Yeah, it's over...

Obviously, I tried bringing the site back recently, but bullshit kept happening.  And I still have other, more "legitimate" work to focus on.  I wanted to make it to the site's tenth year anniversary (October 2019), but sometimes, you have to know when to pull the plug.  Thanks to everyone and ANYONE who has ever read my content.  I still have a self-dubbed fan club on Facebook that I might start posting random stuff in, just because.  Here's that LINK, yo!

Album Cover of the Whatever

It's back!  And thank Satan for that; I need a low-effort column.  Maybe you think I could have picked a better Mercyful Fate album cover.  That's subjective.  Maybe you think I could have picked a better Mercyful Fate album.  That's objective.  This isn't a long player proper, playa!  It's simply a compilation of b-sides and rare material.  While I detest the title font (I see they went with the "cheap paste" option), the artwork is a generic party.  As in Party City.  It's as dumb as a box of dumb, but it's fun!  It's cheese, it's Halloween, it's Subspecies II: Bloodstone, it's...you get the point.

A Cure for Wellness

After watching it back recently, I'd have to say that 1998's Gargantua isn't that bad.  It's very obvious, yes, and the CGI doesn't hold up, but it's agreeable enough to watch.  I don't know why you asked, though.  I thought I made it clear that this is a review of 2016's A Cure for Wellness, a picture that I pined for when it bedecked theaters.  This would have been a great flick to catch in theaters.  Alas, I wasn't able to make it out to the hippodrome.  Over six months since my last review, I can still use ridiculous words with the best of 'em.  Don't you refer to your local movie shack as a hippodrome?  You shouldn't.

Previews painted Wellness as a wholly unique experience.  And it is unique, but now that I've imbibed the film, it's a teensy bit more conventional than I was expecting.  In a disappointing way.  I'll get to the good stuff later (my opinion is broadly roseate), but everything felt vaguely Hollywood-by-numbers.  It's as though a studio executive was standing on the set, just off to the side, intercalating directives such as "Make the ending big!" and "She's the love interest!"  By the way, I don't know that Mia Goth was the nonpareil choice to play Hannah.  This is where I need to parlay plot details, isn't it?  Damn.

Dane DeHaan is Lockhart, a young upstart who is sent to Switzerland to bring his company's CEO back to America.  Apparently, Pembroke (the CEO) has stolen away to a sequestered rehabilitation clinic nestled in the Swiss Alps.  To get "well."  Ooooh, quotation marks!  That means something mysterious is happening!  Mysteriously!  Without diving into particulars, the sanitarium utilizes eels and gallons upon gallons of water.  It's totally legit.  Seriously, how does this place exist?  Aren't there codes and ordinances that would protect against the construction of a horror house such as this?  The town is cool with it?

The plot holes are noticeable, but let's put those aside for a minute.  Back to Hannah.  We are never told her exact age, but I swear to Jehovah's astragalus (it's one of the proximal bones of the tarsus, you monkey), the girl is barely pubescent.  Fourteen at the oldest.  The actress is older, but that doesn't matter.  She looks fourteen and yet, Wellness tries to pass her off as desirable.  The marked age difference between Hannah and Lockhart doesn't seem to rankle the film.  Ew.  The villain attempts to rape her and we see her breasts AND EW.  "Ew" is probably the point, and I get that.  It's just a very uncomfortable sit.

I liked this film?  Yeah, I guess so.  Gore Verbinski is a master of the visual arts.  Several images reminded me of his redux of The Ring, mainly the underwater shots of suspended bodies and furtive, double-dealing eels (I don't trust those creepy motherfuckers).  The cast is fine (nice segue, Dom).  Jason Isaacs should be the next James Bond.  Don't get me wrong; he's excellent here as a twisted doctor, but his gentility is quite winning.  Man, apart from this paragraph, this review isn't nearly as positive as I imagined it would be in my head.

Technically speaking, A Cure for Wellness is high-grade material.  I wanted to see how it ended, which is important.  Did the ending make sense?  Nope!  This is a lengthy feature, but it still feels as though scenes were truncated.  Robert Z'Dar says, "Give Gargantua another chance."

What the...? A video Blood Capsule?

I'm working on finishing up a (written!) movie review, but until the warm, flaky bun is out of the oven, please enjoy the first of a few seasonal videos highlighting a few seasonal movies.  Is there a dweller in your cellar?

Cripples ov Siberia

Hi!  Boy, my life has FUCKING SUCKED as of late, but I think I can find pockets of time to spend on this rinky-dink website.  It's October, after all.

