“Lights Out”

 

Trailer HERE

 HOLY SHIT!!!!!

Lights out finally hit theaters this weekend, I was fortunate enough to catch it early in the morning yesterday and if you haven’t seen it yet you should really get to the theater now..before dark. This movie played off of one of humans most basic fears, the fear of the dark and created a masterfully terrifying tale. I’ve been pumped to watch this movie since I saw the first trailer a few months ago and man oh man, the wait was definitely rewarded. The film was directed by newcomer David F. Sandberg. David has a long list of shorts on his resume and surprisingly so, Lights Out was based on one of those shorts that he had directed back in 2013 (Click HERE to watch it). Isn’t that some freaky shit? Now imagine that tension but for an entire hour and twenty minutes. I haven’t watched his other shorts but I’m going to look them up as soon as I’m done with this review as I’m sure many producers did as soon as they watched ‘Lights Out”. This is David’s first full feature on the big screen but his effort into the finished product seems like that of a seasoned horror director. 

The film starts out with this scene picture above that we’ve all seen in the trailer & which is the scene that makes up the entire short. The only difference is the location, in the short Lotta Losten who’s credit is Woman is stalked by a strange shadow in the dark in her apartment and in the film Lotta, now credited as Ester is closing up shop when she encounters the shadowy nightmare. After her encounter she rushes over to warn her boss Paul, who’s also in the shop closing up for the night. Paul is played by Billy Burke, Ester’s tries to tell Paul that she saw some strange shit but Paul is on the phone dealing with family matters and shuns her warning off. Ester then takes off, which I’ll be honest was the only part I wasn’t to crazy about because if I saw some creepy figment in the dark I’d either wait for him to get off of the phone or I’d just hang it up for him and drag him outside to tell him but its ok, it’s a movie and I understand not everyone would act the same. There actually could be a lot of people who might have just thought it was in their heads and left after being blown off by Paul. As a result of not listening to Ester, Paul soon has his own run in with the haunting figure in the shadows and although he learns it’s weakness, light…Paul doesn’t make it home that night from work.

After that opening to set up the tone we are introduced to the cast that’ll take us through this frightful ride. Maria Bello plays Sophie & Gabriel Bateman plays her son Martin. He (Martin) has also been seeing the shadow in the dark and one night runs into his moms room to seek the comfort of her safety but in turn realizes that his mom might know more about the strange figure than we all thought. This is very apparent when Sophie who’s alone in the room when Martin rushes in asks him “Did we wake you?” while looking towards a pitch black closet in a room. CREEEEPY… Just writing that gave me chills because there’s nothing scarier as a kid than running into your parents arms for safety from the unknown and then having your parent turn around and actually talk to that unknown…shit’s just not right. As the film continues to unfold we learn that Sophie is slightly off her rocker and Martin soon seeks help from his older sister Rebecca played by Teresa Palmer. Rebecca is in her late 20’s early 30’s maybe, lives on her own and is in a “complicated” relationship with this guy Bret played by Alexander DiPersia. Rebecca gets called to Martin’s school to pick him up and shortly after they get in the car Martin asks Rebecca if he could stay with her for a few nights because their mother was acting crazy. Rebecca is dismissive of this at first claiming that she understood and that their mother had always been this way and that she would get better. He tells her that he hasn’t slept in a few days because he had been tormented by this shadowy figure and that Sophie had been talking to the woman in the dark whose name here we learn is Diane.

Rebecca confronts her mother when they get to the house and learns that she in fact had been off her meds for a few days. As a result she ends up taking Martin with her to her apartment. That night after she plays big responsible sis with Martin Rebecca herself has a run in with Diana. This was one of my favorite scenes and I really wish it hadn’t played out in the trailer because it took away from the experience a little bit but it was still amazing.

In the scene pictured and mentioned above Rebecca wakes up to a strange scratching noise. She’s sleeping in the living room because she gave up her bed for Martin like a good sister always does. Unfortunately the living room window faces a red neon tattoo parlor sign. So every 20-30 seconds the entire room lights up red giving it the effect you see above. So Rebecca wakes up to this scratching noise and sees Diana crotched on the ground carving something into the ground. I won’t waste my time explaining the rest because it’s in the trailer but I wanted to mention it because it was one of my favorite scenes.

