Category Archives: Film

Horror on the Lens: Raiders of the Living Dead (dir by Samuel M. Sherman and Brett Piper)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and welcome to October!  This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is horror month.  For the past three years, we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music.  That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year.

Let’s start things off with the 1986 epic, Raiders of the Living Dead!

I reviewed this film last year but to recap, it’s the story of a creepy boy, a laser gun, a reporter, and a bunch of zombies.  There’s a mad scientist involved, too.  There always is.  The movie opens with a truck being hijacked and then the action shifts to a power plant and, honestly, I have no idea what any of it means.  Technically, Raiders of the Living Dead is not exactly a good film but it is a film unlike any other that you’ve seen.  If nothing else, it’s a film that you watch and you can’t help but admire the fact that it somehow got made and went on to find a small but kind of appreciative cult audience.  It’s just a very strange film and a good one to start October with, no?

Plus, it has got the greatest zombie-centric theme song ever!  The opening credits alone are worth the price of admission (which, incidentally, is free because those of us at the Shattered Lens love you!)

So, here is Raiders of the Living Dead. 

Enjoy!

The Things You Find On Netflix: Deadly Detention (dir by Blair Hayes)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re in high school and you have to do Saturday detention in an abandoned, but perhaps haunted, prison, there’s a good chance that you’re gong to die.

That’s the main lesson that can picked up from the 2017 film Deadly Detention, which I watched via Netflix a few nights ago.  Old prison.  Sex.  Detention.  It all leads to death.  Of course, you really shouldn’t need a movie to teach you that lesson.  I mean, it’s just common sense.  STAY OUT OF THE OLD PRISONS, PEOPLE!  Especially if it’s got a death row because you just know there’s going to be a lot of pissed off ghosts floating around there….

The good thing about Deadly Detention is that it realizes that abandoned prison=death should be common sense as well.  It’s an extremely self-aware movie, fully indulging in all of the slasher movie cliches while, at the same time, poking cheerful fun at them.  Deadly Detention may start out as a horror film but, after about 15 minutes or so, it turns into a full-blown comedy and it’s actually pretty fun to watch.

Why are our students attending detention?  Well, it turns out that the majority of them have been framed, which explains why even the popular school athlete is being punished.  Why are they attending detention in a prison?  Well, it seems that a pack of rabid possums were somehow released into the school.  Now, of course, being the former country girl that I am, I immediately knew something strange was happening because possums are actually immune to rabies.  So, seriously, if you see a possum in your back yard, don’t panic!  They’re harmless.

Among those spending their Saturday in detention:

Officer Pete (Kevin Blake), the quiet hall cop,

Miss Presley (Gillian Vigman), the principal who brings her very big and very pointed principal-of-the-year trophy with her,

Lexie (Alex Frnka), the rebellious school tramp who turns out to be a lot more smarter than anyone gave her credit for,

Jessica (Sarah Davenport), the school athlete who has always been driven to be the best,

Barrett (Henry Zaga), the hilariously vain and shallow rich kid whose main hope is that, if he dies, he’ll still look good,

Kevin (Coy Stewart), the gay religious kid who turns out to actually have a lot more depth than anyone originally suspected,

and Taylor (Jennifer Robyn Jacobs), the cheerfully strange girl who knows all the stories about all the ghosts.

Now, you may be thinking that this cast of characters sounds familiar and it’s true that they’re all deliberately meant to invoke various slasher movie tropes.  At the same time, I suspect that they’re also meant to remind us of the members of The Breakfast Club as well.  However, each character is so well-cast and each actor seems to be having so much fun that they all soon develop their own individual identities.  In fact, this cast is so fun to watch that it’s kind of sad once the blood starts to spill.

But spill, it does.  Soon, the detainees find themselves having to figure out how to escape the prison while an unseen stalker taunts them over the intercom.  What sets this film apart from many other Netflix slasher films is that the students all seem to know that they’re in a horror film and they tend to comment on the action accordingly.  When it comes to a horror-comedy, a film always has to decide if it’s going to be more of a horror or a comedy and, early on, Deadly Detention embraces the comedy label and it turns out that the film made the right choice.  Thanks to a likable cast and some clever dialogue, Deadly Detention is an entertaining 90 minutes.

As I said, the entire cast is good but Alex Frnka, Coy Stewart, and Jennifer Robyn Jacobs especially deserve a lot of credit for taking characters who could have been cliches and instead turning them into fairly compelling human beings.  Alex Frnka not only gets all the best lines but she makes them even better with a delivery that’s perfectly perched between sincerity and snarkiness.  The same can be said of the film as a whole.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Boy of the Streets (dir by William Nigh)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to New York City, circa 1937!

