Author: Mat Brewster

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The Birthday Haul

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Today is my birthday. I’m pushing ever closer to the big 5-0 which freaks me out a little (okay, a lot) but I had a good day. I still had to work which wasn’t fun, but this afternoon my brother’s 4-year-old grandson showed up and that was a delight. There was a mix-up with his childcare so my brother had to pick him up. But we were behind on work so the boy came with him. I had forgotten how fun kids that age can be. And exhausting. He asked questions every five seconds and I kept having to find things for him to do.

Later, we had a nice meal at my mother’s place. My father shares my birthday so we always share a party together.

Anyway, it was a good day and my wife bought me some lovely gifts.

Obviously, I love me some Criterion Collection so I got three films from them. I’m especially excited about Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as we just finished the original series and I’ve never seen the film.

I watched the movie adaptation of Master and Commander the other day and loved it. Everyone says the book series is even better so I’m excited to find out if everyone is correct.

And Batman is my favorite comic book character. I’ve read The Court of Owls before, but it is nice to have a hard copy.

Night Moves is the New Blu-ray Pick of the Week

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Sometimes I debate what my pick of the week should be – should I choose something I haven’t seen but am really excited about, or should I choose something I already love getting a nice release?

On one hand, it makes sense that I would pick something that I’ve already seen. I know the movie is good and therefore I can stand by my recommendation. On the other hand, when a highly anticipated film makes its home video debut that’s exciting. Or it used to be. Maybe I’m coming from a time when home video releases were exciting. I’m old enough to remember when a movie hit the theater and if you missed it you had to wait until it came out on video. But I guess now they hit streaming services even earlier.

Whatever, I went with the more traditional pick this week. Night Moves is a terrific little 1970s noir, and Criterion is giving it the 4K treatment. But in case you were wondering, I thought pretty hard about picking The Brutalist, which I haven’t seen but has received rave reviews.

You can read all my thoughts on this week’s releases here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Maniac (2012)

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Maniac has the feel of one of those gritty, nihilistic 1970s horror films. Which, in a way, it kind of is. It is a remake of a gritty horror film made in 1980. It stars Elijah Wood as Frank Zitto a serial killer who murders and scalps women. He owns a mannequin restoration shop and he takes the scalps back home, places them on the mannequins then talks to them like they are still alive.

The film is shot entirely from Frank’s point of view and I hate that gimmick. I’ve seen it in several other films and it always grows tiresome very quickly. In old films like Lady in the Lake (1947) and Dark Passage (1947) its use is cumbersome because cameras were so large movement was quite limited.

It is slightly better here mostly because cameras have gotten smaller allowing for easier movement and CGI allowed them to manipulate the images to create more interesting shots. But it is still a gimmick and a bad one at that. There is one scene where Frank is stabbing a woman and the camera moves away, and we see the action from a third-person point of view. It is an interesting moment because we realize that this is still Frank’s point of view. He feels trapped inside his body and he kills to escape. When he kills he literally (and visually in the case of the film) escapes from his body.

But the film doesn’t really do much else with that idea. There are some flashbacks (still filmed through his point of view) where we learn his mother was a prostitute and she often made him watch her have sex with her Johns. That made him a killer, I guess.

One day a kind young woman takes pictures of the mannequins he has on display at the front of his shop. She’s Anna (Nora Arnezeder) and she’s an artist. She’s got a show coming up and thinks his vintage mannequins will be perfect for it. They form a friendship and the question becomes whether she’ll save him or he’ll kill her.

Within the first few minutes of this film, as soon as I realized it was going to be completely shot from his POV I started hating this film. It didn’t help that it goes to some pretty dark places. Because so much of it is seen through the killer’s eyes we get into his headspace. We see him killing. There was a time when I would have loved the transgressiveness of that, but now I just find it depressing.

There are moments in the film where it lightens up and becomes interesting. Most of these are when Anna is on screen. Nora Arnezeder is quite good and her character’s relationship with Frank is an interesting one. She certainly lights up the screen giving what is mostly a dark, dreary movie some buoyancy. It was enough to make me like the film, but not enough to make me really enjoy it.

Westerns in March – Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)

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Actor Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher made seven movies together, all westerns. I’m a big fan of all of them and this weekend while looking for another western to watch I landed on this one. Mostly because I knew it to be lighter fare than the others and my wife tends to not like dark and serious films.