As the rest of the movie plays out we find out that Sophie as a child knew Diana. Diana had a skin disease that made her very sensitive to sunlight. Hence why she can’t be in the light. I always find the need to include these type of details questionable but I like how Mr.Sanberg presented the material. Social services eventually comes to get Martin from Rebecca because she isn’t his legal document forcing Rebecca to go stay with Martin and her mother. Her complicated relationship also materializes throughout the movie because what’s a good horror movie without a little love. It’s all about balance, plus people connect to being in love and having relationships so when you kill one of those people it’s twice as effective. Sophie has us all believing the whole time that she’s in cahoots with Diana but during that night she slips Rebecca a note that says “I need help”.

The ending of this film was really what took it to another level for me. I won’t spoil it for everyone but just know that while it looks like the rational ending would entail destroying the evil with some type of light, that’s not how it ends. The ending was one that I thought could be a possibility but today’s horror genre has failed me so much recently that I didn’t believe David would deliver. However he did just that and that’s why I will defintely be buying a ticket to his next film. Everyone make sure you get out to the movies and check this one out. This is what horror movies use to be at some point and it’s great to see films like this taking it back in that direction. Thanks for reading everyone and don’t forget to check out my blog We’reNotRolling.com where I share my stories, rants and experiences from working in hollywood the last 10 years. Oh and here’s a pretty image to think about before you go to bed tonight..

-PEACE

Stranger Things

Trailer HERE

Holy Shit!!!!!

Need a new show to binge on this weekend? Look no further than the new Netflix show “Stranger Things“. It was released on Friday July 15th and I watched the pilot episode this past Saturday night and knew I’d have to reserve 7 hours somewhere in my Sunday to watch the other 7 episodes because I was hooked. If Stephen King & Steven Spielberg had a show, it would be called “Stranger Things”. However they’re not the masterminds behind this wonderfully terrifying show. That credit goes to Matt & Ross Duffer or The Duffer Brothers as they call themselves. These guys created, wrote & produced all the episodes and directed 6 of the 8. The other 2 were directed & produced by Shawn Levy. Shawn has a few directing notches under his belt, 46 to be exact. He’s directed movies such as “The Internship”, “Night at The Museum” & “Date Night”. The Duffer Brothers on the other hand apart from “Stranger Things”, as far as directing credits goes these 2 talented young men only have a movie called “Hidden” 2015 and then 2 shorts “Eater” 2007 & “We All Fall Down” 2005. I love it when Directors come out of nowhere and deliver such strong and just fucking awesome content. I haven’t watched any of these other films they directed but if they’re anywhere as interesting and well told as “Stranger Things” I will definitely be looking for them online or on Netflix soon. These 2 guys fucking killed it on this show and I can’t wait to see what else they have to bring to the table. Netflix will surely be giving these guys a second season or we shall start a petition and annoy the gigantic studios slightly. They don’t care about our petitions but hey as fans it’s all we can do.

Alright so let’s get into this. At the beginning of the show we’re introduced to this small town, the kind of small town where everyone knows name (and there always glad you came..sorry I had to). It’s the 80s and everything is going good until a small boy by the name of Will Byers played by Noah Schnapp disappears on his bike ride home late one night from his friend’s house after he encounters a creepy long limbed creature in the middle of the road. The town slowly gets turned “upside down” as his family, friends & town sheriff continue their search for Will and in turn start to discover that Wills disappearance might have been caused by that of supernatural powers.

