings her a surge of popularity in her sorority; so much so that she decides to challenge the sorority’s mega-bitch defacto president. Not everyone in the house is pleased about their sorority’s new mascot, and before long those same girls begin to mysteriously disappear.

As ridiculous at the premise and antics of the sloth are, the film doesn’t go far enough in a lot of ways. To be honest I’m not sure what earned the film its PG-13 rating. In the 1980s, every member of this sorority would appear topless at least once. Here, several pledges go through a hazing process in which they enter a shower completely clothed. Most of the deaths are implied and appear off screen. The violence is on par with most made for television horror films. Where the film does get a little extreme is in the silliness of the sloth’s actions. We learn early on that the little guy is smart, but by the time we see him using someone’s laptop, all bets are off. As the sloth steals a car, buckles his seatbelt, and speeds off to commit another murder, all I could do was laugh. It’s all in good fun, and everybody’s in on it.

Slotherhouse is better than it deserves to be but not as good as it could have been. If you’re going to go over the top with your premise, you’ve got to go all the way with your plot, your violence, your language, your everything. Instead what we get here is a pretty middle of the road sorority murder mystery with one very out there killer. What would have worked here was an over the top, frantic horror film. Instead, mostly, we get a “slow” burner.

One of the challenges with enjoying older films is that there are barriers between the story and its audience. Sometimes the films are in black and white and are presented with mono sound, which instantly give them a dated feel. Sometimes there’s overacting, often a result of vaudeville and silent actors adapting to the “talkies” of the 1930s. The films are typically heavily dialog driven, with special effects in their infancy. All of these things can combine to create distance.

About halfway through [i]The Champ[/i], eight-year-old “Dink” (Jackie Cooper) comes home to discover a horse trailer hauling away his horse, “Little Champ.” Moments later, Dink’s dad — a washed-up, former heavyweight boxing champion referred to only as “The Champ” (Wallace Beery) by his son — is forced to tell Dink that he lost the horse in a game of cards. “I’ll win him back, just as soon as I can get some dough,” offers the hungover Champ, but a despondent Dink retreats to a stump and is about to cry when the Champ grabs his face. “Get that lip up before you lose it,” he says, closing the boys mouth with his oversized boxing hands. He then forces the boy to smile, something we can imagine has happened a thousand times before in this complicated relationship.

The Champ, you see, is down on his luck. No longer boxing, The Champ now lives in Tijuana and passes his time drinking, gambling, and raising his son Dink, in that order. Through a chance encounter at a horse race, The Champ’s ex-wife Linda spots The Champ and Dink, whom she has not seen since he was an infant. Linda and new rich husband want to take the Dink and give him a better life, but having lost his title, his money, his home, and his honor, Dink is all The Champ has left.

[i]The Champ[/i] overcomes all those barriers I mentioned by presenting a small number of characters, all of whom viewers become emotionally invested in. Motivation and emotion are front and center here; we know why Dink wants to remain with The Champ, we know why Linda wants to rescue Dink from the squalor he lives in, and can feel the struggle The Champ is going through as he weighs what’s best for himself against what’s best for Dink. When The Champ finally reenters the ring against his doctor’s orders as Dink cheers him on, we can feel it. [i]The Champ[/i] is a film about losing, and winning, and sometimes, losing by winning.

Throughout the film, Jackie Cooper shows amazing range for a kid and demonstrates why he went on to become one of the biggest child stars of the 1930s. The role of The Champ revitalized the career of Wallace Berry, who signed a contract with MGM guaranteeing he would be paid $1 more than any other studio actor, making him the highest paid actor of his time. Director King Vidor went on to direct the black and white scenes in The Wizard of Oz and is best known for directing 1956’s War and Peace. Berry won the best actor Oscar for this role (in a controversial “tie”) and both he and Cooper badmouthed one another, swearing to never work together again, which they never did, until co-starring in Treasure Island which was released the following year. The champs were back.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Minutes after the original source material entered the public domain, production began on Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. According to the film, the once friendly animals inhabiting the 100 Acre Woods fell on dark times after Christopher Robin went off to college and left them behind. During the following winter, the animals became so desperate for food that they killed and ate Eeyore, which turned them back into feral killing machines with a hatred for all humanity, especially one Christopher Robin.

