Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 25: The Tingler

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 25: The Tingler

Filmmaker William Castle was notorious for selling his movies with fun gimmicks that you had to go to the theater to experience. For House on Haunted Hill there was a skeleton on a zip-line that would fly out at the audience, and for The Tingler there were select seats in the theater that would shock the audience member during certain points in the movie, a plant in the audience who would pretend to faint and a fake nurse who would take her away, and at the end Vincent Price literally demands the audience to scream. It's a lot of fun.

Castle's intro to the film is reminiscent to the opening of James Whale's Frankenstein, warning the audience about how scared they're going to be, which I love. Then there's a bunch of screaming floating heads, which I also love.

Vincent Price plays a doctor who has discovered some sort of thing that allows fear to kill people, a thing he calls "the tingler." He then goes home where we discover he has a shockingly bitter relationship with his wife, which sort of comes in and out of the plot. This happens with a few characters in the movie (including Price's), where they seem to bounce around with either being evil or normal, depending on what the plot needs. But it's The Tingler, so that's not really important.

There's a genuine scare in the movie that's still effective today, and it's part of a wild sequence that makes the whole movie worth watching. There's also a wonderful meta ending in a movie theater that would probably be even better with the gimmicks, but it's still delightful.

Sure it's clearly cheaply made, but it's quick, it gets the job done, it's got real scares, and at one point Vincent Price says: "This gun can put a hole in you the size of a medium grapefruit.", and if that's not worth the price of admission I don't know what is.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 24: Cronos

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 24: Cronos

Guillermo Del Toro is now synonymous with monster movies, a reputation he worked for 25 years to achieve, going all the way back to his very first movie in 1993: Cronos.

Taking place in Mexico, the large majority of the film is in Spanish, with a couple of somewhat fascinating exceptions. For one, the opening Lord of the Rings-esque narration is entirely in English, which through me for a loop as I expected all of it to be in Spanish. Ron Perlman is the primary source of English in the movie, with occasional attempts at Spanish throughout.

This is a vampire movie, but only on a very technical level. The only vampire in the movie is the kindly old protagonist who slowly becomes one. He's not bitten by a person, instead he's bitten by a small device with an immortal bug in it. Pretty different. He never grows fangs or bites anyone, but he does get a taste for blood and has quite a hard time dying.

As with all of Del Toro's movies to come after this one, the set design and cinematography are gorgeous. It feels like a dark, bizarro modern fairy tale, which is kind of Del Toro's whole thing. There's a little girl who looks like every little girl in every Del Toro movie, and there's plenty of violence that juxtaposes the somewhat whimsical tone he sets up.

I would've liked the movie to be more focused and seen more happen to the likable grandfather protagonist, as well getting more wonderful creativity like the beetle device with all of the gears inside. I don't need so much of Ron Perlman and his boss, I just want to see a nice old man deal with becoming a vampire and get some more Del Toro madness.

While I do have issues with the movie, it's a great start to a career that, although riddled with both hits and misses, is undoubtedly unique and entirely his singular vision. If you're a Del Toro fan, you don't want to miss this one.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 23: Tales from the Crypt

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 23: Tales from the Crypt

Part of the Amicus Productions portmanteau film series, Tales from the Crypt is a horror anthology movie that spawned a cult-favorite TV series, and boy is it fun.

Asylum, which was also made by Amicus, came out only a few months later, but this is absolutely the superior film. Focusing far less on the framing story, Tales from the Crypt gives us five stories that are for the most part engaging and genuinely creepy.

The first story centers around a home invader dressed like Santa, which would be so much creepier if we didn't see his face till the end. It still works though, with a fun spousal murder plot to keep the viewer distracted from the truly scary thing lurking just outside the house. It truly feels like a nightmare scenario.

The second story is mostly shot in POV, which is very inventive and makes it feel all the more personal. There's wonderful use of the "it was all a dream" trope that's particularly impressive considering how the trope is typically so obnoxious. This is another authentic nightmare story.

In the third story Peter Cushing plays a wildly different character than what he typically does, going for a kindly Bob Cratchit-type, who ends up being horribly wronged. It's a blast to watch him play so against type, and makes me respect him all the more as an actor.

The fourth story is my least favorite, as it's not very scary due to it's playing a bit more like a comedy of errors, with a couple accidentally misusing a monkey's paw. Also, the main guy sounds like Matt Barry, which is always funny.

The last one sort of feels like a classic scary story kids would tell each other, revolving around losing losing eyesight and having to walk through what is essentially a torture tunnel.

It's perfect for Halloween and you get a lot of bang for you buck with five fun stories, so I highly recommend checking this one out. It's not exactly a fantastic movie, but it's a lot of fun.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 22: The Stepford Wives

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 22: The Stepford Wives

Probably the scariest movie I've seen this month so far, Jordan Peele called this one of his biggest influences for Get Out and it's easy to see why.

In the same vain as other classic 70's horror films like Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now (or modern greats such as Get Out and Hereditary), The Stepford Wives is almost entirely setup, which is what makes so unsettling, and the ending so terrifying.

For the first half of the movie almost nothing seems to really be wrong. The main character's husband is part of a terrible men's social club and the other ladies in the neighborhood are strangely boring, but she makes a friend and still mostly lives an average life. It's not until nearly an hour into the movie that things start to really get suspicious, and the last thirty minutes or so for it to start really getting scary.

I've never seen the Nicole Kidman remake so I can't speak to it, but it seems a bit unnecessary considering this movie was made so well the first time. The only issue I can really think of is that they name a character "Raymond Chandler", which is a very confusing thing to do.

I'm not gonna talk about any spoilers here. You just gotta see it for yourself, and remember to be very patient. It's worth it.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 21: Dressed to Kill

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 21: Dressed to Kill

Much like any Brian De Palma film, Dressed to Kill is an exhilarating rollercoaster of twists and turns. Much like Brian De Palma's filmography, it's also a bit hit-and-miss.

