The original “Conjuring” film was the scariest movie since “The Exorcist” in my book. Its first sequel was pretty damn good too, loaded with creeping dread and nice scares. Alas, the third time is definitely not the charm, as the second sequel THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT doesn’t live up to its legacy. There are a few good moments to be had, including the film’s opening sequence as Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) battle a demon that has invaded a young boy named David. Jullian Hillard (The Haunting of Hill House, Wandavision) is a great little actor and his scenes depicting the demon bending his body into evil, grotesque shapes while he spouts deep-throated bellows are scary, gross and pure horror fun. When his sister’s boyfriend Arne begs the demon to leave the young boy alone, it willingly jumps into Arne’s body. The opening ten minutes is loaded with visual cues from “The Exorcist” including the priest’s arrival backlit by a single, foggy streetlight and Arne pulling a Father Karras. The rest of the film never equals the opening for sheer horror. Soon, Arne is seeing and hearing disturbing things and it’s a very bad time for his work to involve a chainsaw. Troopers find Arne walking by the roadside, covered in blood. The Warren’s are called back to help save Arne and provide his defense in court, creating the first real-life example of “not guilty by reason of demonic possession” ever pled in a courtroom. Like the rest of the Conjuring films, this is based on a true story, but true life was never quite this scary. John Noble (Walter from “Fringe”) is terrific as a former Priest in town that helps the Warren’s track down the source of the evildoers. Unfortunately, the story wanders all over the place, even flashing back to the start of Ed and Lorraine’s romance as teenagers. Wilson and Farmiga are really good in their roles and convey a real sense of love and commitment to each other and to defeating the nasty spirits. But it just felt to me like I was bouncing between a routine episode of Dateline, a couples origin story and Arne being locked up with a demon in more ways than one. Jump scares and sudden sounds are well used, as always, but after the opening sequence, it was just never very scary. I come to these movies to be dragged down into suspenseful horror. Maybe it’s director Michael Chaves (the Curse of La Llorona) just doesn’t have the chops to pull it off, but It’s pretty disappointing compared to the first two films. I kept waiting for bigger or more inventive scares. Producer James Wan said that they wanted to move away from the “Haunted house” set up depicted in the first two films and I think that move leaves the film stagnant. Maybe if he’d stayed in the director chair, this would have been more compelling. At one point, a character walks into the famous room at the Warren’s with all the trinkets and memorabilia from the other, much scarier films in the franchise. All it did was remind me how much better most of those films were. The painting of that scary Nun on the wall as he walks around the room gave me more creeps than anything else in the last hour of this installment. Decent but unsurprising, pedestrian where its predecessors were superb, THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT features mild PG-13 scares bathed in R rated blood. But those first ten minutes pack a hell of a punch…… I’ll give this one a C.

I’m up for a gory 80’s horror film as much as the next guy, but one of the most repulsive gems from the era must be THE BEAST WITHIN. Not so much due to its then state-of-the-art creature effects, but because the filmmakers seem determined to make violent rape a repetitive plot point. Less than five minutes into the film, newlyweds Ronny Cox (Deliverance) and Bibi Besch (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) find themselves stranded on a country road. Eli (Cox) does the typical horror movie thing of leaving his bride in a car in the middle of nowhere while he goes to get help. Caroline (Besch) is violated by a repulsive, human like thing that looks like a muddy creature from the black lagoon, mashed up with The Fly. It’s unnecessarily graphic and pure eighties. The film flashes forward 17 years. Eli and Caroline’s 17 year old son (oh-oh) is very ill and seems to be turning into…something. Mysteries abound. Like…. • How Paul Clemens got cast as their son Michael. He couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, or in this case, pulsing rubber makeup and a mosquito tongue. • How we are supposed to be intrigued by a mystery that was basically solved in the opening sequence? • Why good character actors like Don Gordon (Bullitt), RG Armstrong (Predator), LQ Jones (Casino, The Patriot) and Logan Ramsay (Walking Tall, Scrooged) are all slumming in the same film • How much better Tom Holland got at his writing job after this mess, moving on to horror classics like “Fright Night” in 1985 and the underrated “Psycho II” in 1983. Talk about a quick learner. The best thing in the film are the practical (non-CGI) transformation effects by Tom Burman (Cat People, The Goonies). They are slimy, gross, but never very scary. They might have been more effective with a real music score playing behind them instead of the bad TV movie level score by Les Baxter. Laughably bad. Theatres had warning signs up that vomit bags would be provided at all seats. They must have sat through this mess in advance. THE BEAST WITHIN gets a repellent D-.

