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Knives Out (2019) – It Murdered Me

Released: 28th November
Seen: 23rd November (Advance Screening)

One of my favourite films of all time is the immortal Clue, the camp murder mystery based on the board game of the same name… in the states, in Australia it was named Cluedo for reasons I don’t understand. Everything about it makes me so happy from its quotable dialogue to the crazy camp characters to the luscious set that just begs you to enjoy every element of it. The film is a cult classic but it contains one massive flaw… no way in hell could you actually solve that thing. It has three different endings and all of them rely on information the audience never gets until the moment Wadsworth starts running around and telling everyone who did it. For years I was waiting for a movie to come around with great dialogue, crazy fun characters and a murder mystery that actually feels solvable as the plot comes out… and Rian Johnson clearly heard my plea because he made that exact film and I love it so much.

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Charlie’s Angels (2019) – Don’t Call Me Average

Released: 14th November
Seen: 18th November

In 1976 the world was introduced to three female private detectives who worked for a mysterious man who they would never actually meet. That man was Charlie and they were his angels, the show Charlie’s Angels would become an instant smash hit, spending the first two seasons in the top 10 most-watched shows of the year and it became iconic almost instantly. 20 million viewers tuned in to watch a trio of strong women kick ass, it was a monster hit that even achieved the rare feat of creating an influential hairstyle trend. It lasted for 5 years and there were multiple attempts to revive the brand, eventually culminating in a pair of films in the early 2000s that did amazing business but badly with critics. Well, time for them to revive the brand again because we are never permitted to allow a brand to die even when no one wants it anymore (and judging by the box office… oh damn this brand should’ve died long ago)

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Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story (2019) – Powerful

Released: 13th August
Seen: 13th November

On May 30th 2017, a photo was uploaded on the internet that would change Kathy Griffin’s life forever. The photo was of Kathy in a blue dress holding a mask with piss-yellow hair covered in ketchup, clearly a reference to a certain president whose name I won’t mention because it’s my review and I get to do stuff like that. The photo was immediately condemned on all sides and Kathy went through the standard cancellation procedure where she lost all her current gigs and had to do the apology tour we send comics on when they make a bad joke. None of this was asked of photographer, Tyler Shields, who not only never apologised, but who continues to work to this day (not saying he should’ve gone through it too, just pointing out that he seems to be doing fine while Kathy’s the one dealing with everything). Anyway, for Kathy this went far beyond your standard “Cancel culture” reaction, this was a steroid induced destruction of a life and career because of one photo. I want to state up front that I did not like the photo in question, I thought it went too far and wasn’t funny… I’m also aware that it was a joke referencing a comment the person depicted in it said and that, at least at the time, Kathy was apologetic for it. What followed was a reaction that even literal rapists don’t have to go through, and this year Kathy finally said “ENOUGH” and let the world know what happened in one of the best and most heart stopping concert films I’ve ever seen.

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Zombieland 2: Double Tap (2019) – Filling like a Twinkie

Released: 17th October
Seen: 11th November

Zombieland 2: Double Tap is a film that exists for reasons I don’t quite understand. At least, I don’t understand why it exists right now. In 2009 when the original Zombieland came out in cinemas it was still a good time for Zombie-related media, the hit series The Walking Dead was still a year away so having a comedy film about a bunch of people surviving in a zombie wasteland felt fresh and new. The style choices and tone all felt like something we hadn’t seen before and it was one of the funniest films of the time and still holds up today. It’s not like they didn’t try to get a sequel out right away, but everything languished in development hell so long that now we’re so far past the prime time for Zombie movies that Disney felt like they could do one. So how do you make a comedic take on a topic that’s already been wrung dry? Well… you just do the same stuff you did the last time only with a tiny upgrade in the technology and the zombies.