I'm gonna start with the bad, just to get it out of the way. This 1980 movie has very dated views on several things, despite not being made all that long ago. The plot heavily involves transsexuality, and while they bother to show one transsexual person being interviewed, the large majority is showcasing it as a mental illness and something to be feared. There's also a racist group of thugs dressed like the cast of Fat Albert that harass a white female character, which gives off some serious Birth of a Nation vibes. It also paints people with mental illness as automatically dangerous and scary, which isn't exactly fair.

Moving onto the good, I love how the movie is nearly impossible to predict. Something exciting and wild happens in nearly every scene, almost like De Palma purposefully tried to surprise himself every time he sat down to write the movie. It has more than a passing resemblance to Psycho, complete with a beginning mislead, an over-explanation of what happened at the end, and a shower kill. It's clear the De Palma was trying to rattle the audience in the same way Hitchcock so famously did. While it's certainly inspired by Hitchcock, it's also unmistakably De Palma, especially in the visuals. Split screens, sweeping crane shots, fun oners, his trademarks are there from top to bottom.

I picked this movie because it's in the Criterion Collection and Edgar Wright recommended it, so I feel like it's worth mentioning that Michael Caine at one point yells "You don't have to be a detective to figure that out!", which Simon Pegg also yells in Hot Fuzz. Figuring out references in reverse like that is always fun.

As long as you accept that it's dated and has problems, it's worth seeing for its impeccable filmmaking and storytelling techniques.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 20: X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 20: X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

Another Roger Corman film, but instead of his typical tongue-in-cheek approach, this one is actually quite tragic.

Ray Milland plays an ambitious scientist who invents a chemical that allows him to have x-ray vision. It starts with what a Corman film about x-ray vision would typically have: a party where Milland can see everyone naked (but it's 1963 so it's lots of backs and legs). He also has a very funny dance that I think is worth mentioning. But his mind quickly deteriorates and he goes from a doctor to a carnival worker, eventually landing on being a Vegas gambler. It's a very full, depressing character arc that Corman manages to pack into less than an hour and a half. It's pretty brilliant.

Milland is fantastic, as he is wont to be, but the most surprising performances comes from Don Rickles, who plays a creepy sleazeball unbelievably well. Dick Miller also shows up again, officially solidifying himself as an MVP of the month for me.

This an underseen, underrated gem that I absolutely recommend. It accomplishes so much with so little that it (ironically enough) has to be seen to be believed.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 19: Piranha

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 19: Piranha

Two Joe Dantes in a row! I haven't seen the 2010 remake Piranha 3D, which seemed to play a big part in bringing back b-movies for a while there in the early 2010's (Hobo with a Shotgun, Iron Sky, FDR: American Badass, etc.), but this 1978 "original" (much like the large majority of Roger Corman productions) is far better than it has any right to be.

Piranha is a blatant ripoff of Jaws, but it's so aware of this fact that they feature Jaws as literally a game in comparison to these piranhas. There are also significant differences from Jaws, such as the fact that they (spoilers) lose their Quint in the first half hour of the movie. The movie also tends to go on lots of big tangents (always piranha-themed tangents, but away from the main two characters), causing it to feel a bit more like the hyperactive little brother of Jaws.

Heather Menzies (Louisa Von Trapp from The Sound of Music) plays a determined woman who is trying to find the two teens who died at the beginning of the movie, and what's shocking is that her character is actually smart and has agency. She's funny, she outwits bad guys, she's actually the most defined character in the whole movie (which isn't saying a lot, but still). She's somehow more advanced than a lot of the pandering "strong female characters" that are tossed at us today. Everyone else in the movie is having fun but are clearly one-dimensional. Dick Miller (from Bucket of Blood) was in both The 'Burbs and this, so he's getting quite the representation this October (it turns out he's in all of Joe Dante's films, as well as many Corman films).

It's definitely a Roger Corman production in that it's low-budget, short, simple, and an arguably well-told story, despite being very silly and shallow. Check it out if you just wanna have a fun time.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 18: The 'Burbs

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 18: The 'Burbs

Other than Big, I'm really not familiar with Tom Hanks' early comedic work from before he became America's nice dad. I've also only seen two other Joe Dante films (Gremlins and Small Soldiers), so this combination of ignorances provided me with the perfect excuse to watch The 'Burbs.

This is a fun little Halloween comedy about nosy suburbanites becoming terrified that the new neighbors are a satanic cult. I say it's "fun" because while it is undoubtedly a comedy, there's not really any jokes. There's a comedic tone to the whole thing, with plenty of cartoony hijinks and a comical musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, but there aren't really any punchlines to the silly setups. It has the tone of a live action cartoon (probably because Joe Dante is essentially an animation historian), but it's a fairly cheap cartoon.

Although this is a year after Big, Tom Hanks really doesn't do much performance-wise in this movie until the very end (his breakdown is my favorite part of the whole movie, but then it's sort of undermined by a "twist"). Bruce Dern plays a strange ex-military character as well as he can, and poor Carrie Fisher is given an incredibly boring housewife role despite proving her comedic chops in films like The Blues Brothers 9 years before.

There's plenty of fun set design and bizarre sequences to make the movie worth watching, but as a whole it's not very strong. If you're looking for great horror-comedies, this one can wait for a bit.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 17: Beyond the Black Rainbow

 Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 17: Beyond the Black Rainbow

After seeing Mandy I became deeply curious with its creator, Panos Cosmatos, and was very surprised to discover he’s only ever done one other film. Beyond the Black Rainbow came out 8 years ago, but somehow it feels like it’s both from 40 years in the past and 40 years in the future.

Much like Mandy, this is a very unique, singular vision. I love the world Cosmatos created with the mix of 80s science fiction, old educational films, very specific editing and color grading techniques, and the dreamlike pacing and logic of a David Lynch movie.

While I absolutely love the style and the world, there’s very little to grab onto in terms of character and story. The only character that gets any sort of development is the villainous scientist, while the protagonist is a total blank slate. There basically is no plot other than “a bad scientist experiments on a lady”, which is fine except there’s so many tangents that there’s no way to get invested in that main story. Clearly Cosmatos wasn’t trying to write a timeless story though, he had the vision for a cool world and he nailed it.

If you’re into surreal, deliberately paced movies then you should absolutely see this. If you only like story and characters, maybe watch Mandy instead. 

