Halloween in March, Kershner Exploration

I don't work, so I have a lot of dead time to fill and I like to set up little watch projects to work through over the course of the year to feel a little accomplished when I waste time with a film or show. The first couple months of this year were absolutely crazy, I was out of my apartment nearly as much as I was in it, so I didn't get much movie watching done let alone plan out projects. But I think I have some that are finalizing and that I will utilize this simple little blog to document.

Last year my two biggest projects were rewatching the entirety of the two classic slasher franchises, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. This year, I'm gonna do another classic slasher franchise with Halloween, watching all the Michael Myers films (sorry Halloween 3, though I do love you) through Resurrection in the early 00s. If I get through this quick, I might then add the Rob Zombie Duo and DGG trilogy. I will write my feelings on each of these films here as I watch them. I want to get a LITTLE bit more modern this year, away from all the 80s, so since I happen to own 7 of them on a used DVD collection I picked up for next to nothing, I thought I might do the Saw franchise cause I think I've only ever really seen the first three or so though I'm generally familiar with the plots of others (thanks Wikipedia).

A special project I got cooked out was motivated purely by curiosity. Irvin Kershner directed one of the consensus greatest films of all time in The Empire Strikes Back, and delivered entries in the RoboCop and Bond (unofficial) canons, but not a lot of people talk about the many films he directed in a long journeyman Hollywood career. So I want to, entirely for the first time, check out some of his non-franchise directing work and see what gems there are to be found!

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Saw III (2006): The Scariest Halloween Episode of ER

I had a rough couple of weeks for various reasons but most notably being sick, and I just barely watched anything other than YouTube videos and some episodes of old TV series I’m working on that maybe might get posts on this blog later on, but today I’m finally feeling a decent bit better though not entirely over my cold and in good spirits so decided it was time to take on Saw III. As always, let’s get the nasty bad part of the review out of the way first. The entire storyline of the Jeff character is pretty uninteresting as they didn’t learn the lessons of the first film that having significant interactions between multiple instead of an angry guy just standing there contemplating not killing people like a total prick is a significant part of developing them. Also, the traps really lost their ironic basis entirely and none of them until the last one are particularly clever or interesting, they just sound like they were lazily picked out of a hat submitted by production staff. Lik

Timecop (1994) - Kick Some Damme Ass in the Past

Like many I’m sure, I can often spend an hour just browsing various streaming platforms available to me just trying to settle on one thing to watch. Sometimes more than an hour if I’m being honest. So sometimes I just simply have to put my foot down with myself and say “Okay, you’re just going to throw on the next thing that sounds remotely interesting for the next reason” with whatever streamer I’m on at the time. Well this time, I was on the Roku Channel, and for some reason the film that was chosen was Timecop. The first thing that’s notable is that they use my favorite cheapass stunt in 80s and 90s low budget time travel movies, which is setting it in the future so that the primary time travel is to the year the film was released so most of the time they don’t have to do anything to dress things up. Sometimes, such as Terminator, this device can be used quite effectively, most of the time though it is clearly pretty low effort like here. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a pretty awful

Saw II (2005): Anybody Else's Needle Phobia Got Them Itchy?

Finally getting around to watching Saw II as part of my complete series rewatch after a few weeks since the first, this time watched on the Roku Channel instead of my beat up DVDs because it is a marginally crisper picture and I cannot do a disservice to the cinematographer, of course. Oddly enough I believe that this is the Saw film that I have seen the most times in my life, just because it’d sometimes pop up on random streamers or back in the day cable movie channels. As often with these reviews, we’ll get to the bad first. The cast is a huge downgrade, no offense to Beverley Mitchell who I loved as a kid who sometimes watched 7 th Heaven with my older sister, from the original with none of the victims being nearly as compelling as the two originals and Donnie Wahlberg’s one-note performance being a huge downgrade from in terms of nuance from Danny Glover in the lead detective role. The nu metal music video editing isn’t quite as intense as the original, but unfortunately it is

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