Buchanan Rides Alone is the silliest of the films they made together, and probably my least favorite. Scott plays Tom Buchanon a drifter returning from Mexico with a lot of money in his pocket. He’s headed home where he’ll buy a plot of land and finally settle down.

He stops at a strange little border town called Agry where he quickly learns everything – a glass of whisky, a room for the night, a well-cooked steak – costs ten dollars exactly. He sits down with a bottle only to have it taken away from him by a drunk named Tom Agry. Moments later a young man named Juan (Manuel Rojas) charges into the bar and kills Tom.

The Sheriff and several other men round Juan up and beat the living tar out of him. Buchanan steps in to lend a hand. Naturally, this lands him in jail.

Nearly everybody of importance in the town is named Agry. The leader of the family Simon runs the town with a tight fist and is also a judge.

There is a trial, and a breakout, and lots of gunfights. It is all light-hearted and fun. There are a few attempts to be actually funny, but mostly it is just breezy and slight. Most of the other films Scott and Boetticher made together are much more serious in nature and have something to say. This is pure entertainment.

It isn’t bad at that, but I can’t help but compare it to films like The Tall T and Ride Lonesome (both of which I reviewed here), and this film just doesn’t compare.

A Few Pickups

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I assume most of you have read my notification on the music site that I’m no longer going to be posting music. That was a hard decision to make, but I think it was the right one.

My hope is that with the time not posting music is going to save me can be spent making this blog more interesting. That will be a challenge because I was so used to posting music that it became like a reflex. It was just something I did every day. But writing movie reviews and posting other interesting things on this site is not yet a habit. I’ll have to make it one.

Something I’ve done in the past and enjoyed was to post pictures of recent purchases.

This post includes two separate purchases.

Tulsa regularly does a big flea market and we like to go (when we remember that it exists). We attended last Saturday and I immediately spied a big vendor with lots of DVDs and Blu-rays. He was selling them all for $1-$2 apiece. Naturally, most of them were crap, but as you can see I found a few gems.

There was another vendor with an even bigger, and better selection of movies. I started grabbing them but then realized they weren’t so cheap. They were individually priced, the cheapest being $5 and they went as high as $50 for larger boxed sets. Those prices weren’t bad for what he was selling, but since I originally thought they were $1 a piece I rejected them outright.

Today my wife went thrift shopping and sent me a picture of the second set. I don’t know anything about Sandition, but I generally love PBS shows and since it was selling for $1 for the three seasons we knew that was a bargain. I have no idea what My Wife Maurice is about (neither does my wife but it is French and she loves all things French).

Studious observers may notice that I now have two copies of the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man. I picked the DVD up at the flea market. When my wife sent me the selection of the movies she found at the thrift store she asked me if I had The Quiet Man. I looked at my list and told her, “No.” Friends, I had not yet added the DVD to my list. So, now I have an upgrade to Blu-ray!

I love a good bargain.

Five Cool Things and Carrie Coon in the Criterion Closet

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Another (two) weeks, another Five Cool Things. This time I’m talking about Twin Peaks, Yellowjackets, Hannibal, Dark Winds, The French Connection and Carrie Coon visiting the Criterion Closet.

You can read all my thoughts on these things and more by clicking here.

Godzilla Vs. Biollante is the New Blu-ray Pick of the Week

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I am slowly becoming something of a Godzilla superfan. I’ve always loved that giant, nuclear, lizard monster but I’ve always enjoyed him more or less randomly. I’m still pretty random in my viewing if I’m being honest, but I’m now paying attention to the different versions and eras of the famed beast.

Godzilla vs Biollante is the second film in what is commonly called the Heisei Period of Godzilla films. That’s a sort of reboot of the series in the 1980s. The effects work was updated from the original films and there was a new reliance on Godzilla being a terribly destructive force (at least at first, I think he becomes more friendly in later films).

This one features Godzilla fighting a genetically modified plant (imbued with Godzilla’s own DNA and some psychic powers from a girl). It is a bit of a mess but a lot of fun.