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 16: The Neon Demon

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 16: The Neon Demon

Nicolas Winding Refn definitely has a fan base, and it’s understandable why. He has a specific, dreamy style that makes him unique, and his film Drive has become a modern cult classic over this past decade. The Neon Demon is Refn’s latest film and it certainly fits the mold of the rest of his filmography. 

I essentially feel the same about this film as I do Drive, which is that it’s very very pretty, but ultimately shallow (kinda like the characters in the movie). I wasn’t particularly invested in any of the characters, the dialogue’s not great, and there’s really nothing new here in terms of themes or ideas, but the cinematography, production design, makeup, and costumes are all (for the most part) astounding. I especially love the dream sequences, as they feel truly surreal and dream-like. My one issue with the cinematography is that some scenes were lit so dimly that I couldn’t even tell what was going on. There’s a few nighttime scenes that are like this, so be prepared for that.

The performances are all very good, with Keanu Reeves being my favorite because his character is so much sleazier than I’ve ever seen him play before. Elle Fanning is believable as the starry-eyed led, and Jena Malone also deserves a shoutout for getting one of the most demented scenes in the whole movie.

There’s a couple of good gross-out moments, it kept me invested the whole time, and it has the style down, I just wish it was more committed to the actual substance of the story and the characters. Still worth a watch though, especially if you like Refn’s other work.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 15: Teen Wolf

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 15: Teen Wolf

I take one look at the poster for Teen Wolf and the whole movie plays in my head. It's corny and ridiculous, but it knows exactly what it is and just leans into it. Michael J. Fox is a regular kid who has to walk home late one night and gets bitten by a werewolf - then (almost definitely a metaphor for puberty) his body starts changing and he suddenly becomes much more hairy and animalistic. Now he's Teen Wolf, and he's getting into all kinds of wacky shenanigans; chasing squirrels, barking at people, going on a date and having to run into the bathroom because it's a full moon, he suddenly becomes much more aggressive playing football and his teammates who used to make fun of him are now intimidated by him - all that fun stuff that's so easy to write.

Except no, absolutely none of that happens.

Instead, Teen Wolf is gloomy and dark, filled with horribly depressing synth music when there isn't just sad silence, and aggressive, creepy teens that are all clearly played by full-grown adults. It feels more like Risky Business than, I don't know, Teen Wolf.

Teen Wolf doesn't chase squirrels or bark at people, he essentially doesn't act like a wolf at all. We don't even know why he's turning into a wolf until a third of the way into the movie. He just notices long hairs in the locker room at the very beginning for no reason, and then one or two more hints that he's a werewolf happen, then he just turns into a werewolf in the bathroom. Still completely silent about how he's become a werewolf, he opens the door and his dad is waiting outside the door, now also a werewolf. According to the light internet research I just did (and reading Harry Potter), being a werewolf can be hereditary, but it would be a lot simpler and more effective if we just saw Michael J. Fox get bitten.

He doesn't play football (a sport that requires tackling and being animalistic), instead he plays basketball, something literally no wolf could ever do. Wolves do not have hand-eye coordination. No one is frightened or intimidated by him, he doesn't even have to hide being a werewolf, no, as soon as the kids and teachers see that this werewolf is good at basketball he becomes the most popular kid in school. He's the best basketball player on the team (but only as a werewolf) (weird, but fine), he's the biggest partier in school (but only as a werewolf) (that makes sense), the popular girl he's in love with wants to be with him (but only as a werewolf) (okay, that's kinda creepy), he's the lead in the school play (but only as a werewolf) (wait, what?), he's getting all A's in his classes (but only as a werewolf) (wait, are werewolves smart?), and that's pretty much all of act two.

Much like most of the movie, the characters and their relationships often don't make sense. I already mentioned how old the actors that are playing the teens are, which makes the whole tone of the movie much creepier and sadder. Watching actors in their late-20s/early-30s playing seven minutes in heaven (or in this movie's case "two minutes in heaven", what why?) immediately creates an uncanny valley effect of "this feels wrong." But more than that, there's some weirdly written characters in here. Mainly, there's a guy named Stiles (not to be confused with Ryan Stiles from Who's Line is it Anyway?) who seems to be a few characters in one. He starts out as a bizarre side character who wears distracting novelty t-shirts and bothers everyone, but then he becomes weirdly aggressive in pressuring Teen Wolf to get him beer from a liquor store (which he does). He becomes more aggressive and scary when he takes total control over a house party where he forces people to make out (including Teen Wolf with his platonic best friend, Boof (yeah), and he claws her back which seems to be played for a laugh but it's just sad instead). He becomes this maniac and actually makes the real "villain" (Mick, the jock) seem harmless. Stiles is so specific that I feel like he has to be based on someone real, that or they lost an actor and just had Stiles fill a couple different roles. The other creepy character thing is Teen Wolf's dad's relationship with Boof. Again, Boof is Teen Wolf's platonic friend that he obviously ends up with at the end. Teen Wolf's dad loves Boof and keeps encouraging Teen Wolf to ask her out, which is embarrassing but it's something a real parent would do. But the one day Teen Wolf comes home and Boof and his dad are playing basketball together in the backyard. That's unusual. What high schooler plays basketball alone with their friend's dad? How close are these two? Because Teen Wolf looks confused and embarrassed, which implies this has never happened before. Is his dad secretly a creep and just likes having Boof around? What's going on here? I'm scared. Teen Wolf also has a teacher who looks and acts like she's from the 1800's, and he's got a coach who looks dead inside and doesn't care about anything (at one point Teen Wolf comes into his office to talk and the scene essentially goes: Coach: "Talk to me anytime you need." Teen Wolf: "Okay, can I talk to you?" Coach: "Sorry, I'm very busy."). No character makes sense.

Above all of these insane details, the movie is just very lazy. It's a comedy but there's no actual jokes (seriously, there's not a single joke in the movie), there's no emotional core, the characters are completely surface-level, and almost everything in the movie feels like the first thought that the writers had.