Not long thereafter we meet a group of college-aged girls having a fun-filled weekend in those same woods. It doesn’t take long for Pooh and Piglet to sniff out these uninvited guests and have them for dinner… and I don’t mean as guests. Only one of the girls has any sort of back story, and they’re all interchangeable. Even if you wanted to tell them apart, you couldn’t.

Then again, that’s not who the audience is rooting for. After one of the girls is abducted from the hot tub, she quickly finds herself hog-tied (no pun intended) in the driveway. After Piglet gives the signal, Pooh inches forward in a Dodge Charger until the front wheel slowly rolls over her skull, sending her brains in one direction and her eyeballs in the other. Of course there’s no rest for the wicked, and in a series of murders that would make Michael Myers jealous, Piglet (armed with his trusty sledgehammer) and Pooh (a fan of knives) chase, torture, and slaughter most everyone they come across. And while I don’t think we’re supposed to be rooting for the killers, it’s hard to feel sorry for the humans when they’re all so dumb. When three of the girls run up on Pooh killing one of their friends, they stick around for several minutes to watch the action instead of running in the other direction. In another scene, two of the girls sitting inside a car with the keys in the ignition watch a five minute brawl before deciding it might be a good time to drive away. Imagine what actions you might take if two creatures showed up to kill you and your friends. Everybody in the film consistently does the opposite of what you just thought of.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey ventures into the realm of torture porn. There’s no real plot and nobody worth rooting for. Even when Jason or Freddy slice their way through a film, somebody somewhere is planning a counter attack. Not here. The closest Pooh comes to meeting his match is in the form of a random hippy armed with a crowbar, who unfortunately gets his face karate-chopped off. The film desperately could have used more humor and camp and a little less blood; I doubt that’s what we’ll get in the sequel, which is already being teased with a 2024 release date.

Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to capturing the excitement and charm of the classic role playing game on film. Dungeons & Dragons, released in 2000, currently has a 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Its 2005 sequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God saw a limited release in North America, and the third film in the series, 2012’s Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness, was a direct-to-video release. Arguably the best version of Dungeons & Dragons to make it to a screen was the children’s Saturday morning cartoon from the 1980s.

After several years of legal delays (which ostensibly gave audiences enough time to rinse the memory of those previous films from their mouths), the franchise is back with 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The resurgence of interest in tabletop RPGs combined with the success of shows like Game of Thrones and the D&D-laden Stranger Things surely contributed to the desire to bring the franchise that started it all back to the big screen one more time.

Honor Among Thieves opens with some backstory and character introduction. Edgin (Chris Pine), the charismatic thief, and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), his right-hand muscle, were caught attempting to steal a magical tablet and sent to prison. Before long they’re out and have teamed up with an amateur sorcerer named Simon and a shape-shifting druid named Doric on a quest to retrieve the tablet from their old friends who turn out not to be so friendly.

At its core Honor Among Thieves is a heist movie, but to its defense it’s an entertaining and funny one. There are plenty of one-liners and bumbling plans to keep you entertained, and perhaps the best part is you don’t need to be familiar with Dungeons & Dragons to enjoy the film or get the jokes. To be sure there are plenty of D&D references scattered throughout the film; fans of the game will recognize specific creatures, weapons, and locations like Neverwinter and Underdark. Sharp viewers may even catch a cameo from another party of adventures last seen in an 80s animated series…

Several of the film’s subplots fell flat for me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if large amounts of this film were cut for running time. Elgin’s entire motivation for seeking this magic tablet is to resurrect his dead wife, who we see in a couple of flashbacks and never really get sold on their relationship. There’s also a brief reconnection between Helga the fighter and her former partner, a 3′ tall halfling who isn’t mentioned before or after. While I’m sure this was intended so audiences might see a lighter side of Helga, all I kept thinking about was a 3′ tall halfling in bed with a barbarian woman. Tiny magic staff, work your power! The entire adventure is an attempt to reunite Elgin with his estranged young daughter, who again we see so little of that I couldn’t care less if the two ever reconnected. Honor Among Thieves has plenty of action, jokes, and special effects, but it’s pretty weak when it comes to establishing any kind of emotional connection to any of the characters. When major characters face danger (or even death) I found myself saying… meh?