The Criterion Collection also seems fascinated by Godzilla and they’ve done their usual awesome-looking job with this disc.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Moana 2: I quite liked the original film. It had a good story, some great animation, and at least a couple of inescapable earworm songs from Lin Manuel Miranda. The sequel was a huge hit (making over a billion dollars at the box office) but for whatever reason I never got around to watching it. From what I can tell the story is basically the same (Moana has a big adventure on the sea, along for the ride is the demi-god Maui) but there is no Lin Manuel Miranda this time which is disappointing.

Wolfman (2025): Director Leigh Whannell previously helmed a really good adaptation of the old Invisible Man story so it seems like he’d be a great fit for a new wolfman adaptation. But the previews looked dumb and the reviews were bad. Still, I am a horror nerd and I love a good wolfman movie.

The Last of Us – The Complet First Season: A fantastic adaptation of a popular video game finds a man and a teenage girl trying to survive a world full of zombie-like creatures.

The Penguin – The Complete First Season: This series is a continuation of the film The Batman and follows Oswald Cobblepot (Colin Farrell) aka The Penguin as he tries to conquer Gotham.

Forbidden World 4K UHD: Shout Factory presents this Roger Corman-directed Alien rip-off that’s actually pretty good. You can read my Friday Night Horror Movie take on it here.

Deep Blue Sea 4K UHD: Arrow Video presents this silly-sounding film about some genetically mutated sharks that grew super intelligent and, you know, started killing people.

Thirst 4K UHD: Powerhouse Films brings us this 1970s horror film about a descendent of Elizabeth Bathory who is abducted by a blood cult.

Westerns in March – Day of the Outlaw (1959)

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One of the things I love about Westerns is how they deal with taming the wild frontier, and how they depict small societies forming miniature communities. As Europeans settled across the Western United States they formed embryonic societies outside the confines of the Eastern cities. Certainly, they brought with them Western ideas of society (while destroying many of the native cultures around them) but they could literally create their communities in the ways that they saw fit.

The television series Deadwood does an amazing job of bringing forth what I’m talking about.

Obviously, Western movies take a great many liberties with history and the societies that they depict are often in the shape of (what was then) modern ideas, but it is still a fascinating concept.

Day of the Outlaw begins with a man, Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) who helped found and make safe the tiny, isolated community of Bitters, Wyoming. He killed and ran off various outlaws and badmen from the area to make it safe for women and children. He figures that gives him a say in how things are run now.

But while society sometimes needs men like Starrett, it likes to forget them once their jobs are done. Homesteaders have come to town, farmers, and they want to put up barbed wire fences (someday I want to do a study on the use of fences in Westerns) to keep their livestock from running away. Starrett runs cattle across the open land and fences get in his way.

It is this conflict that the film begins. Starrett has come into town to either force the homesteaders to not put up their fences or kill them. It doesn’t help matters that the head homesteader is married to Helen Crane (Tina Louise) whom Starrett loves. Just as the fight is about to happen Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) and his band of outlaws bust in.

They are on the run from the cavalry but need a place to button down for the night. The men are raring for a good time and figure copious amounts of whiskey and a few turns with the women would be just about right. Bruhn is a tough man, and not opposed to murder when it suits him, but he forbids the men from indulging their basest instincts. Not so much because he has a soft heart for the women but because he knows the men will wind up fighting over the small number of women in this burg, and that’s not good for anybody.

Director Andre de Toth ratchets up the tension as the outlaws grow increasingly impatient and Starrett learns to become the good man. Matters take a turn for the worse as storms blow in making it nearly impossible for anyone to leave.

Cinematographer Russell Harlan fills the screen with wide vistas of the on-location snowy mountains. The stark black-and-white photographer emphasizes the isolation and frozen hardness of everything.

Robert Ryan and Burl Ives are terrific as two hard men sizing each other up in an impossible situation. It all comes to a boil with Starrett leading the men through the mountains in a suicidal trek that he hopes will at least keep the townsfolk safe.

I liked it a lot and I recommend it to one and all.

Trick Or Treat (1986)

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I love me some silly 1980s horror and Trick or Treat is some terrifically silly 1980s horror. Marc Price (of Family Ties fame). He plays a metalhead who accidentally unleashes the ghost of his favorite rocker after he mysteriously dies. At first, the dude helps him prank his bullies but then things (naturally) turn deadly. You can read my full review here.