Here's where it gets weirder: The budget was one million dollars, which sounds about right, because it looks cheap and there was no effort put into anything. But it made EIGHTY MILLION DOLLARS. It made EIGHTY TIMES its budget. It was number two behind Back to the Future, so clearly people saw two posters with Michael J. Fox on it and around a third of them accidentally walked into the wrong theater. Except they mustn't have, because Teen Wolf got a sequel (with Jason Bateman instead of Fox),  still gets referenced today in shows like How I Met Your Mother (albeit mostly ironically), and in 2011 had a dramatic, Riverdale-esque show on MTV that lasted six years.

I understand an ironic love of this movie. It's a great so-bad-it's-good movie to watch with friends and laugh at how many questions it raises, and for that reason alone I recommend it. However, if anyone likes this movie genuinely, I just can't really see how that's possible. But please tell me why.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 14: Onibaba

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 14: Onibaba

Onibaba (which supposedly translates to "Demon Hag") is a 1964 Japanese horror film that isn't particularly scary, but boy is there a lot of drama.

The story circles around a feral mother and daughter duo who live in a field who survive by killing men and taking their stuff. This sounds like a pretty decent, straightforward relationship, but it's brought to turmoil when an animalistic man comes between them. Drama ensues.

My favorite thing about this movie is the sound and the music. It's silent until a noise is absolutely essential, with my favorite example being that the music during the title credits are a jump scare. There is dialogue, but it's mostly about atmosphere, which I love. There's also some very memorable images that stem from the wonderful visuals created by production design, costuming, makeup, and the cinematography.

If you're looking for a horror film, this one's not particularly scary. There's one character who wears a scary mask and the ending is very scary, but for the most part it's just a drama centered around toxic familial relationships and sex. If any of this sounds appealing to you, check it out! It's on YouTube!

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 13: The Island of Lost Souls

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 13: The Island of Lost Souls

Before the Marlon Brando-led cinematic travesty in 1996, but after the 1896 HG Wells science-fiction novel, there was a 1932 film based on the HG Wells novel that inspired the Brando movie, called The Island of Lost Souls.

I read "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (an HG Wells novel about a mad scientist cross-breeding humans and animals) in elementary school, and naturally only remember the parts with the animal-people. This seems to also be the case with director Erie C. Kenton, who kept everything pretty surface-level instead of delving into the more philosophical aspects of the story. It seems like he mainly set out to get audiences to say: "Look at these horrible monsters! How gross!", and that mission is accomplished. However, there are still deeper, creepier comparisons that while probably not intentional, are definitely there.

Dr. Moreau (played wonderfully by Charles Laughton) is a white man in a white suit who owns a group of natives that he's torturing and beating with a whip. I don't believe the word "slavery" is ever used in the film, but there's definitely some vivid plantation-esque imagery going on, which isn't helped by the entirely white central cast (including the "exotic" native "Panther Woman", who is clearly just a white lady). There's a literal dehumanization of these natives (some of whom are played by actual non-white actors) and it ends with them overcoming their master and destroying their prison, which definitely gave me Django Unchained flashbacks. I'm not exactly sure what any of this means, but it's pretty visceral.

While there's certainly problematic aspects to the film (it is a pre-code film made in 1932), its inspiration can be seen all over the place. In the world of music alone there's a treasure trove of Island of Lost Souls references, including "Are we not men?" inspiring Devo, "No spill blood!" inspiring Oingo Boingo, House of Pain's name, and songs by The Meters, The Cramps, and Van Halen as well. It's also the go-to Dr. Moreau film, so any and all film/television references to the story are typically references to this version of the story.

It's an early talkie, with sound having been around for about 5 years when it was released, so the dialogue is not good, and that seems to inform quite a bit of the acting as well. Richard Arlen is a stiff, as is The Panther Woman, which was fine for me since I don't care about them, but Bela Lugosi is bizarrely underutilized in this film. He's Dr. Moreau's assistant and has hardly any dialogue, despite Lost Souls being released a year after Dracula made him an icon. It's strange to the point of distracting, because all I keep seeing is Dracula being awkward off to the side in most of the scenes he's in. Laughton is very good though, as is to be expected from him, and all of the native experiments are clearly having the time of their lives in their creepy makeup so that's fun to watch as well.

I understand that Island of Lost Souls has its place in cinematic history, and the animal-people are still scary to this day, but it's certainly not without its faults and corny moments (which can also be said about any of the other classic monster movies). So check it out if you've already seen the old Universal horror movies and you're looking for something else like them, or if you just want to watch a solid pre-code era talkie.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 12: Martin

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 12: Martin

Dark, grimy, and realistic, George Romero’s Martin (released in 1978) is an entirely original take on the vampire mythology, and what a sad, lonely take it is.

Spoilers. (The last sentence is my spoiler-free recommendation.)

Despite coming out the same year as Dawn of the Dead (or perhaps, because for it), Martin is a very low-budget kitchen sink drama that takes place entirely in Pittsburgh. It’s about a young man named Martin (who is actually an 85 year old vampire) who moves in with his cousin who knows he’s a vampire and wants to destroy him. However, Martin spends most of his time running errands for local folks around the neighborhood and occasionally attacks, drugs, rapes, and sucks the blood of a few women around town. These attacks are realistically sloppy, with side-by-side comparisons of how it would go in a more romantic, typical vampire story.

Much like A Clockwork Orange or Mike Leigh’s Naked, Martin features a protagonist who does absolutely reprehensible things and all the viewer can do is watch. It’s slightly different in that Martin has to suck blood to survive, but the sexual assault aspect is entirely on him. He’s a sad, lonely character who doesn’t fit in anywhere, but he’s also very much a monster, sort of like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. He longs to do “sexy stuff” with a woman who actually wants to (and eventually meets a desperate housewife who does), but in the meantime he settles for assault. He’s both unforgivable and somewhat sympathetic, the same as many classic movie monsters.

I love how low-budget and simple the film is, almost like a spiritual sequel to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (as opposed to its actual sequels). The acting is very good from the main leads, and there’s some fun supporting performances, including one from special effects artist Tom Savini (who also did the effects for this film), as well as Romero himself as a young priest. The filming style is very simple, shot mostly indoors and never feeling particularly grandiose. The attack scenes are mostly shot handheld, creating an appropriately anxious tone to compliment the terrible situations he‘s put himself in. The sets all seem to be real houses (with some strange but memorable 70s decor), and the exterior shots are all shot in and Pittsburgh.