This show has a lot of great aspects to it but as always I think most the credit has to be given to the cast that brought this great story to life. First I’ll start with Winona Ryder because she was the reason  I wanted to watch the show in the first place. Winona is one of those actors that no matter what she’s in, she will definitely be at the top of her game. In “Stranger Things” Ryder plays Joyce Byers mother to Will (The lost kid) and her older son Jonathan Byers played by Charlie Heaton. Winona is the first one to make contact with Will in this supernatural world that he’s in that they name “The Upside Down” when she notices that he is powering the lights at the house. Everyone around her as usual thinks she’s nuts because that’s always the case and as cliché as it sounds, in reality it’s probably the most accurate description of what would happen if a mother or father that just lost their kid started telling everyone they talked to that he was alive and talking to her through the lights. Ryders technique to speak with Will evolves to the point that she writes the alphabet on a wall and lines each letter parallel to a light on the string of christmas lights that she hangs above the letters so that Will can light the coinciding light to letter and communicate with Joyce. It was actually a very great idea and I had never seen it before so I wanted to make sure to mention it.

Then there was the kids, Will’s friends that we follow through this search for Will and like Joyce they still believe that he is alive wherever he may be. Starting from left to right you have Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) & Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson). Lucas, Mike & Dustin all go looking for Will end up only finding his bike but in hid place they find Eleven. Eleven is confused and lost and in a hospital gown which always means some shit went down. I don’t want to get to into detail about Eleven because even though this is a review I like to keep it short and leave a little mystery to the show. All you need to know is that Eleven was held by the government and like many shows and movies that we’ve seen before they fucked with her and turned her into a sort of weapon. Alright that’s all I’m saying about the character. As an actor this girl is just such a treat to watch. She truly is very talented and you can’t help but connect and love her character. Plus her name is Eleven which for whatever reason always makes everyone a little more bad ass on-screen. If you have a character named after a number there’s always that intrigue about why that’s their name. In this case was there 10 before her? We don’t know but I expect to find out in season 2 that Netflix is going to greenlight any minute now..wink wink. I expect to be seeing Millie start popping up in several movies as the years continue. Same goes for these other 3 young gentlemen, Caleb, Finn and Gaten are all just a joy to watch on the screen. Especially Dustin, you can say he’s the comedian of the group but not in the dumb way. He’s witty and wise and the netrual party friend in the group. Every group of friends needs that one person that always plays referee and jumps in between arguments. And his hat kept reminding me about Pokemon. I might be playing Pokemon Go a little too much. It always amazes me that kids can be this great at portraying these fictional character but all 4 of them achieve this feat with ease. Well at least it looks like they did it with ease to me because I’m not an actor, if you ask them they might have a different opinion. 

Now before I wrap this up, I want to talk about all the 80’s nostalgia that this series delivers because as an 80’s kid I couldn’t help but love every bit of it. There’s scenes with moments like Dustin asking Eleven to fly a toy Millenium Falcon with her mind (Can she do that, who knows..WATCH THE SHOW!), scenes where Eleven is flicking through the TV channels and comes across HE-MAN (I fucking loved He-Man, that was my shit!!) & other subtle moments like when Mike’s sister Nancy played by Natalia Dyer  is at the locker with her crush Steve Harrington played by Joe Keery and in the locker you can see a Trapper Keeper (Remember those things?!). Besides all that very obvious 80’s memorabilia the show in general just has that old school, Goonies, E.T, Stand by Me and It feel because of the kids and this adventure they go on to save their friend from the mysterious monster. There are goverment guys chasing kids on bikes, kids dealing with the pressure of being someone they’re not to fit in, bullies picking on our heroes and just everything else that was great about 80’s movies. Lastly before I want to talk about the title sequence to this show because I don’t know why but it made me love the show even more. It just also had that 80’s Stephen King horror movie feel to it. The red letters against the grainy black was just genius to me, it felt like I was watching the beginning of a VHS tape (if you don’t know what that is, you’re a young mother fucker..google it kid!). I like when shows put that extra effort in there to make their intro stand out and add to the overall feel of the show. Alright I’ll stop running my trap, go watch the show. You won’t be disappointed and if you are, you have no soul. Hahahaha..Thanks for popping in and reading. Don’t forger to follow us on Twitter, FB & Instagram..Till next time my Film Fanatics.

-PEACE

Ghostbusters 2016

Trailer HERE

  GOOD SHIT!!!