First, it was great in 2021 to actually see a big budget movie on the big screen with a good size audience at Alamo Drafthouse! Nothing will ever beat the theatre experience for true movie fans, especially with Alamo’s hilarious and often insightful pre-movie dives into old trailers that match the movie’s theme. CHAOS WALKING certainly looks like a big budget sci-fi adventure, powered by strong special effects and a powerhouse cast loaded with talent. As the film opens, it has a classic western feel, tinged with an edge of Kevin Costner’s “The Postman”. We are pulled into a dystopian world with two jarring qualities. Everyone’s inner thoughts can be heard and often seen as “The Noise” above their heads in a colorful vapor that circles above them. Keeping secrets can be pretty hard, as witnessed with young Todd (Tom Holland, Marvel’s current Spiderman) who seems to spend most of his thoughts bemoaning his current life on a farm and looking for something more. There are more than a few echoes of Luke Skywalker’s whining in the original Star Wars. Mads Mikkelsen is terrific as Mayor Prentiss, who oversees their town that feels like an 1800’s throwback to a macho, "testosterone rules" village. This is made all the more apparent by the fact that all the women of their town were murdered by the indigenous species of the planet, an alien race that looks suspiciously like those lanky, water-hating creatures from “Signs”. Into this world plunges Daisy Ridley (Rey from Star Wars) as astronaut and new-world settler Viola. She’s the sole survivor of their exploratory mission to the planet. Viola and Todd are thrown together in an escape adventure/quest to contact her mother ship and the 4000 settlers right behind them. Viola’s arrival feels a lot like Ripley’s intrusion into the all-male prison in “Alien3”. Only this time you can see all the thoughts of hate, fear and lust swirling around the men’s heads as a tangible threat. The first 15 minutes of the film, I was thinking how annoying that those mist thought bubbles were, but as you adapt to the communication, it becomes an interesting story telling vehicle. The sound effects team does excellent work throughout, swirling those thoughts around your own head in the theatre and plunging you deep into some very good action sequences. David Oyelowo (Selma) is excellent, if underused, as the local preacher who brings new power to fire & brimstone. Cynthia Erivo (The Outsider) matches him as the mayor of another town. Nick Jonas is all violence and vinegar as Mayor Prentiss’ son. Demian Bichir (The Hateful Eight) is powerful as Todd’s father. Every corner of the cast is filled with some of the best actors working today, which elevate the formula film. Without them, I think this would sink like a stone. I’m not familiar with the books on which it’s based, but it feels like they are cramming a lot of story into two hours. Holland and Ridley are both very good and enjoyable in the lead roles, bringing a fresh angle to what could easily be examined as a deep analogy to the traditional roles of men and women in society. Suffice to say the women are powerfully and entertaingly kicking some serious ass here. Director Doug Liman has made some great underrated films in the past decade, including Tom Cruise’s ‘Edge of Tomorrow” and “The Bourne Identity” and he delivers great action scenes and more gravitas than the movie probably deserves, as derivative as it is. With $125 million budget, the film looks great, but screams for more details and character development behind all the thundering horses, soaring spaceships and mad escapes. CHAOS WALKING looks and sounds great but about an hour after you leave the theatre, it all just wisps away like so much “Noise”. I’ll give it a C+ carried by its special effects, stunt, sound teams and a fantastic cast looking for more to do…. I did mention this reminds me a lot of Costner’s ‘The Postman” right?