It’s sad, violent, fascinating, and overall a great example of indie filmmaking. If you’re alright with watching something pretty gross and depressing, this is a great little movie to check out.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 11: The Blackcoat's Daughter

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 11: The Blackcoat's Daughter

The independent studio A24 is all the rage right now, and with good reason. From bizarre indie films like Swiss Army Man to classy Oscar winners like Moonlight, they've made one hell of a reputation in their 5 years of making movies. Their horror films in particular are fantastic, with The Witch and Hereditary being two of my all-time favorites of the past decade. So naturally when I heard about another horror movie of theirs that I hadn't seen yet, I had to check it out.

I almost feel guilty reviewing this film without seeing it twice, because I spent most of its runtime being confused. Characters talk low, the lighting is dark, a couple characters look very similar to each other, and it's plot is already purposefully mysterious - which are all ingredients for a big meal of me not knowing what's going on. I watched the film on my TV from my plugged-in laptop, which can often make the image look darker, so I'll call this my bad and not the movie's.

So with confusion aside, there's plenty I liked about this film. The acting is great, and I love that it's darkly atmospheric and deliberately paced. The cinematography is gorgeous, with several images sure to stick in my mind for quite a while. It hardly ever scares, instead it creeps (which isn't done nearly often enough these days), and it does a very good job of it.

I won't talk much more about it, as I really do need to see it again with more subtitles and screen brightness, but if you're looking for a new atmospheric horror movie, this is a good choice as long as you really pay attention.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 10: Asylum

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 10: Asylum

The anthology format is perfect for horror. From Black Sabbath to Creepshow to any Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, they're always fun because the great stories never overstay their welcome and neither do the bad ones. Asylum is another one of these anthology horror films, and while it's certainly not one of the greats, it's perfectly acceptable.

The main story that frames the film is about a man who comes to a spooky asylum to apply for the position of psychiatrist. He's told by the owner that he can have the job if he listens to the scary backstories of four different patients. Written by Robert Bloch (the author of "Psycho"), the four stories are fairly unique and all have fun little twists at the end.

While it's got four fun little stories, the film as a whole is not that great. It's by no means a gore film, or even that violent, but there's a sort of gross, mean-spirited quality to the whole thing, perhaps caused by its fear of the mentally ill, which doesn't exactly hold up today (with good reason). It also feels like it's trying to be a classic Hammer horror film (going as far as to hire Peter Cushing), but it doesn't have that striking technicolor look or that feeling of excitement that something like Horror of Dracula possesses. The only moment in the film I felt truly exciting was when it opened with Mussorgsky's "A Night on Bald Mountain" (which I, like most people, know from Fantasia). The central problem, however, is that it's not that memorable, with none of the characters really standing out.

Overall, if you're looking for something obscure and underrated this is good for an acceptable evening of scares (it's even on Edgar Wright's Top 100 Horror Films list), but if you're looking for a really good horror movie to watch, there's much better ones to check out first.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 9: A Bucket of Blood

Jacob’s 31 Days of Halloween - Day 9: A Bucket of Blood

This is my first Roger Corman directorial experience, and while I was prepared for something strange, I still don’t think I was quite ready for A Bucket of Blood.

The main thing that threw me off is that the movie is essentially just a parody of beatnick culture (a thing that was pretty specifically happening in 1959). It’s about a young busboy who works in a club for beat poets and artists. He’s treated in a somewhat inferior way, until he accidentally (and what a shocking accident it is) makes what he decides is an art piece and finds his way into their inner circle.

I won’t dare spoil what happens in this film because the surprise twists and turns were, for the most part, what kept me engaged in the story. The acting is as over the top as the dialogue (which is very), and the characters aren’t exactly three-dimensional. The cinematography is surprisingly decent though, with some fun visual ways of revealing the more shocking moments and pretty black and white images, despite the relatively low production value.

It’s fun, bizarre, shocking, dark, and only an hour long, so I think it’s definitely worth checking out. 

Light spoiler/trigger warning: 

If you really love cats, one is killed in the first 10 minutes. It’s very clearly fake, but still. It’s the only animal that gets hurt in the film.

Also, what a weird name for a movie that has almost nothing to do with a bucket of blood.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 8: The Monster Squad

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 8: The Monster Squad

After the monster hits of The Goonies in 1985 and Stand By Me in 1986, 1987 needed it's own kind of monster hit starring a gang of kids. The answer is somehow simultaneously satirical, silly, sickening, stupid, and simply sublime.

I never even heard about this movie until a few years ago, and part of me feels like I really missed out by not seeing this when I was ten years old, but that's largely because this is a film that could really only exist in the 80's. They essentially took what made The Goonies and Stand By Me popular, boiled them down to their most basic elements, and then blew up those elements as big as they could. The result is a group of stock kid characters (the leader that they always refer to as "the leader", his best friend with no discerning personality, a fat kid who's name is literally "Fat Kid" until practically his last line in the movie, an annoying little sister, and a cool kid who smokes cigarettes and shoots guns), near-constant swearing, horrifically inattentive parents, shockingly realistic violence, and some unfortunately pervy behavior (a girl who constantly changes in front of her window is blackmailed with nude photos of herself that Frankenstein's monster accidentally took, it's a little uncomfortable).

While this does have all of the insanity that an 80's kids movie with all of the classic Universal monsters could possibly contain, it's got plenty of problems. For one, none of the kids can act. The Goonies and Stand By Me had exceptionally talented kid actors who almost all sustained careers well into their adulthoods. This is not the case with Monster Squad, with the only actor I even recognized being Tom Noonan (Frankenstein's monster). None of these kids had star quality, comedic chops, or any kind of acting chops. It doesn't help that the dialogue is pretty terrible, with the jokes typically only being funny due to the irony of hearing them in 2018, and anything resembling drama being far too over the top to take seriously. What's truly bizarre about the writing is that sometimes it's so lazy it feels like brilliant satire (calling the fat kid "Fat Kid" and giving the leader a shirt that says "Stephen King Rules" feels like a huge wink to anyone familiar with the popular tropes of that time), but I'm still going to call it lazy.

