Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer dir by John McNaughton
I had never seen this, it's been on my list for years. I finally gave it a watch this weekend. I love Michael Rooker so it was cool to see him in his first role. He does a fantastic job. The first half of the film I kept thinking to myself, what's so bad about this film that every one always says it's so disturbing, all of the kills are pretty non graphic and we just see a lot of aftermath shots. That's until the tape scene, holy fuck that was hard to watch and extremely uncomfortable. I don't' know what it is about filming a VHS tape playing on an old TV but it made that scene feel more real and raw compared to if we were just in the room as it actually happened. Plus there's the nasty finale which was obviously coming but still just as fucked to watch as you thought it was going to be. Great film that I will rarely revisit.
Prisoners of Ghostland dir by Sion Sono
Well this was an interesting one. Sion Sono is a director who I love to watch, he's on the same level as Miike, batshit crazy with varying quality of films and he makes a fuck ton. Everything about this one is terrible but it feels very purposefully terrible. Nic Cage is mostly looking confused and it mostly works for the film he's in. Very clearly a much younger and fit double during the more strenuous action scenes. All of the Asian actors are acting at 11 for every scene, purposefully speaking in bad over enunciated English. But a lot of them also speak in Japanese as well. Sets are actually really awesome, even though there's pretty much 3 sets in the whole film. It's a really baffling film that I recommend checking out just to see what the fuck is gonna happen. Bill Mosley chews up his scenes playing The Governor. Mediocre movie elevated by it's own strangeness.
Hellbound dir by Yeon Sang-ho
I loved this mini series, it's 6 hour long episodes from the director of Train to Busan. The basic premise is that all of a sudden Angels begin appearing and giving a decree of death to people saying they are bound for hell in "x amount of days", then three creatures from hell arrive at the designated time, brutally beat the person and incinerate them. This brings on the formation of a cult around this who basically begin to build power based on how they manipulate the circumstances. It's fascinating, well acted and just incredibly entertaining. The CG is a bit rough but honestly it's with in the realm of believability of the world so you just kind of roll with it. I highly recommend checking this out, it's much better than the overly hyped Squid Games.
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