The 1982 sequel AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION has a decent creepiness factor, generous doses of repulsive behavior and overall leaves you feeling like you need to take a bath after watching it. Burt Young (making his character Paulie in Rocky seem like an intelligent, jovial Disney character by comparison) is abusive husband and father Anthony Montelli. He moves his family into the worst piece of real estate in Amityville well before the events of the original film. His wife Dolores (Rutanya Alda), oldest son Sonny, daughter Patricia and two youngest children are barely in the house 10 minutes before blood starts to pour from the kitchen sink and a menacing presence lurks out from underneath a wall in the cellar. In more talented hands there would be some real scares and dark thrills here, but mostly it's just b-movie scare tactics, buckets of blood and some seriously twisted storylines. James Olsen (The Andromeda Strain) is the best thing in the movie as Father Adamsky, who makes the requisite visit to the Montelli’s new home. He’s out the door pretty quickly as Anthony threatens and screams at his family. I felt like Anthony was such a lowlife a-hole from the first scene, that I wasn’t sure if the house’s demons had any effect on him or just moaning admiration for his parenting skills. Screenwriter Tommy Lee Wallace had previously done much better work on John Carpenters “The Fog” but he did write and direct the ridiculous “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” the same summer as this film, so 1982 definitely wasn’t his best year. Wallace seems to be mining lower and lower circles of hell as he drags these characters down into child abuse, spousal abuse and repulsive doses of incest as a possessed Sonny Montelli suddenly gets eyes for his sister. In some twisted effort to go even lower, not even the youngest children are spared a blood spattered murder in the second act. Moses Gunn is the only police detective who understands Sonny is possessed, allowing Father Adamsky to whisk Sonny away for an exorcism. Honestly by that time, I’d nearly lost interest and except for some cool levitation effects and good voice over work for the demon, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen a thousand times. Clunky, cheap and seriously lacking any character with redeeming morality, AMITYVILLE II leaves a slimy, grimacing distaste in its wake, reinforcing again just how superb “The Exorcist” really was in the way it handled similar material. Director Damiano Damiani reportedly didn’t speak any English. After watching this, I’m wandering just how much of his vision got last in translation. I’m guessing he just started out to make sensationalistic trash and achieved that brilliantly. It gets a D. Blech.

Back in 1967, my brother Mark and I hit a massive old movie palace in Phoenix to see the sci-fi extravaganza BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH. As a six year old, it had everything I needed to think it was legendary. Explosions, bad guys with awesome weapons and plenty of mysterious tunnels beneath the planet’s surface. Well, watching it again in 2021 on TCM is a bit of a different experience. It’s LOADED with unintentional laughs, horrific special effects and acting just this side of an Ed Wood flick. As a matter of fact, if you gave Wood a much bigger budget from MGM, his version would probably look a lot like this. Horrible camera work, silly romantic music every time a young woman is on screen, bizarre set lighting that will make even the most casual movie watcher raise an eyebrow, this one is very much of its time. Chinese General Chan Lu (inexplicably played by Englishman Martin Benson of “Goldfinger” fame) has gone off the rails and dug a massive system of tunnels from China to the USA and created a network under much of America. Please leave all your commonsense notions of the sheer scale of that effort at the gate, especially when you see the rather small scale of his apparent army. Hey, at least he took time to decorate his lair with giant rugs and a pet falcon. Our hero is Commander Jonathan Shaw, played by Kerwin Mathews (7th Voyage of Sinbad) in a near perfect early 60’s blend of B-movie bravado and poor acting. Every woman seems to swoon in his presence, while bad guys cower in fear. It’s damn funny. Shaw’s friend Arnold (Peter Arne, so great in many Blake Edwards films) opens the film by sticking his ear to a sidewalk in Las Vegas, screaming “Ants! They’re like ants!” as his super hearing detects the Chinese marauders tunneling toward Sin City. He’s bailed out of the looney bin by Shaw to lead an opposing force beneath the Earth to defeat the invaders. It looks like the filmmakers actually built about 100 feet of real tunnel and then shot it from every conceivable angle. Blurry matte paintings and forced perspective, sub-Harryhausen effects attempt to create massive vistas, but all you’ll remember are the scenes with our actors in a jeep being bounced by crew in front of a giant spinning wheel of rock, which is supposed to be the walls going by as they drive. It’s so cheap it made me laugh out loud almost every time they used it. Thankfully just when you get sick of seeing those tunnels roll by, Viviane Ventura appears as a “world class spelunker” and geologist who has to be warned not to step on molten lava, cause “it’s hot!”. I guess she missed that day in school. The fact that all the Chinese senior bad guys are played by English actors with Spock eyebrows and bad makeup is nearly as distracting as the bad special effects. As a kid, I really loved this and you can see why, its slightly mad and looks like a globe hopping Bond movie with all kinds of wonders. Now, just enjoy its hilariously bad editing, photography, music and acting that still serves as a silly Saturday morning sci-fi diversion. This battle sputters do a D. “You fool! They’ve got tunneling machines! They’re coming in under us and you sit there like an idiot!” Lighten up, Francis…..