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is harmless and entertaining and if it gets kids to roll a 20-sided-die and try D&D for the first time, that’s good enough for me.

The same movie critics who lauded 1996’s Scream for being original, self-aware, and revitalizing horror films will absolutely love 2022’s identically named Scream. Where the former was praised for going meta by calling out and breaking the cliched rules of the genre, the latest film in the series goes meta meta by referencing the series itself.

Scream (2022) opens with a scene that mirrors Drew Barrymore’s scene from the original’s opening scene. In the fictional Scream universe, a series of movies called Stab based on the events (murders) that took place in the Scream universe were released. When a new generation of teens begin to once again meet the Ghostface killer they quickly realize they are being targeted by a copycat murderer attempting to recreated the past, and the only people who can help the kids from 2022’s Scream are the ones who survived 1996’s Scream.

A pivotal bit of exposition toward the end of the first act explains to the teens (and viewers) what’s happening. “We’re stuck in a requel,” says one of the teens, all of whom are both potentially the killer and on the chopping block. “A requel is not quite a reboot, and not quite a sequel.” The character points out that requels don’t have any weight unless original characters connect it with the original franchise. She references several recent films including Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and Halloween, and true to her theory, it isn’t long before Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Rules (David Arquette) have all returned to the Screamiverse.

Just as the 1996 film lovingly poked fun at horror films, the 2022 film attempts to do the same by eating its own tail. The characters end up partying in the same house that appeared in the first film, 25 years later. During one particularly meta moment, Ghostface sneaks up behind a teenager on a couch as she watches the scene from the fictional Stab in which Ghostface sneaks up behind a teenager sitting on a couch; that scene, of course, is a recreation of a scene in 1996’s Scream in which Ghostface sneaked up behind a teenager on a couch — the same couch in the same room we’re watching again — and killed them. As the teen on the television mockingly screams “look behind you!” unaware that Ghostface is standing behind them with a knife, the teen we’re watching also screams “look behind you!”, unaware that Ghostface is behind her, too — same room, same couch, same knife. Anyone who doesn’t see what’s about to happen would not survive as a character in a Scream film.

The returning characters have seen it all before, and while within a knife’s blade of the fourth wall, explain the formula to the other characters. They conject on who the killer or killers may be, who will die, and what will happen, and pretty much nail it all. That’s not to say there aren’t shocks and surprises along the way, but at the end of the day these characters have seen it, we’ve seen it, and now we’ve seen them see it, which is kind of the point.

I don’t know that the killer’s motive or the big Scooby-Doo reveal toward the end helps Scream make any more or less sense than any of the other films. Ten years after Scream 4 and 25 years after the original debuted, the new crew (RIP Wes Craven) bring the story to a mostly logical solution. The rules are both mocked and followed, and according to IMDB’s trivia section, the final rule of scary movies — something the actors and characters weren’t privy to at the time of filming — will be followed. Based on the success of this film, a sixth film in the series has already been greenlit.

In [i]Magnificent Warriors[/i], female Chinese secret agent Fok Ming-ming is sent to a city near Tibet to connect with another secret agent and rescue the ruler of the city, Youda. Ming-ming is told she will know her connection because of the watch he wears, but when she arrives she initially teams up with a silly conman who ended up with the watch. Ming-ming eventually finds the right contact, Youda brings along his girlfriend, and soon the pack of five are leading a Chinese rebellion against the Japanese soldiers occupying the city.