What does hold up genuinely is the production value, which from the moment the movie starts is staggeringly impressive, especially considering what I thought it would look like. The sets are great, the costumes are solid, and the practical effects are impressive even to this day (because the brilliant Stan Winston was behind them). The movie becomes all the more special because of all of the effort that was clearly put into it from a practical and visual standpoint.

There's a solid chance you'll hate Monster Squad. It's cheesy, messy, and at multiple points genuinely uncomfortable. But there's also a solid chance you'll love it, because of the production value and maybe even because of the reasons I listed that you'd hate it. If you go into it knowing it's completely insane, there's a solid chance you'll have the time of your life. I suggest taking that chance.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 7: Psycho

Psycho

I have seen Psycho many, many times over the years. I watched it again today, and as always I had a wonderful time. It's tense, exciting, funny, fascinating, and occasionally terrifying. I recommend this film to anyone and everyone, even people who don't like horror. There are only a handful of truly scary moments, and one of them is arguably the most famous scene in film history. The vast majority of the film is an engaging, twisting plot that goes from money to something very, very different. I would go as far as to say if you're only ever going to see one horror movie in your life, it should be this one (my personal favorite horror film is The Shining, but that's far too scary for anyone who doesn't like being scared).

I haven't done this on this blog before, but I'm going to leave two YouTube links here. (So hopefully this works.)

One is the original theatrical trailer for Psycho, which is Alfred Hitchcock himself giving you, the audience, a personal tour of the set of Psycho. It's the most bizarre trailer that's ever been made, like nothing ever done before or since.

The other link is from my favorite YouTube channel, Red Letter Media, talking about the history and the details of Psycho, because I think they detail it much better through their conversation than I could here on this blog. They also talk about Psycho II, which I have never seen but am now very curious because of their description of it.

Hithcock's Psycho Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJQfFQ40lI

Red Letter Media Re-View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adGebPmRjxg

Please see Psycho. You won't regret it.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 6: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 6: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Another low-budget cult classic that I've never seen before, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is notorious for being at least partly responsible for the NC-17 rating due to its disturbing nature. While not anymore violent than a typical slasher film or creepier than a typical exploitation film, there's a purposefully off-putting tone to the whole film that's made possible by its slow nature.

Spoilers.

I came into this film ready to watch Michael Rooker kill a bunch of people in darkly humorous and creative ways, and boy did I have the wrong mindset. There are only two on-screen deaths, with the rest of the murders only having their aftermath shown, and Henry's not even the most despicable character in the movie.

The large majority of the film is about Henry's roommate Otis' sister, Becky, coming down to visit them in their Chicago home. There's tons of footage of the three of them talking in their dark, dingy kitchen, purely for the purpose of character development. Otis is on probation but sells drugs from the gas station he works in and spends the rest of his time being generally creepy- including heavily flirting with his own sister. He's somehow more terrifying than Henry, who is a serial killer, mostly because creeps like Otis are far more common in the world than pathological murderers like Henry. Eventually Henry introduces Otis to the joys of killing people, which ultimately ends with Otis assaulting Becky, forcing Henry and Becky to kill him and dispose of his body. Then, after all of this, Henry kills Becky because he just can't help it. These are the main story beats of the film, with the rest being filled in by footage of Henry driving around Chicago and the main characters' many kitchen conversations.

The deliberate pacing of the film thoroughly surprised me, especially considering the film is under 90 minutes, and it may mean I have to watch it again at some point because I had wildly different expectations for what it ended up being. However, I do like the grimy, gross tone that writer/director John McNaughton was able to achieve with the film's tiny budget, almost entirely through implications as opposed to actual action. There's some great shots of Henry's dead victims, along with the sound of him murdering them, but the only truly violent onscreen moments are Otis shooting a helpful stranger and Henry killing Otis and dismembering his body.

If you're into serial killer films, this is a definite must, not just for its huge influence on later serial killer films, but for its realistic approach to showing what a serial killer is like when they aren't serial killing people. If you're just looking for a good scary movie to celebrate the Halloween season, this might be a little slower than what you want.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Documentaries don't often find their way to the theatrical spotlight - they have a much safer home on TV and internet streaming services. So when Won't You Be My Neighbor? made the box office top 10 on its first weekend and became the highest-grossing biographical (not nature, concert, or political) documentary of all time, it was clear that the world must be feeling nostalgic for someone as kind and understanding as Fred Rogers.

The film essentially functions as a summary of the broadcasting history of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, from its start as a low-budget public access TV show to its booming success as a low-budget public access TV show.

I was fascinated by all the coverage of this subject because I didn't personally grow up Rogers' show (I was more of a cartoon kid myself). So seeing all of the "dangerous" subject matter for children that he would cover in such a sweet, gentle way was absolutely mind-blowing for me to see for the first time. In the first week of his show he covered the Vietnam war, and went on to teach kids about any subject from divorce to how it's okay to feel sad or angry to death itself, all with a calm smile on his face. I can't help but feel like I missed out on watching something truly wonderful, which makes me all the happier that I watched this documentary.

Director Morgan Neville had previously won an Oscar for 20 Feet from Stardom (which I still haven't seen), and it's pretty safe to say he's a shoe-in for another one this year. That being said, while this is excellent coverage of the show and everyone who worked on it (from the fascinating actors to the hilariously mischievous crew to Rogers' own family), I'm not sure that we get enough of a glimpse into the man himself. Everyone interviewed says that the Rogers on the show is the same Rogers in real life, but I can't help but feel like he could've been explored further as a subject. Of course it's tough when the subject of the documentary is already dead, but I wanted to see more Fred Rogers. What was his relationship with his family like? His relationship with his wife seems great, but his sons seem somewhat distant. They said he would vent some of his anger and sadness through his piano playing, why not talk more about that? Perhaps it's to preserve the mystery and the public image that he kept so well by simply being who he is, and my asking to learn more about his personal life might be over the line. After all, this is purely a personal complaint. Neville clearly had a focused story that he wanted to tell and he accomplished that goal magnificently.