It was impossible to have been a teenager in the 70’s and not have many memories of how the Bee Gees music was EVERYWHERE. I’ve remained a casual fan over the years but was shocked at how little I knew about them and their influence on music as I watched THE BEE GEES: HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART on HBO. Director Frank Marshall (producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future) and his team dive deep into the history of the Brothers Gibb. Sole surviving member Barry Gibb provides a heartfelt, transparent interview that serves as the backbone of the film. Now 74, Barry narrates the clips from their very early start as teenagers with a dream. Film records also offer plenty of opportunity for his brothers Robin and Maurice to chime in, often reeling with joy from each success, along with longer-term fatigue from the overwhelming fame and pressure that came with each new achievement. On the whole, they relish their success and are often surprised by it, especially the HUGE success of their soundtrack contributions for “Saturday Night Fever”. Eric Clapton, Mark Ronson, Nick Jonas, Justin Timberlake, Alice Cooper, Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand and a cavalcade of stars are seen in current interviews and archival footage detailing the huge impact of the group on modern music. We also see the impact of the loss of their younger brother Andy and the last seventies when the Bee Gees were pigeonholed as a “Disco” act as that genre fell out of favor, even though they’d been cranking out pop hits since the 60’s! I would have liked to have seen some mention of their involvement in the horrible film “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and some behind the scenes footage or reflections from Barry on making the film, which landed with a THUD in theatres in 1978. But that’s nitpicking a really enjoyable documentary. By the time the final notes are sung, you’ll be amazed all over again by the sheer number of hit songs that the Bee Gees wrote or performed. They provide a roadmap for five decades of hits. Loaded with never-before-seen footage, HOW DO YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART earns an impossibly high note enveloped A. Barry’s recollections of his brothers and observations on aging & survival sing with a sincerity far beyond the music. Hugely enjoyable.

Charles Bronson cranked out a lot of simple, enjoyable thrillers in the seventies, with 1975’s BREAKOUT providing some decent, if dated action, laughs and suspense. Bronson is dusty Texas pilot Nick Colton. He and his sidekick Hawkins (an impossibly young Randy Quaid many years before Cousin Eddie) make a few bucks where they can, but his business and airplanes are at best second-rate. Colton is approached by Ann Wagner (Jill Ireland, Bronson’s real-life wife) whose husband Jay has been falsely accused, convicted and thrown in a Mexican jail. Jay is played by Robert Duvall in his first film after “The Godfather Part II”. He’s not the only heavyweight aboard. John Huston (Chinatown) is Harris Wagner, behind the scheme to keep Jay in the prison. Bronson is effortlessly tough, funny and enjoyable in the role. He always looks like he’s either just beat the tar out of someone or fallen off a bar stool with his buddies. He makes it look easy. Watching a mid-70’s film and its sense of humor is sometimes jarring some 45 years later. Quaid cross dressing to sneak in the jail and nearly getting beaten to death isn’t funny, nor are Sheree North’s rape jokes, but you can’t hold every film to today’s sensibilities. The first half-hour is pretty slow, taking forever to get rolling, but the last half-hour detailing the escape attempt and its aftermath is non-stop action, suspenseful and gritty in that very enjoyable, seventies B-Movie rough & tumble way. A final confrontation on a runway features the most graphic human interaction with a propeller since George Romero’s “Day of the Dead”. It’s hard to believe this was rated PG! BREAKOUT doesn’t break out of any genre stereotypes, but it’s an enjoyable throwback action flick for a rainy day. I’ll give it a C+.