I’ve watched a lot of kung-fu movies and most of them are set either in China or modern day, but this film feels like a World War II film — and, at times, an Indiana Jones film. The setting is a small city near Tibet during the Second Sino-Japanese War, so there are a lot of sandbags, and Jeeps, and soldiers with rifles and bayonets, and at least one aerial dogfight. Ming-ming arrives in a yellow biplane and is handy with a whip, which adds to the Indiana Jones feel.

The pacing of this movie is slightly off. The film is exactly 90 minutes long, with three nearly exactly 30 minute acts. The first act has plenty of action, but mostly with characters we’ll never see again, and it’s not until the end of the first act that Ming-ming actually arrives in the city and the story begins. In the second act the team is assembled and the mission is underway, but before you know it that’s over and we’re back into a full-on WWII film. The film’s structure follows the 30/30/30 plot arc to a fault; if this film were made today, it would be more like 10/35/35/10.

What sets this film apart, other than the rather unique setting, is the amazing cast. Michelle Yeoh plays Fok Ming-ming, a full 35 years before film critics were goo-gooing over her performance in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Yeoh’s work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Supercop, and tons of other films established her in the martial arts pantheon, but her fight scenes in this movie rival her contemporaries. The conman she crosses paths with is played by Richard Ng, mostly known from his appearances in all the Lucky Stars films. Ng is one of those guys that can make you laugh one second and knuckle up moments later. Secret Agent 001, Ming-ming’s original connection, is played by Derek Yee (Tung-sing), who appeared in more than 40 Shaw Brothers films before eventually becoming the chairman of the Hong Kong Film Awards Association in 2017.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/lqZj1wr.jpg[/img]

[i]Magnificent Warriors[/i] isn’t a great movie, but it’s a good movie with some great scenes. The scale bounces between small fights between a couple of people and large-scale fights that take place between the entire city and a regimen of soldiers. Like a lot of these films, [i]Magnificent Warriors[/i] isn’t sure what it wants to be — an Indiana Jones film, a WWII film, or a straight up kung-fu films. It does each of these things pretty well, but not a great job of combining them seamlessly into one coherent movie.

The Muppets Mayhem is a 2023 10-episode series on Disney+ starring the house band from the original Muppet Show, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

Nora, one of two employees at a failing record label, aspires to become a music mogul despite her current position as a lowly assistant. While shredding papers, Nora discovers that the world renown Electric Mayhem once accepted a large cash advance from the label in exchange for an album which they never delivered. (The band promised to deliver an album after their tour ended and then proceeded to go on tour for 45 years.) Nora, with help from her sister Hannah, her music mogul and ex-boyfriend JJ, and Mayhem superfan Moog, plan to wrangle in the Electric Mayhem, squeeze a debut album out of them, and reap the rewards.

The glue holding the show together is the Electric Mayhem, who ironically can’t seem to hold anything together. The six-piece band, consisting of Dr. Teeth, Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Janice, Zoot, Lips, and Animal, can’t focus on anything long enough to get anything accomplished. Subsequently, Nora spends 10 episodes attempting to drag the Mayhem into the 2020s by arranging recording sessions with modern producers, giving them cellphones, and introducing them to social media.

Like many one-off series, The Muppets Mayhem would have worked better as a two-hour special than a 10-episode series. To fill all those episodes, viewers are taken on multiple long side quests. In one episode, the band spends the night in the desert and attempts to find themselves by ingesting 30-year-old marshmallows and spending half of a 22-minute episode tripping and having hallucinations in a way-too-long Doors-inspired segment. In another episode, due to a misunderstanding Animal believes he is no longer needed in the band and spends half an episode at an employment agency applying for work. (His tenure answering phones is short lived.) On Family Guy these would be 5-10 second clips and in a normal length film they would last two minutes, but in today’s episodic format they become entire episodes that are slightly entertaining but ultimately don’t move the needle forward.