I recently bought a few compact discs (a "CD" is an optical data storage format), and I realized something.  I'm done!  Sorry, bands.  I am finally done purchasing ringlets of music when half of the time - I'm not even kidding - the discs skip.  Brand new goddamn discs!  I have Alexa in my room, so with our Amazon Music Unlimited subscription, I can jam to almost any record.  No, this isn't a sponsored post.  I wish.

Between the bitch (Alexa), YouTube and Spotify, I'm alright in the metal department.  Look, I held out as long as I could.  Friends renounced ceedeez years ago, so I've been the old man out.  Not anymore!  I was moved to write on the topic after "spinning" I Loved You at Your Darkest, the latest Behemoth opus.  Man, it's a motherfucker.  I didn't go head over hooves for The Satanist, but this sick puppy does the trick.  It marks a seamless progression (and in some cases, amelioration) for the band, striking (dis)harmony between gruff death metal and forward-reaching black metal.

See you when I see you.

The High Ate Us

I've been thinking a lot about...life. lolz  Life, maaaaaan.  Time and how it's perceived.  That doesn't make a lick of sense, but basically, I need to work on other stuff.  Non-website stuff.  You know where this is going.  I hesitate to use the word "'hiatus" because that implies that I'll be back at some point.  And I might!  I don't want to scare anyone, but I'm fucking 33 years old.  That's human years!  I need to switch shit up.  If I do decide to come back for the fifth time, I'll let people know.  I'll let you know, bro!

Album Cover of the Whatever

What happens when you can't find the comic book you wanted to review?  Album cover of the whatever, baby!  Count yourself lucky.  I'll keep looking.  That comic is guaranteed to be a slam dunk.  But hey, this is a pretty good album.  The band is Unreqvited (sic) and the album is Stars Wept to the Sea.  It's (mostly) relaxing post-metal with an omnipresent blackness.  I don't know exactly what is happening on the cover, but if the title is prognostic, those are stars weeping...y'know, to the sea.  All I know is that I adore the base color.  I'm positive that "base color" is a hair styling term, but fuck it.  I'm too metal to care!

Species

Rewatching this 90's favorite, I nearly choked on my dry roasted edamame (they were just peanuts) when I realized that Young Sil was played by Michelle Williams.  She was so cute!  So I have personal history with Species.  Seven years ago (!), I reviewed the film's comic book tie-in.  You can read that HERE, but be forewarned, I basically review the movie in the first paragraph.  Er, read this first.  Yeah.  Keep in mind, I read the four-issue comic series before seeing the motion picture.  I was deep in the throes of puberty upon my initial viewing of Species, so it was a flustering experience.  Stupid cock contractions.  I do remember liking the finished product.

Let's get this out of the way.  Natasha Henstridge was a firm 20 years old when she shot this thing.  It was her first acting gig!  Fresh out of the wrapper and all that.  She is a sweltering smokeshow, and due to the convenient skullduggery of the storyline, she spends a disproportionate (or proportionate, depending on how you look at it) amount of screen time either topless or naked.  That is not a complaint.  The feminist chunk of my brain is all, "Bitch, please."  The other chunks find Species to be a rather watchable update of Lifeforce.  Oh, and I enjoy boobs.  Sil could be seen as a feminist villain who goes after what she wants without any regard for men.  Of course, she also rips out the spine of a club chick.  That tends to disrupt the metaphor.

Positives!  Director Roger Donaldson brings a steady hand to the proceedings.  The plum, comfortable budget ensures that everything looks gorgeous.  Man, those opening credits are a sci-fi fanatic's nocturnal emission.  It's clear that MGM wanted this to be a success on the level of Alien.  They even deputized the talents of the late, great H.R. Giger to design their creature.  I dig Sil, but they pissed on her with dated CGI.  Even in 1995, it didn't look convincing.  The non-digital effects rawk, and there are gallons of gore to go around.  Speaking of Night of the Seagulls, it's my top entry in the Blind Dead saga.  Speaking of Chucky Voorhees, that ain't no river!

Sometimes, my marbles trip over themselves.  People get hurt.  The acting is passable, although I doubt that anyone knew why they were in this popcorn collage.  Forest Whitaker tries like hell to carry depth as Dan, an empath who knows which way Sil went.  I really don't think that screenwriter Dennis Feldman knows or understands the capabilities of an empath.  As a matter of fact, I sniffed out boxcars of plot holes.  They didn't bother me much as a teenager, and they still don't.  Species isn't the type of scare flick that is decided by nuance.  It's a fun, fast-paced grotesquery that feels like an R-rated episode of The X-Files.  Robert Z'Dar says, "Titties!"