In 1975, newspaper ads and posters for THE DEVIL'S RAIN shouted that you wouldn't believe the last 15 minutes of the film. So scary, so terrifying that you better be in good health. They proudly announced it was the most amazing conclusion of any movie, EVER! Whoa there, you might want to calm down on the claims folks. There are a lot of decent actors stranded in this incredibly silly, never scary attempt at thrills. William Shatner manages to belt loose a "Khaaaannnnnn!" like scream at the villain, Ernest Borgnine as Corbis. Corbis is apparently the return of a Salem Witch hunt era satanic preacher who was burned in his church along with his flock. Now he's back to terrorize the Prescott family, including Mark (Shatner) his mom,the cleverly named Mrs. Preston, played by Ida Lupino, who is only about 13 years older than Shatner. Tom Preston (Tom Skerritt from "Alien") arrives with his wife to track down Corbis and his current crew. The whole movie makes very little sense. The Devil Cult is hiding in an old New England style church in the middle of what looks like an old set from a B western. Every time there's a risk of being bored (and that's a LOT) they throw in another TV actor like Eddie Albert or Keenan Wynn to spruce things up. This was John Travolta's first film. He's almost unrecognizable and rarely present as Danny. Director Robert Fuest made a name for himself with the American International horror hits "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" and it's sequel, but ruined his career with this shlockfest, sinking into obscurity after it release. The entire budget was spent on that last "greatest of all time" 15 minutes in which a rain falls down on all the devil's disciples, melting them into puddles. Imagine the scene in Raiders where they open the ark of the covenant and all the Nazis melt. Of course someone with Spielberg's talent realized that the only way to make melting baddies entertaining is to make the head to skull transition process take about 2 seconds. Not here. Fuest makes every melting take an agonizing 15 minutes. If you've ever watched a candle melt for a quarter hour, you know how exciting this can be. Speaking of Raiders, film editor Michael Kahn worked on this film and would later edit "Close Encounters" "Raiders" and "Saving Private Ryan" for Spielberg. Well done Mr. Kahhhhnnnnnn! Seeing Ernest Borgnine run around in ram's head makeup has it's entertaining side, matched by Shatner's overacting and some of the worst stunt work I've ever seen. The scariest part of the movie is the opening credits, which play over the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Those images are far more terrifying and imaginative than anything that follows. THE DEVILS RAIN is a downpour of cheap film making, badly assembled into a forgettable mess that has a memorable place in seventies schlock. I'll give it a D because I laughed, a lot. I mean, I wasn't supposed to, but.......

My year of watching all things Kubrick continues with 1999's EYES WIDE SHUT, an adult, sexually charged final film from Stanley. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (married at the time) play a doctor and his wife in NYC with what appears to be a perfect, high society life. After Kidman shares an intimate nightmare/fantasy with Cruise, he becomes jealous and obsessed with exploring his own sexual dalliance. The central 30 minutes of the film is a luxurious, mysterious, haunting and suspenseful orgy at a luxury estate. Everything else in the film radiates out from that central 30 minutes. Is everything what it seems? Is everything we see reality or fantasy? As Cruise stumbles from one highly sexual encounter (whether he acts on them or not is for you to discover) you are dragged along into some uncomfortable and intriguing positions (literally). Not perfect, but imperfect Kubrick is better than most director's masterpieces. The ending is too pat a resolution for the previous 150 minutes and the final line of dialogue will either make you laugh or infuriate you, it kind of did both for me. Filmed in London on soundstages and sets, Kubrick captures Manhattan except for one curious detail. Where the hell are all the people that should be on those sidewalks? Languorous, beautiful, maddeningly impersonal and intimate at the same time, it kept my eyes wide open all the way to a B. Not for the easily offended.