With Adam F. Goldberg (from the Goldbergs) at the helm you know this is going to be a nostalgia fest, and true to form there are classic Muppet references galore. Additionally, with Disney money comes Disney connections, and the show has more cameos and licensed music than it can handle. In ten 22-minute episodes the Electric Mayhem run into Billy Corgan, Morgan Freeman, Cheech and Chong, Kevin Smith, Peter Jackson, Ziggy Marley, Ryan Seacrest, Paula Abdul, Weird Al, Danny Trejo, and dozens of other celebrities. There’s also a steady stream of appearances for younger viewers like deadmau5, Charlamagne The God, Lil Nas X, and Zedd. This huge spread guarantees you’ll recognize some of these people, but unlikely to recognize (or care about) them all. Some of these cameos are so forced that they feel cringy, like when Susanna Hoffs (former lead singer of the Bangles) drops by and not only has to introduce herself but admit that Lips is the one who “taught her to walk like an Egyptian.”

There’s a price to pay for that kind of access and it comes in the form of product placement. The band makes an excursion to shop for groceries all to set up a bit where Animal fills a shopping cart with Fritos, and then says “Fritos!” ten times. Restaurants, businesses, and products are constantly mentioned and appear on screen. Sgt. Floyd Pepper spends a few seconds coming up with a new jingle for Bennigan’s. In an establishing shot, the camera pans down from the Chateau Marmot sign to catch the band’s bus driving by. Animal plays with a Simon toy for 30 seconds, during which the band says “Simon” 20 times. Animal gets a job at Teppanyaki Terrace, works around people in Teppanyaki Terrace uniforms, and appears on a Teppanyaki Terrace billboard. Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are frequently mentioned by name.

The series has 10 half hour episodes for Nora to succeed, for the love triangle between Nora, JJ, and Moog to get resolved, and the Electric Mayhem to record an album, all of which we know are going to happen. The final episode ends with the Electric Mayhem heading out on tour, which they had been doing for the past 45 years before the show began. It’s possible this could lead to a second season, but more likely it’ll lead to even more Disney+ series. What we need next is a 10-episode series about Fozzy the Bear’s journey through the world of stand up comedy, or how Sam the Eagle left the forest and found the Muppet Show, or…

Two years after the first film ended, Becky is back, and this time she’s mad…der. She’s madder.

To recap, in the first film a group of white supremacists crossed paths with Becky, demanded she return an item, killed her guardian, tortured her dog, and chased Becky around the woods while she violently and gleefully murdered them one at a time.

In The Wrath of Becky, which picks up after a three year gap, a group of white supremacists cosses paths with Becky, demands she returns an item, kills her guardian, tortures her dog, and chases Becky around the woods while she violently and gleefully murders them one at a time.

Stop me if that sounds familiar.

The movies aren’t identical, of course. This time around, it’s a group of “Noble Men” (clearly a stand in for the Proud Boys) who get tangled up with the world’s most dangerous teenager. And this time, it’s a USB stick containing the names of every Noble Man that Becky has made off with. There are other differences too, but the devil is in the details; by and large, both of these films are about a teenage girl who pushes back when pushed too far.

Because we know who Becky is and we understand that the Noble Men are bad guys, the film doesn’t need to waste on character development and can get right to what everybody came for. The first Noble Man lured outside the home finds himself fastened to a chair with a hand grenade duct taped to his mouth and a string connecting the pin to the front door of the home, and that’s just the beginning. Unfortunately for the Noble Men, there’s a stockpile of weapons out in the barn just waiting for Becky to discover and find creative uses for.

Like the original, The Wrath of Becky is over the top; while not a cartoon, it feels more like a comic book than the real world. To squelch anyone from saying “but that wouldn’t happen in real life” on the way out of the theater, at the end of the film sixteen-year-old Becky — with the list of Noble Men — is hired by the CIA and issued a rocket launcher, so… yeah.

Both Becky and The Wrath of Becky are grindhouse revenge films from the 70s redone with HD cameras and slick CGI special effects. Grenade-exploding heads never looked so good. The plot’s about as deep as one of Becky’s hole traps, but it’s all in fun… unless you’re someone in this film other than Becky.