Anyone even moderately familiar with Mr. Rogers, whether it be through his show or through the many parodies of him (some he liked some he very didn't), should absolutely check this doc out. Just be ready for some serious feelings.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 5: Misery

Misery

The last time I saw Misery was around 5 years ago, so I was due for a rewatch of  this classic dramatization of a famous person’s worst nightmare.

Writer/director Rob Reiner is also responsible for films like This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, Princess Bride, and A Few Good Men, none of which have anything in common other than being stone-cold classics. In a way, it’s this lack of a trademark that is Reiner’s trademark- he always allows the story to be told without any fancy directorial flourishes- and Misery is as straightforward as they come, which in a way is what makes it so special. Act one is barely over by the time the credits have finished rolling- ending with Sheldon being dragged out of his crashed car by Wilkes- and the movie then takes its sweet time in act two, allowing the tension to build and build until it’s practically unbearable.

Another thing I realized is how much I like Buster (the town sheriff played by Richard Farnsworth) as a character. His bickering banter with his wife is delightful, and his curiosity about the case is so grounded and believable it’s impossible not to be on his side. Even though he is the light side of the story, cutting back to him still furthers the film’s tension because he’s always so close to finding out where Sheldon is being held captive. His last couple of steps to finding Sheldon are certainly a stretch, but it’s forgivable due to what ends up happening to the sheriff.

The design of Wilkes’ home also deserves a shoutout, because it’s not the creepy old decrepit home that’s so common in horror films. Much like the interior of the Bates house in Psycho, what’s terrifying about Wilkes’ home is that it’s basically any grandma’s house. There are some ceramics and dolls, as well as a surprisingly incriminating scrapbook, but there’s no spiderwebs or mold or anything like that. It’s the context and the seclusion that make it terrifying.

As with all of Reiner’s films, the star of the film is the story and the characters, brought brilliantly to life by a great screenplay by William Goldman and the wonderful cast, mainly James Caan and the role made iconic by Kathy Bates. If you’ve never seen it, now is the perfect time. 

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: Bad Taste

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: Bad Taste

Peter Jackson, writer/director of the Lord of the Rings films, started his gargantuan career with this wild, creative, and endlessly silly gore movie, which he made almost entirely on his own.

Only having done a few shorts before, at the age of 26 Jackson released Bad Taste, a sci-fi/horror/comedy film about a group of aliens who don human appearances in order to capture real humans and eat them in the form of an intergalactic snack called Crumb's Country Delight. The plot's not very important though, what's really fun about the movie is how creative Jackson's filmmaking is in the context of his extremely small budget.

There's all sorts of fun camerawork and plenty of both gross-out and just plain goofy gags, but the real star of the show is Jackson's special effects. All sorts of masks, prosthetics, gore, blood, ooze, explosions, and models were used in this film, and they're all passionately and expertly created by Jackson himself. It's this handmade quality that makes Bad Taste worth anything at all, because the actual story and dialogue are dumb to say the least.

The actors are all Jackson's friends, and they're also the crew of the movie, so there's lots of room for forgiving their not-so-great acting - but what I can't forgive is the musical score, which is so bad it sometimes actively works against what's happening on the screen. The script is also bad, but with a name like Bad Taste it's clear to tell what Jackson was going for, and that goal was certainly accomplished. There's plenty of gore humor, a clear precursor to the far more brilliant Dead Alive (or Braindead), which I saw last year and still highly recommend.

If you have interest in becoming a filmmaker or you just love sci-fi, gore, and practical effects, this is a fun little gem to check out. If you only like movies where there's a great story and interesting, three-dimensional characters, this is absolutely not for you.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 3: Gerald's Game

Gerald's Game

Most Seinfeld fans will be familiar with the episode where George is with a woman who cuffs him to the bed but then she has to leave unexpectedly, leaving him alone in her apartment, cuffed to her bed. Four months after that episode aired, Stephen King's novel Gerald's Game was published, which essentially presents the exact same situation except this time the woman is cuffed to the bed and the man dies. 25 years later, Netflix turned it into a movie.

Gerald's Game is one of those great "What would you do?" ideas, like the question "What would you do if you had the powers of God?" made Bruce Almighty and "What would you do if you were buried alive?" made Buried. "What would you do if the guy who cuffed you to the bed suddenly died?" may not be as common of a question, but it's essentially the same as being buried alive; it's a survival film, but on more than one level.

Spoilers.

After Jessie has been dropped into this situation, she does what anyone would do: go crazy. Versions of both her dead husband and herself appear to talk her through the situation and to weigh her options of survival. This takes us to occasional flashbacks to her as a child where her father was sexually inappropriate with her. It's the typical kind of intimate, uncomfortable, bordering on unnecessary detail you'd expect from a Stephen King novel, but in the case of this kind of story, where the situation is so simple that the details are everything, it works.

Carla Gugino is wonderful at playing every aspect of her character; it's inarguably her movie and she nails it. Writer/Director Mike Flanagan does a great job of simply telling the story in a very straightforward way (I highly recommend his earlier film Oculus), and I commend him for also editing the thing all by himself.

While they could've maybe gone farther with how crazy she goes and blurred the lines between fantasy and reality even more, I like the way they keep almost everything grounded in reality (particularly the Moonlight Man, which was a twist I loved). It gives the whole story a sense of realism, like this could've really happened.

Though there are a few logic concerns (Why would they leave the door open? How had they had a multiple-month dry spell without ever addressing his aggressive fantasies?), the movie as a whole is intriguing and entertaining from start to finish. If you're in the mood for something dark and twisted this Halloween season, this is a solid one to check out.

American Animals

American Animals

Following the tradition started by films like American Splendor and 24 Hour Party People is the newest entry into the category of "subversive biopics": American Animals.

Based on a real-life heist by four college students in the early 2000's, the film blends dramatization and interviews together to the point of occasionally having the actors actually interact with the real people they're playing. While this isn't really anything new, it's immensely entertaining to see the similarities and differences between the actors and the people, especially when the real people are every bit as interesting as their dramatized counterparts.

