Posts Tagged ‘The Room’

Brigsby Bear – Make Something Cool With Your Friends!

Posted 26 Aug 2017 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead 

Brigsby Bear, USA, 2017

Directed by Dave McCary

Though Dogtooth certainly has its dark sense of humor, one wouldn’t expect a movie about an abducted child raised in an isolated, hermetically sealed world based on lies to be a comedy. This type of premise has yielded great results as emotionally devastating drama, as in the rightfully acclaimed Room, or intense psychological suspense, as in the by-and-large underrated 10 Cloverfield Lane (not about a child abduction, but dealing with similar ideas in terms of the nature of the protagonist’s captivity). Despite these and some other obvious comparison points, though, veteran Saturday Night Live director Dave McCary’s feature debut, Brigsby Bear, is a wonderfully original, sincere, and idiosyncratic movie that manages to not only earn cruelty-free laughs from an inherently unsettling subject, but also to make a larger point about the very nature of art and entertainment, without being annoyingly meta about it.  Read More

Transformers – Michael Bay And The Cinema Of Subtlety

Posted 29 Apr 2012 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Didn't Get

By Ezra Stead

Transformers, USA, 2007

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, USA, 2009

Directed by Michael Bay

Transformers is a pretty bad movie, but its first sequel is unbelievably awful. With the latest Michael Bay monstrosity, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, taking more than a billion dollars at the box office and potentially remaining the top-grossing movie of this year (please, please, prove me wrong, awards season), now would be a good time to revisit the first two, which might help explain why I have sworn off the third one, or any future editions. I hope no one thinks I’m a snob just for occasionally displaying some standard of good taste. Remember, I love The Toxic Avenger (1984) and The Lost Boys (1987), not to mention much lower quality films like The Room (2003) and Birdemic: Shock and Terror, so I’m not always too pretentious for a good time with a bad movie.  Read More

Birdemic: Shock And Terror

Posted 13 Apr 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Most Confusing Films of All time, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Birdemic: Shock and Terror, USA, 2008

Written and Directed by James Nguyen

Birdemic: Shock and Terror is probably the worst film ever made.

After years – hell, nearly two decades – of searching, I think I just may have found the absolute worst movie ever made. Though Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), my previous choice, is indeed the most mind-numbing and impossible to enjoy film I can remember seeing, at the very least it has some stellar craftsmanship in the technical departments. James Nguyen’s Birdemic: Shock and Terror was clearly made without the benefit of anyone who knew absolutely anything about filmmaking within a hundred yards of the set. Witness production values and acting that make Tommy Wiseau’s notorious 2003 classic The Room look like a legitimate masterpiece. Witness sound editing and mixing apparently done by a pair of deaf children. Witness the worst special effects ever seen in a feature film. Witness the musical number “Just Hangin’ Out,” sung onscreen in its hilarious entirety by Damien Carter. Witness the flaming wreckage of a film that is Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

Read More

Postal – An Acquired Taste (Or Lack Thereof)

Posted 28 Mar 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Postal is an unexpectedly brilliant film. Postal, USA / Canada / Germany, 2007

Directed by Uwe Boll

If you’ve never heard of German director Uwe Boll, that most likely means you’ve just avoided some really bad movies. The only other one of his films I’ve seen so far was 2005’s Alone in the Dark, a truly terrible film at least as bad as any I’ve previously deemed the worst of the decade, but by all accounts I’ve heard, his other previous films – including House of the Dead (2003), Bloodrayne (2005) and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) – are also among the worst ever made. He is famous for his execrable video game adaptations (see all of the above) and for financing them through a loophole in German tax law that rewards filmmakers; the law has since been changed, presumably to make it more difficult for Boll to make movies. So it was with the gleeful fascination of a movie so bad it’s funny (i.e. Troll 2 or The Room) that I approached his post-911 comedy Postal. Three days and four viewings of the film later, my mind was blown.

This movie is brilliant! Read More