While browsing the entertainment section of Walmart or, more likely, the “please buy me” table at a garage sale, you have probably run across one of Mill Creek Entertainment’s “MegaPacks” of DVDs. These large box sets contain 50 movies and come with exciting names like “50 Drive-in Movie Classics” or “50 Sci-Fi Invasion Films.” Sometimes they even bundle them together — I paid $5 for “100 Awesomely Cheesy Movies,” which included two smaller collections (“50 Swinging Seventies” and “50 Excellent Eighties”). When you think of “excellent eighties movies” you might think of movies like Footloose, Karate Kid, or Top Gun, but… those are a little out of Mill Creek’s reach. Instead, you’ll find a stack of movies you’ve never heard of with titles like “Tuareg the Desert Warrior”, “My Mom’s a Werewolf”, and, from 1984, “Hard Knox”.

The recipe for Hard Knox is pretty simple. Mix equal parts of Police Academy and Stripes in a blender and then use a sifter to remove any humor, intelligence, or actors with talent.

In the film, retired military pilot Colonel Joe Knox arrives at the military school he previously graduated from only to discover it may close down. Knox’s mission is to whip a new wave of recruits into shape and ultimately lead them in competition against a rival school. This is literally the plots of Police Academy 1 and 4 combined. One of the few recognizable actors is a young Alan Ruck (Cameron from Ferris Bueller) who plays Frankie Tyrone, the stereotypical “if I act crazy I can get out of here” character. There are several other characters of course, but for the most part you’ll just want them to go away.

The kids break each other down before building the team back up, and even ol’ Knox is forced to learn new tricks when the school lets some danged-ol’ women-folk join the club. The film jumps between dorm scenes, people in military uniforms having boring conversations, and training sequences. All of these scenes build toward a showdown between the newly recruited dopes and another school (see: Police Academy 1). Each squadron of recruits is given a pouch full of paint-filled balloons and sent out into the forest to do battle. The kids are given balloons instead of guns with live ammo because they would have taken out the director before turning on one another.

Mill Creek goes the extra mile here by providing a DVD directly sourced from a VHS tape (occasionally the tracking breaks loose). Every 8-10 minutes the movie fades to black, revealing that Hard Knox was actually a made for television film. According to IMDB had the film been successful it was intended to launch a television show, and since you’ve never heard of the television show Hard Knox, that tells you all you need to know about the movie.

Judy Blume wrote books for tweens about tweens, and back in elementary school I read a bunch of them. Books like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Blubber, and Superfudge featured regular characters in relatable settings and situations, always embroiled in some type of “coming of age” story. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is a 2023 film based on the 1970 Blume book of the same name.

The story opens as 11-year-old Margaret’s parents drop the bombshell that her father has taken a job that will relocate the family from New York to New Jersey. In one fell swoop, the family will be moving, Margaret will be changing schools, Margaret’s mother will be quitting her job and becoming a stay at home mom, and Margaret will no longer be able to see her grandmother, whom she is particularly close to.

Margaret has more than New Jersey to adjust to; she’s becoming a young lady, and Margaret and her new group of friends are constantly comparing bra sizes and in a rush to see who will be the first to get their periods. There’s also a religious angle, as the title suggests. Margaret’s father and grandmother are Jewish, her mother is Christian, and Margaret’s maternal grandparents have become estranged due to the marriage. A school report about religion has Margaret exploring different religions and her own relationship with God.

Blume’s stories are popular because she takes relatable characters and places them in situations we’ve all experienced before. Unfortunately if you’re a boy, you may have a tough time finding things to directly relate to in this film. My wife loved the book growing up and enjoyed the film as well. As Margaret and her friends do their bust exercises while shouting “we must, we must, we must increase our bust!” I was like, “girls really did that?” while my wife cackled with laughter. It’s a cute film full of experiences I couldn’t relate to. Your wives will love it.