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Cut (2000) – A Little Dull

A few months ago I talked about a movie called Porno, a comedy movie about a cursed porno film that summons a demon when played. It’s a brilliant idea that was just not quite done right so naturally I wanted to see if someone had done a serious version of this idea and it turns out that back in 2000, someone did the “Character from a film comes to life to kill people” idea in a little Australian slasher film called Cut. The film came out in 2000 and boasts an alarming 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, at the time barely making a half million at the Australian box office. This is partially due to bad marketing and just bad timing since a comedy slasher film in the year 2000 wasn’t exactly rare. This was also the point in the horror genre where we were up to the third Scream movie, self-aware horror had kind of been wrung dry and Cut got lost in the shuffle. It only just recently got re-released in a 4K restoration and that’s what I got to see so… does it get better with age? Not really, but I can appreciate its cheese a lot more.

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Cats (2019) – No, not that one.

Released: 24th October
Seen: 28th October

Later on this year, we’re all going to get to experience the wonder and majesty that is Cats. Cats, the Andrew Lloyd Weber monstrosity, is turning into a live-action film where everyone looks like they were born directly in the centre of the uncanny valley and everything about it both horrifies and delights me. Like, we’re all aware that Cats is basically a suicide musical right? It’s literally a musical about which cat gets to kill themselves in order to come back as another cat and someone gave Tom Hooper millions of dollars and several major celebrities in order to make the film version of the suicidal cat musical. It’s going to be nuts, I can’t wait… I apparently couldn’t wait so much that the second my local cinema said it was showing a movie called Cats I had to see it, I need to be the person who saw two different Cats movies in cinemas… because I’m a sad person, please give me pity.

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Dolemite Is My Name (2019) – Brilliant

Released: 25th October
Seen: 26th October

The 1970s was the era of the blaxploitation film. If you look up a list of blaxploitation movies they will list every year of the 70s with milestone movies like Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song and Coffy. While these movies often featured racial stereotypes that might be termed problematic today, they’re also a subgenre of film that features an entirely black cast and often featured black directors and writers trying to make films for black audiences of the day. It was also a genre that made worldwide stars out of people like Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree and the subject of the newest Netflix biopic Rudy Ray White.

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Ready Or Not (2019) – Here I Come

Released: 24th October
Seen: 25th October

One great trick Horror movies can pull out to create an engaging story is to take a mundane game of some kind and introduce the element of death. There have been horror movies about video games that will kill the player should they lose, films that took video poker and added murder victims and last year we even got a film that took Truth or Dare and made it deadly… granted, it didn’t make it good, but it sure did make it deadly. Well, now we have another addition to this little group in the form of Ready or Not, which takes the childhood game of hide and seek and flavours it with a little bit of The Most Dangerous Game for good measure.

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Hustlers (2019) – The Hustle Is Deep

Released: 10th October
Seen: 11th October

You’d think that there’d be a lot more films about exotic dancers. After all, it’s a job that can contain the three things that people love more than anything. Sex, drugs, and dancing to remixes of Britney Spears songs. Still, it feels like there aren’t that many major hit films about exotic dancers. There’s the infamous Showgirls, maybe some people remember the 1996 film Striptease and there are, of course, the two recent Magic Mike movies (the second one is better, I will not be accepting arguments on this), I know of Zombie Strippers and Full Monty but that’s about all I could name off the top of my head. There are others but not many that are giant mainstream hits and certainly none that would really get any kind of buzz as being more than just a fun movie to enjoy on a night out with friends… well, then Hustlers came along and said “Fine, I guess we’ll have to give you everything you ever wanted” and just ran away with every bit of my heart.

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Violence Voyager (2019) – Say, Its Only A Paper Movie

Released: 21st October (Advance Copy provided by Tricoast Worldwide)
Seen: 7th October

Every film, on some level, has a gimmick attached to it. Joker’s gimmick is that it’s a Scorsese film wearing a Supervillain costume, Searching’s gimmick was that it took place entirely on a computer screen and I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu’s gimmick is that it’s the first film actually made by a piece of shit. Hell, even sound and colour were originally considered merely gimmicks back when film was first beginning. Finding strange new ways to make a film can lead to some genuinely fascinating pieces of art that might not be mainstream but are certainly interesting experiences to go through. So, let’s talk about a horror film made entirely out of paper cut-outs because that’s a thing that actually exists in this reality and I kind of love it, despite its flaws.

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