It’s a place where the extremely wealthy carefully avoid the districts dominated by the extremely poor, like the Bowery.  In the Bowery, families live in tenements and worried mothers can only cry as they watch their sons join street gangs and their daughters settle for a life of abuse and loss.  Sure, there’s a few do-gooders.  Occasionally, there’s a cop who is convinced that no boy is a lost cause.  Sometimes, you’ll run into a doctor who is determined to provide adequate medical care to the inhabitants of the Bowery.  In fact, you might even see a rich person who is determined to spread about some charity.  But, for the most pat, life in the Bowery is just one hopeless day after another.

14 year-old Chuck Brennan (Jackie Cooper) lives in the Bowery.  He’s got a gang of boys who will do anything that he tells them to do and, despite the fact that Chuck is obviously smarter than almost everyone else around him, he has no interest in being a role model or decent citizen or anything else of that matter.  Chuck lives in a shabby apartment with his mother (Marjorie Main) and his father (Guy Usher).  Chuck looks up to his father who apparently knows important people and is often out of town on “business.”  However, when Chuck discovers that his father is actually a low-level hood who works for the local political machine, Chuck is not only disillusioned but also inspired to go find some gangsters to team up with himself.

The system says that Chuck is a hopeless case but not everyone agree.  Officer Rourke (Robert Emmett O’Connor) thinks that there’s hope for Chuck, he just needs something or someone to straighten him out.  (Like maybe a stint in the Navy….)  And then there’s Nora (Maureen O’Connor), the sweet Irish girl who lives in Chuck’s building and who is often heard singing to her deathly ill mother.

In the end, it’s all up to Chuck.  Will he pursue a life of crime or the life of an honest man?  Will he be a man like his father or will he end the cycle of crime and desperation?

Boy of the Streets is a low-budget, black-and-white film from 1937.  It was produced by Monogram Pictures and, much like Dead End (which came out the same year and featured a superficially similar storyline), it’s a film that mixes social commentary with a bit of gangster action.  The film’s low-budget doesn’t do it any favors and there’s nothing particularly surprising to be found in the film’s plot but child actor Jackie Cooper is convincingly cocky as the swaggering Chuck and Marjorie Main does a good job as his anguished mother.  (Interestingly, Main also played Humphrey Bogart’s mother in Dead End.)

Boy of the Streets is a good example of a film that I never would have seen if not for TCM.  (I recorded it off of TCM way back in June.)  That’s one reason why I’ll always be thankful for TCM.  At a time when so many people seem to be determined to destroy history, TCM is celebrating it.

A Blast From The Past: The Good Loser (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Director Herk Harvey

What’s more important?  Being a good winner or a good loser?

Does being a good winner make it more difficult to be a good loser?

Should an individual loss matter if it contributes to a team victory?

When your child loses, is it a good idea to relentlessly taunt them about it?

These questions and more are explored in the 1953 short film, The Good Loser.  This is one of those films that they used to show in schools in order to teach students how to …. well I’m not sure what anyone learns in The Good Loser.  It tells the story of Ray, who is the best public speaker in all of Kansas or, at least, he is until he makes the mistake of agreeing to mentor Marilyn.  After Marilyn beats him at the speech and debate tournament, Ray throws a little hissy fit.  It doesn’t help that everyone — from his classmates to his own father — is making fun of him for losing to his protegee.

“What do you think?” the narrator asks and I’ll tell you.  I’ve never been a good loser so I totally think that Ray has every right to drop out of school and spend the rest of his life wandering around the country, drifting from job-to-job and refusing to trust anyone.  “Second place just means you’re the best loser.”  A teacher said that to me once and the end result was …. well, actually, I think I was kinda like, “Really?  The best?”  Anyway….

Now, if you’re wondering why I’m sharing this video in October, it’s because this film was directed by Herk Harvey.  Harvey made a career out of directing short educational films but, to horror audiences, he’s best known for directing a classic horror film called Carnival of Souls.  Carnival of Souls is a film that I’ll be sharing on later in the month.  On the surface, The Good Loser may not appear to have much in common with Carnival of Souls.  However, I think you can compare Ray’s insensitive classmates to the insensitive ghosts who haunted Candace Hilligoss in Carnival.  If nothing, they’re all similarly relentless.  They’re also all jerks, if you ask me.

What do you think?

Film Review: The Wedding Chapel (dir by Vanessa Parise)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sarah (Emmanuelle Vaughier) is a painter who is frustrated because, despite her obvious technical skills, her work still lacks the spark of passion and imagination that it needs to be truly special.  Not only is her first show panned by a snooty art critic but her boyfriend dumps her on the same night!

Jeanie (Shelley Long) is a widow who is still adjusting to life as a single woman.