The story itself is the star of the movie, and writer/director Bart Layton (also responsible for The Imposter, which I haven't seen) does an excellent job of retelling it. While for the most part it's shot in a fairly standard way, there are a few moments of truly great filmmaking, such as their ideal fantasy of how the heist will go. The actors all do a fantastic job, and the script is great at always feeling believable as opposed to being forcefully clever. It's all about this real story.

If you like The Social Network, Ocean's Eleven, or American Splendor then this is definitely a movie to check out. If you like all three you should've seen it already.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 2: The Halloween Tree

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 2: The Halloween Tree

On the second day of October, it's a classic 90's cartoon I've never seen before!

Growing up addicted to Cartoon Network and loving Halloween, I'm not quite sure how I ever missed this animated Ray Bradbury adaptation. Premiering in 1993, there's lots to like about this TV special. The animation and backgrounds are gorgeous, there's creativity from start to finish, and it features the voices of the late great Leonard Nimoy and Ray Bradbury himself.

I wasn't familiar with the story, so this was my first time experiencing it. It's about a group of kids who, while chasing down their sick friend, end up at the house of an old man who transports them to history lessons about each of their costumes. He teaches the kids the origins of classic Halloween archetypes such as mummies, skeletons, witches, and monsters. It's both educational and consistently entertaining, a feat that few other cartoons can achieve.

All of these elements make this a perfect movie for a child to watch during the Halloween season, and adults can certainly enjoy it as well. Check it out if you haven't seen it!

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 1: The Lost Boys

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 1: The Lost Boys

October is here! Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I like to get as much out of the month as possibly I can, and I've found that the best way to do that is to watch a Halloween-related movie every day of October. So, to start things off I watched an 80's cult classic for the very first time: The Lost Boys.

This movie has a lot going for a teenage audience: sexy vampires, motorcycles, cool music, comic books, evil grownups, and an oddly specific fascination with Jim Morrison. The cult status certainly tracks, and in some ways it's earned, because a modern take on the vampire mythology was a novel idea at the time, and vampires have always been a subject that young people have a natural fascination with due to the whole "eternal youth" thing.

The problem I have with The Lost Boys is it's kind of a tonal mess. The vampire plot with the older brother has a dangerous, sexy edge to it which seems to be what Joel "Director of Batman and Robin" Schumacher wanted the predominant tone of the movie to be, but then there's the plot with the younger brother and two other kids trying to hunt the vampires, which is like The Goonies but more hardcore (even featuring Cory Feldman), and then there's a wacky grandpa character who seems to have escaped from a silly John Hughes movie. If the focus was entirely on the teen vampires it could've been a lot more interesting, and if the focus was entirely on the boys hunting vampires that still could've been fun, but when equal time is given to both plots it causes the tone to teeter all over the place. Throw in a crazy grandpa and you've got yourself one pretty unbalanced movie.

Although the script isn't great (apart from the tone, the dialogue is far from memorable), the filmmaking is solid. There's some cool camera work and fun makeup and practical effects that definitely make the movie worth watching. Creativity can be found in almost every scene, it's just not always presented in quite the right way.

It's worth seeing once as an adult, and I'd highly recommend it to teenagers.

Oh, and even though I think the grandpa character is bizarre and ridiculous, he gets to deliver one of the best final lines in a movie I've ever heard, although it's a punchline that really only works if it has an hour and a half setup.

BlacKkKlansman

BlacKkKlansman

Anyone who knows the name "Spike Lee" probably has a few associated thoughts that immediately come to mind. Things like how outspoken he is in real life, how prolific he is, how much of a mixed bag his filmography is (leading me to refer to him as the Stephen King of filmmaking), but they probably won't associate him with the word "subtlety." This is often the punchline to any Spike Lee joke, whether it be how he portrays white people (or even how he sometimes displays black people), or how he'll sometimes break the fourth wall to practically scream the point of his movie directly at the audience; the man is known for hitting his viewer over the head with his message. But sometimes he strikes gold with this style, whether it be Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, or now, BlacKkKlansman.

In the words of Troy Barnes from Community: "There is a time and place for subtlety, and that time was before Scary Movie." (This is particularly funny when Donald Glover (also known as Childish Gambino) is the one delivering that line, with his now-iconic, in-your-face music video for This is America gloriously damning subtlety to hell in the first ten seconds.) There is no time for subtlety in this day and age, because the majority of people aren't going to take the time to read between the lines, and things are a little too crazy right now to hope people are going to understand cryptic symbolism. This movie couldn't be Annihilation because the subject is simply too important to risk people not getting. Therefore Spike Lee makes direct allusions to current events throughout the film, and a surprise ending that is absolutely gut-wrenching. While the movie is often incredibly fun and funny, it never takes its finger of the trigger of its message. This movie needed to be made now, and it needed to be made by Spike Lee, because otherwise it would never be in multiplexes and therefore be given a chance to be seen by the masses.

Steering away from the sociopolitical angle of the film, the actual plot and characters are a tense joy to watch. It took me a bit to warm up to John David Washington (Denzel's kid), but by the end of it I absolutely adored him. Him and Adam Driver give perfectly grounded performances, helping create the illusion that these two guys are cops and not actors, despite the fact that both of them have to go undercover and act their way out of some scary situations. And boy, are those situations scary. I call it a "tense joy" because there's never a moment where I felt like these guys were safe (especially since this is somehow all a true story), but there's often surprisingly effective humor that gives very necessary breaks to the tension. Topher Grace is the only person who could play David Duke, Laura Harrier is wonderful as Patrice, Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen is terrifyingly believable as the shrewd klan-member Felix, and a special shoutout goes to Corey Hawkins who expertly delivers one of the most powerful speeches I've seen in a modern movie. The soundtrack and the score are also a joy, and the cinematography has that trademark exaggerated Spike Lee style of canted angles and frequent intermittent style changes. 

I'm not gonna get into spoilers because I think it's important that everyone go see this movie, mainly because this really happened, and because these guys are still out there. But if you watch movies to escape and don't want to be reminded of what's going on in the world, then it's definitely not for you.