Hello fellow film geeks, nerds, squares, die hards and casual movie goers. How are you? Welcome to another review or whatever you want to call this on The Film Can. Well Ghostbusters is finally out and all our worries can be laid to rest the consensus is overall positive and I agree. Paul Feig and this wonderful, funny, talented cast have added another chapter to this Ghostbusters universe that some of us hold so dear to our hearts. There was apparently a lot of people upset that they were making this movie. I don’t like to waste my time reading ridiculous shit like that so I can’t tell you the specifics but I do know I had overheard that people were upset with the all female cast. So like I said before this is a ridiculous reason to be upset and talk shit about a movie before it’s release. As a Director their number one job is to find the actor/actress that best fits the part regardless of age, sex or ethnicity. Some of us become so invested in these fictional worlds & characters that we never give anything new a chance because we fear change. Change is good and should always be welcomed before being judged.

Now I’ll be honest because well..that’s what you came here for, honesty. The new Ghostbusters was good but not as great as I wanted it to be and I think that’s because they made it a reboot as oppose to a sequel. I remember at one point there was a rumor going around or a script for a new Ghostbusters movie that took place a 20 years after the originals. The interesting part though about this rumored script was that the story took place after the Ghostbusters had gone nation wide and the Ghostbusters now were as common as fireman and police. Every city had their own Ghostbusters station. The original cast was going to play the same characters from our beloved originals and we would meet the new group that would carry on the torch. I FUCKING LOVED THIS IDEA!!! It still gives me chills thinking about it and I hope they still incorporate that somewhere in the next sequel or 2 because there will definitely be a few more after this one. I just thought that was an amazing concept and was broken-hearted when I found out this was going to be a reboot.

First off I have nothing against reboots but I feel movies should only be rebooted if the original was a shit show that shouldn’t have been (Like Batman V Superman, hopefully someone someday in the future will reboot that and give us the BvS movie we all wanted). This wasn’t a movie that had to be rebooted, the originals are god damn national treasures to the film community. The world of the Ghostbusters lends itself to the story opportunity to have more than one group of Ghostbusters so why not just follow a new group or at least have the original cast maybe hire the new batch that we follow. I think that because this was a reboot we didn’t really explore the Ghostbusters world any further. This movie was trapped from standing on its own 2 feet because of the need to stay true to the originals because it’s a reboot not a sequel. This was the only major overall problem I had with this film and it’s what kept it at just a GOOD SHIT rating for me.

Now with the bad out-of-the-way lets talk about some of the good. First off the cast, they really couldn’t have picked a better group of woman to carry this franchise into its next level. Kristen Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, a professor at a college. After she finds out from a spooked tour guide played by Zach Woods that a book she had previously written with her then friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) about the existence of ghosts is now selling online Erin in fear that she might lose her tenure at the college if her boss found out that she had written about such nonsense goes to visit Abby. They meet up at Abby’s lab where she’s working Kate McKinnon Jillian Holtzman. Holtzman is probably one of the funniest of the bunch because of the character is so zany. She was really just all over the place and it worked very well. She was truly the only character that I couldn’t compare to that of the original cast. Wigg reminded me of Dr. Peter Venkman. Melissa’s character Abby reminded me of Dan Aykroyd and Leslie Jones Patty Tolan was exactly as Ernie Hudson character Winston Zeddmore that wound up just coming to apply for a job with the Ghostbusters. Again this had to play out the same because, Reboot. But back to the story, Abby agrees to stop selling the book if Erin introduces her to the tour guide. They go down to the haunted museum and it plays out much like the 1984 Ghostbusters when they go down to the haunted library from this point on. After their encounter with the ghost a video goes viral on YouTube of their recent encounter the college snobs can’t have such a person working at their prestigious school that believes in ghost so Erin is fired and joins Abby & Jillian that decide to try to catch a ghost as proof and go into business for themselves sort of speak. I would go into more detail about how the rest of the movie goes but if you’ve seen the original you already know and if you haven’t you shouldn’t be watching these new ones first. There’s some slight differences in settings like the museum/library locations that I mentioned above and characters like Andy Garcia Major Bradley being a more comedic politician as oppose to David Margulies Mayor in the 1984 version and Chris Hemsworth almost too stupid character Kevin the secretary to Annie Potts Janine Melnitz much more dead tone not giving a shit attitude but other than that it’s a reboot. Same tone and pace but with a few different elements to make it just a little different.