They are mother and daughter and together …. THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

No, actually, they don’t.  (Though I will say that I think a film or a show or a series of books about a mother/daughter crime solving team would be great and I’m a bit shocked that there aren’t more of them out there.)  Instead, what Sarah and Jeanie do is they return to the small town where they once lived.  It turns out that greedy developers want to tear down the family home. It’s all about eminent domain, which is a totally evil thing that should be condemned more frequently in the movies.

Anyway, it turns out that it’s not just the family home that’s due to be demolished.  The developers are also planning on tearing down the nearby chapel.  While Jeanie’s busy having flashbacks to her teenage years, Sarah’s getting involved in trying to save both the chapel and the house!  Helping out Sarah is a local politician and lawyer with the unfortunate name of Roger Waters (Mark Deklin).  Not helping Sarah is the local sheriff, who keeps arresting Sarah, tossing her in jail, and forcing her to wear one of those really unflattering orange jumpsuits.  Roger bails Sarah out so many times that he soon finds himself falling in love with her.  Sarah, however, doesn’t want to get tied down in a small town.  She has an artistic career to pursue, assuming that she can get in touch with her emotions.

Speaking of love, Jeanie is haunted by memories of her ex-boyfriend, Larry.  As far as Jeanie knows, Larry left for Vietnam and never returned.  She’s always assumed that he must have died during the war but what if …. well, let’s say that he didn’t die in the war.  And what if Larry (Barclay Hope) just happens to be living in that small town?

Oh my God, love’s all around!

First released in 2013, The Wedding Chapel is an exceedingly pleasant film.  Seriously, almost everyone in the film is extremely considerate and nice.  Even the oafish sheriff doesn’t mean to be a jerk.  He’s just doing his job.  Sarah attempts an act of civil disobedience but it’s literally the most mild protest that you could imagine.  This is the type of movie where everyone lives in a nice house and every lawn is perfectly manicured.  Even the abandoned buildings are surrounded by freshly cut grass.  The chapel may be deserted but you’d never know it from looking at it.

It’s a thoroughly predictable movie but, at the same time, it’s too good-natured to be disliked.  No one curses.  No one makes any racy jokes.  This is the type of movie that you could safely recommend to your great-grandmother without having to worry about her getting mad at you afterwards.  Emmanuelle Vaughier gives a pretty good performance as Sarah and director Vanessa Parise does what she can to keep the film from drowning in sentiment.

Since the Halloween season is upon us and this site is going to be 90% horror for the rest of October, I decided that the final movie I would watch in September would be the least terrifying film I could find.  The Wedding Chapel filled that role well.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Hill Number One, East of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause, Giant

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

On this date, 64 years ago, James Dean was killed in a tragic car accident.  At the time of his death, he had already filmed East of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause, and Giant.  East of Eden would be the only one of his starring roles that Dean would live to see.  Dean went on to be nominated for two posthumous academy awards and, in death, he became an icon that will live forever.

If James Dean were still alive today, he would be 88 years old.  Would he still be acting?  It’s hard to say, of course.  Some actors retire and some don’t.  (Robert Duvall, for instance, is 88 and still doing films.  For that matter, Norman Lloyd is 104 and apparently still reading scripts.)  If Dean were alive today, he wouldn’t be that much older than the stars of The Irishman.

In honor of James Dean’s career and his legacy, here are….

4 Shots From 4 James Dean Films

Hill Number One (1951, dir by Arthur Pierson)

East of Eden (1955, dir by Elia Kazan)

Rebel Without A Cause (1955, dir by Nicholas Ray)

Giant (1956, dir by George Stevens)

Big Bad Bob: Robert Mitchum in MAN WITH THE GUN (United Artists 1955)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

Rugged Robert Mitchum is pretty much the whole show in MAN WITH THE GUN, a film by first  time director (and Orson Welles protege) Richard Wilson. It seems a strange choice at this juncture of Mitchum’s career. He was just coming off four big films in a row (RIVER OF NO RETURN, TRACK OF THE CAT, NOT AS A STRANGER, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER ), then makes a low budget Western that harkens back to his days making ‘B’ Zane Grey Westerns at RKO. But that was Mitchum; always the maverick who did things his way.

The film itself isn’t bad: Mitchum plays a notorious gunslinger, a “town tamer” hired by Sheridan City to clean things up from the clutches of boss ‘Dade Holman’ (who isn’t seen til the end, but whose influence is everywhere). There’s a subplot with his ex-wife Jan Sterling, now running the dance hall girls at…

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Lisa’s Oscar Predictions For September

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the help of the festivals, the Oscar picture became a bit clearer this month.  Perhaps the biggest news is that the initial response to Harriet, which many people expected to be this year’s front runner, was decidedly lukewarm.  The other big news?  The Irishman, according to those who have seen it, may be Scorsese’s best yet.

Below, you’ll find my Oscar predictions for September.  If you want to see how my thinking has evolved over the course of this year, be sure to check out my predictions for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, and August!