There's a lot of talent behind the EYES OF LAURA MARS including director Irvin Kirshner (The Empire Strikes Back) writer John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York) actress Faye Dunaway and a very young Tommy Lee Jones. Alas, these talents don't ever quite gell in this silly, style over substance 1978 thriller. Dunaway is New York fashion photographer Laura Mars, who suddenly starts having visions of people around her getting brutally murdered. The problem is, she is seeing these murders real time. Tommy Lee Jones is the police detective who has a hard time believing her story but then suddenly in about ten minutes falls in love with Laura, for no other reason than the script tells him to, I guess. The people Laura surrounds herself with are pretty unappealing, but some great character actors like Brad Dourif manage to escape the film with little damage. There seems to be some over-arching wanna be message about the violent themes of Laura's work and the murders, but that comes and goes. Dunaway is in full "Mommie Dearest" mode and overacts like a high school understudy while most of the models don't exactly do anything resembling acting. Producer Jon Peters got his then girlfriend Barbara Streisand to sing the main title theme and actually most of the music is the best thing in the film, but Babs was definitely slumming here. At least all the people that got their eyes poked with an ice pick in the movie didn't have to actually watch this! A goofy, meandering and pointless D.

An interesting and suspenseful look at modern warfare, cast with some of the world's best actors, EYE IN THE SKY is definitely worth a look. Helen Mirren (excellent as always) stars as Colonel Katherine Powell. She's been on the trail of a Muslim extremist and his ex-pat British wife for six years. As the film opens, she knows that the lethal couple is arriving in Africa to meet with other terrorists. Katherine coordinates a world-wide team to track them down and capture them. She has an American team led by Steve Watts (Aaron Paul of "Breaking Bad") in Las Vegas piloting a missile-laden drone, smaller bird and bug sized drones flown by her inside undercover agent Jama (Barkhad Adbi, Academy Award nominee for "Captain Phillips") and the late Alan Rickman in his last film role as the senior officer in the British military, Benson. Benson views the multiple camera angles of the terrorists from a room surrounded by British politicians and their reluctance to make a decision is soon compounded by outside events. Next door to the terrorist safehouse where our terrorists are meeting, a progressive couple are secretly teaching their daughter to read, to learn and to play. Of course, all of those things are forbidden by the absurd, ancient and ridiculous Muslim extremists who run the town. When their daughter takes her Mother's fresh baked bread and sets up a table to sell it to the neighborhood, her spot of choice sits her directly in the kill zone for our drone attack. The film's structure is ingenious in putting us, as the viewer, in the same position as the military teams around the world and the politicians in their comfy chairs. We see everything on screens, detached but in high definition. What decision would we make? Does the collateral damage of one little girl balance taking out 3 extremists on the top 10 target list? What moral obligation do we have to get her out of harms way? If those terrorists are clearly planning to take out mass casualties that number in the hundreds, does that rationalize the action? Mirren, Rickman and cast do a superb job of showing us the passions on every side of the issue. The film does not have an agenda, you will see in it what you project on to it with your personal feelings. Director Gavin Hood reminds me of the best of Director Paul Greengrass' work "United 93", The Bourne films. The suspense is unreal and begins small, then ratchets up notch by notch to an almost unbearable conclusion. This is a terrific thriller, very well told. As the film's poster decries, THE LONGER YOU WATCH, THE LESS YOU SEE. Those words have meaning far beyond the film, speaking to our national perceptions of conflict and our stomach for a centuries old battle by extremists that has reached our American shores. Check out EYE IN THE SKY. There's plenty to see. It gets an A.

EXPORTING RAYMOND is an enjoyable documentary about "Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal working to create a Russian version of the show for Moscow TV. It's a humorous, real-life look at the language and communication barrier between what's funny here and what's funny there. A 90 minute behind the scenes peek with lots of laughs and some fun observations by Phil. We'll export this one a B.