Here (2024)

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

 In 'The Midnight Meat Train' Bradley Cooper is a photographer who snaps a picture of a beautiful woman at a New York subway station, only to later learn he was the last person to see her before she disappeared. Cooper becomes obsessed with the disaperance and the actual butcher he thinks did the lady in. His trip down that rabbit hole leads him to find a patern of disapernces going back to at least 1911. Soon he's dragged his girlfriend Leslie Bibb and his best friend Roger Bart into the investigation with him, he also comes to suspect that the police department is in on what's going on.

The film effectively invokes the vibe of slimey early 80's urban horror from 'Manniac' to 'Varity' to 'CHUD'. The films director Ryuhei Kitamuar is Japanese and the influence of Asian horror films is felt as well. An hour and 43 minutes in length I think the movie would have benefited from being 10 to 15 minutes shorter. Still the film is fairly effective and I really appreciated the effort to do something different from the standard American horror fair of the Dubya era. **1/2

No Stranger Than Love (2015)

 In 'No Stranger Than Love' Allison Brie is Lucy Sherrington, beloved, small town Connecticut art teacher. Seemingly all the men in town are smitten by Lucy, though she is extremely polite in turning down their advances, none of the quirky locals are doing it for her; Save Clint Cobern, the gym teacher and football coach, played by Colin Hanks, who is really giving off 80's comedy Tom Hanks vibes in this. They like each other but Clint is married, after three years of sexual tension at work they decide to have an affair. Moments before they are set to consummate things, a hole into a bottomless black void opens up in Lucy's floor landing Clint in a sort of floating purgatory. Lucy can hear Clint but not see him and the pair set about trying to find a way to get him back on Tera firma. 

In the mean time a debt collector played by Justin Chatwin shows up in town to collect gambling debts from Clint, so when the coach disappears locals assume the visitor did him in. Only Lucy and Justin know he didn't, things are made more complicated when the two of them starts falling in love.

Heavy on the quirky, whimsy and metaphysical, yet still extremely lite on substance. One can tell what they were going for, a kind of Gilmore Girls on acid, but it just dosen't work. Way too self aware and more absurd than funny, the movie falls into its own hole to the bottomless black void. *1/2

Dinner in America (2020)

 'Dinner in America' hits on something magical, profane but magical. You put two very different and expertly played characters together, Kyle Gallner as a punk rock Pyro and Emily Scaggs as a possibility autistic pet store employee still living at home; improbably these two are just wonderful on screen together. Low budget indie is original and unexpected, a delight full of surprises and exquisitely ploted. A movie that shows that you can do alot with a little if your creative enough. ***1/2