The effects all looked clean and crisp, almost too clean at times but nothing that was jarring. Yates & Holtzman are certainly more into the different elements of catching and destroying ghost in this one and that gives us a whole new array of fun toys that Ray & Egon never had imagined so that was a welcoming new feature as well. I wasn’t too happy with the roles that they gave the original cast because again I really just thought they should’ve been themselves and this should have been a sequel but it was nice to see the gang back in this new version. All the top cast made a cameo minus Rick Moranis and the late, never forgotten and heavily missed Mr. Harold Ramis. 

Overall the movie was enjoyable, not as great as the 1984 classic but this reboot won’t destroy your childhood. Go check it out at the movies this weekend! It’s a welcoming reboot to what I hope will be a bunch of new stories and adventures in the sequels that follow.

-PEACE

Kanye West “Famous”

Image on found on The Chive

I’ve never written a music video review because well..who the hell still watches music videos? I’ll try to keep this short because honestly I don’t want to waste too much of your time after the 10 minutes you wasted watching this…video..horror movie short…deleted scenes from “House of Wax”

I don’t know what I just watched but I know I hated it. The Kanye West video that everyone keeps talking about that just aired on YouTube (I would add the link here but it doesn’t even deserve my time, look it up don’t be lazy) and I just don’t know, I think I’m done with this fucking lunatic. This video is so odd…I’m not even sure I know what the song was, I was too busy being uncomfortable watching Rihanna nude. I never thought I could write such a thing “uncomfortable watching Rihanna nude” but this video did just that. I mean seriously what the Fuck is wrong with this guy? This was as strange as those David Hasselhoff videos. The difference is that I haven’t heard David trying to claim that these were art. I know there’s no way to define “art” so I’ll say this..this isn’t art to me, to me (my opinion) it’s just one of 2 things..either Kanye did it for shock value or he did it because he’s out of his fucking mind. I haven’t liked any of Kanyes music now for a while, I’ve recently found it steadily been declining. I was a big fan of his early stuff like the Graduation LP 2007…

..My Beautiful Dark Twisted Family 2010

But I really didn’t like Yeezus 2013.

I found all his new experimental music unappealing to me. I like “Blood on My Leaves” that’s a great track on there but didn’t care for the rest of the album. I haven’t heard this new album “The Life of Pablo” and I don’t know if I will. I mean I’m sure I’ll listen to some of it because it’s Kanye and that means it’ll be on the radio at some point or playing at a bar I’m at. Anyhow back to the video, yeah this shit was just fucking strange. I like weird creepy strange shit like horror movies and all that but this was creepy in a real life kind of way. Everyone in the bed doesn’t look like they’re sleeping they look like they’re either dead or unconscious and since Bill Cosby is there I kept thinking..unconscious and I’m sure that thought is also going through others minds as well. There’s just no need for the video. I would look up who directed this but again I don’t want to waste anymore of my time. I’ve never watched a video that I wanted to forget about so bad in my life. I just didn’t need this in my life. I’m wondering if Kanye tried to get Jay-Z and Beyonce to participate in this insane idea and Jay just slapped him. I have to say I do respect that Jay never seems to be around any of Kanyes crazy antics. Smart man. I like to think that Jay sees Kanye as that one idiot employee in the company that can’t put together a coherent thought and everyone suspects is crazy but they work hard and make you money so you keep them around. It just sucks to watch someone who you at one point liked and respected keep doing crazy disrespectful shit to other artist/people. So Kanye please come back to reality man, stop doing all this weird shit. You owe all these people an apology and sadly I know you’re not going to give them one because in your crazy Kanye mind this is art and it can’t be stopped. So I have no other words till you become normal again except for “Fuck You Kanye”.

-PEACE