Now, admittedly, there’s still an element of wishful thinking in some of the predictions below.  For instance, it would be an interesting narrative development if Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy were both nominated for best actor.  That doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen but both of them have received a lot of early acclaim for their yet-to-be released films this year.  They’re contenders, even if their reputations may make them long shots.  What’s the point of making predictions if you can’t have a little fun?

Joker is going to get big Oscar punch.  I do think it’s going to probably be a bit too controversial to pick up a Best Picture nomination but I’m still going to go ahead and put down Joaquin Phoenix as a best actor nominee.

Bombshell is the new title of Jay Roach’s Fox News film.  To me, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be that good and, quite frankly, Jay Roach’s films usually prove that just being obsessed with politics doesn’t necessarily mean that you have anything interesting to say about the topic.  That said, if Vice (a film that even leftist film critics criticized as being heavy handed and cartoonish) could pick up a best picture nomination last year, then I’m going to assume Bombshell could do the same.  With both the presidential election and possible impeachment trial looming, it’s reasonable assume that certain Academy members will be even more obsessed with politics than usual.

Meryl Streep for The Laundromat?  Why not?  They’ll nominate Meryl for anything, regardless of how bad the movie is.

Here are the predictions for this month!

Best Picture

1917

Bombshell

The Farewell

A Hidden Life

The Irishman

JoJo Rabbit

Marriage Story

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Parasite

Waves

Best Director

Bong Joon-ho for Parasite

Terrence Malick for A Hidden Life

Martin Scorsese for The Irishman

Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Taika Waititi for JoJo Rabbit

Best Actor

Antonio Banderas in Pain & Glory

Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Eddie Murphy in Dolemite Is My Name

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems

Best Actress

Cynthia Erivo in Harriet

Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story

Charlize Theron in Bombshell

Alfre Woodard in Clemency

Renee Zellweger in Judy

Best Supporting Actor

Sterling K. Brown in Waves

Jamie Foxx in Just Mercy

Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes

Al Pacino in The Irishman

Brad Pitt in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress

Annette Bening in The Report

Scarlett Johansson in JoJo Rabbit

Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers

Zhao Shuzhen in The Farewell

Meryl Streep in The Laundromat

Here’s The Trailer For Uncut Gems!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m a few days late in sharing this but no matter!  Here’s the trailer for Uncut Gems!

I’ve said this in the past but it bears repeating.  If you only knew Adam Sandler from his dramatic performances (in films like The Meyerowitz Stories, Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Men Women & Children, The Cobbler, and Funny People), you would be totally justified in thinking that he was one of our most acclaimed performers.  I mean, as strange as it may seem to say about the star of Jack and Jill and That’s My Boy, Adam Sandler is a surprisingly cable and versatile actor.

(In fact, I think one reason why we tend to get more annoyed with Sandler’s dumb films — as opposed to the dumb films of so many other comedic actors — is because we actually have evidence that Sandler’s capable of a lot more.  I mean, if you’ve just seen Sandler in Punch Drunk Love, it makes total sense that then seeing Sandler in commercials for Grown Ups 2 is going to piss you off just a little.)

Anyway, Adam Sandler deserved an Oscar nomination for The Meyerowitz Stories.  The early buzz is that he deserves one for Uncut Gems.  Standing in his way, of course, is the fact that he’s Adam Sandler.  But, we’ll see what happens.  The trailer looks intense and the film, which has already gotten some early acclaim, is directed by the up-and-coming Safdie Brothers.

Uncut Gems will be released on December 13th.

Here’s The New Trailer For The Irishman!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The second trailer for Martin Scorsese’s upcoming gangster epic, The Irishman, dropped today and …. wow.

Now, admittedly, the reaction online has been kind of mixed.  Some people are a little bit concerned that the de-aging technology is just going to be too distracting, especially considering that this is a four-hour movie.  I will admit that both Al Pacino and Joe Pesci looked a bit …. well, off.  I mean, all the CGI in the world can’t change the fact that this is a film that will feature elderly actors playing youngish gangsters.

Still, the story that The Irishman is telling is a fascinating one and, since Robert De Niro’s character claimed to be both a hitman and a participant in the JFK assassination, the film seems like it will appeal to both mafia afficianadoes and conspiracy theorists.

Add to that, is a Scorsese film and how can you not be excited about that?

That said, the main reaction to this latest trailer seems to be shock that Ray Romano is apparently holding his own opposite actors like De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, and Harvey Keitel.  But, believe it or not, Romano actually has developed into a pretty dependable character actor.  Anyone who has seen The Big Sick can attest to that.

Anyway, The Irishman is expected to be a major Oscar contender.  Of course, they said the same thing about Silence.  We’ll see what happens!

The Irishman will be released on November 1st in select theaters and will then drop on Netflix on November 27th.

Here’s the trailer!