Hundreds of Beavers (2022) – Review
Quick Thoughts – Grade – A – Hundreds of Beavers is one of the most visually exciting and creative independent films that I’ve seen in years. Director Mike Cheslik has created an instant cult classic and it would be great to see it build a bigger audience who can spread the word.
Shot over 12 weeks in Northern Wisconsin, Hundreds of Beavers tells the story of a hapless applejack salesman/fur trapper named Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) who goes on a quest to kill hundreds of beavers so he can marry the daughter of the local merchant. It’s 108 minutes of beautiful shenanigans that involves homemade catapults, errant spit, and tiny knives. Edited over the course of four years (1,500 effects shots + one editor = a lot of work), this slapstick gem is packed full of visual gags that never grow stale or predictable. A lot is thrown at the viewer, but the video game-esque narrative (a video game map tracks his travels) allows the audience to easily follow along as Jean gets better and better at killing beavers. It’s a wildly ambitious endeavor that works because it’s genuinely funny and inventive. A lot of work went into the production, and it’s hard to not respect the amount of determination to create a film that features a fur trapper fine tuning his snare traps so that the catapulted beavers aren’t eaten by scavenging raccoons before his love interest can skin them.
I always hate using comparisons, but the movie plays like a Wile E. Coyote/ Road Runner skit met Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and formed a comedic version of The Revenant. Basically, the cold setting, slapstick, and Beaver detectives blend together to create an experience that culminates with a sled chase that is reminiscent of the speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi. It’s hard to tell where this movie is headed and that’s a good thing because everything builds to a wild climax that involves Buster Keaton-esque fake buildings, cabin fistfights, and a devilish trap inside a wolf den.
Cheslik and Brickson Cole Tews have been making short films together since they were in high school and their bond is the probably the only reason why this film exists because of the sheer amount of shots (and cold nights) and setups for a crowd-funded independent film could only be accomplished by two friends (and their friends who worked for very little money). The two wrote the film by drawing all the different ways beavers could get hurt on notecards, and then building the plot around a hero’s journey that’s easy to follow and allows the hero to kill many beavers. The two used long lenses in wide spaces to keep all the gags in the same frame, and only used six beaver costumes to create the hordes of beavers who are justifiably pissed at Jean for murdering their beaver friends. It’s a well thought out experience and Brickson Cole Tews succeeded in his goal of making “something that was completely and utterly different than anything else anyone would ever try to pull off.”
Final thoughts – Watch it.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 556 – Action Hero Character Names, Chance Boudreaux, and Dwayne Johnson
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
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Mark and Nick Rehak talk about the action movie characters with the best names and share what their action movie names would be. In this episode, they also talk about Dwayne Johnson movies, people named Scud, and Chance Boudreaux.
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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MY CALL: This film was excellent. Everything about this was great. It was truly a blast and a pleasure, and it will make your skin crawl in the best way possible. Why haven’t you seen this yet? Go see it… now! MORE MOVIES LIKE Infested: Of course, Arachnophobia (1990). But for more highly stylish horror, consider Saloum (2021). For more buggy French horror, try The Swarm (2020; La Nuee). And for more “trapped in a building with evil”, consider [REC] (2007) or Evil Dead Rise (2023).
Director Sébastien Vanicek’s first feature film earned him the attention of Sam Raimi, who immediately wanted him to do his next Evil Dead spin-off movie, the most recent of which (Evil Dead Rise) also had apartment building tenants trapped with unwanted deadly guests. And I must say, from the opening scenes through the opening credits, Vanicek is quite the stylish filmmaker. The spider-collecting scene in the desert meshes a sense of cold criminal behavior with biological field work. The montage depicting the transit of the spiders from field to city to post to pet trade has the flavor of a drug cartel’s process, and the hard-cut editing and foreign hip-hop form a tense yet energized pairing. Good call, Raimi. This guy’s got the goods.
Infested (2023; aka Vermines) is a much more serious and much more French approach to Arachnophobia (1990). And whereas Arachnophobia begins in equatorial rainforests, Infested opens in the desert of the Arabian Peninsula. In both cases, the spider kills one of its discoverers, and kills another when someone slips on a shoe. So it seems the influencing film is being directly homaged. Frankly, this is like the unofficial Arachnophobia remake we’ve been waiting 30 years to see. Only now it also has the added dimension of trapping its victims in an apartment building with a quarantine, not unlike [REC] (2007); a dash of a more mature-minded Eight-Legged Freaks (2002); and the film includes some strong social commentary on lower income and ethnic communities.
At a store specializing in various imports and wares from Dubai, Kaleb (Théo Christine) purchases a deadly spider on a whim. Kaleb lives in a run-down apartment building where he collects exotic pets and racketeers sneakers. About as soon as he gets his new pet home, it escapes from its container and produces an egg sac. The spiders reproduce and grow at a rapid pace, and their venom courses through the apartment hallways trailing behind a webbed wake of corpses and spiderlings.
Scenes featuring skittering spiders or tiny swarming spiderlings are shocking even when expected. And boy does this film do well in making its audience feel uneasy whenever spiders are observed crawling along walls, up arms or through vents. It may be a major biological faux pas that these spiders make chirping sounds and grow inordinately large (too large), but even that nice touch serves the film well in staging its suspense. I find myself tensing up and smiling in anxious anticipation, and jumping with a nervous laugh with each subsequent scrambling spider. I adore the high-pitched squeegee-sounding violins twisting my panicked brain and wincing face. This movie is so much fun!
Imagery of spiders emerging from the mouths (and bodies) of the dead are creepy delights. With so much CGI, there was every opportunity to disappoint with some of these effects and the thousands of spiders and wispy webs spanning the screen—but that never happened. Everything was tactful and thoughtfully executed. Vanicek brings hope to those jaded horror fans bemoaning the unexciting redundancy of the genre by infusing a dynamic filmmaking style into the layers of clear effort of the cast and crew. Everyone involved to a great job. This film was excellent.
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John’s Horror Corner: Lowlifes (2024), a domestic survival horror that playfully toys with your expectations.
MY CALL: This was pretty good. The acting, writing, production, gore and violence are all executed well. But I won’t lie—I kind of wanted more. More meanness, more gore, more humor, more extremity, more suffering, more creative deaths, even yet more family drama… something more. MORE MOVIES LIKE Lowlifes: Maybe You’re Next (2013), Becky (2020) or Ready or Not (2019).
Suffering through a boring family vacation grilling out by the RV, Amy (Amanda Fix; Orphan Black: Echoes) and Jeffrey (Josh Zaharia) would rather be anywhere else. But things get even more uncomfortable when they are visited by hillbilly locals Vern (Richard Harmon; The 100) and Billy (Ben Sullivan), who seem anything but trustworthy. Their very polite but equally very nervous parents Keith (Matthew MacCaull; Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and Kathleen (Elyse Levesque; Ready or Not) succeed in getting the dirty yokels on their way… but as experienced horror viewers, we all know we’ll be seeing more of them.
For such an unfamous cast and directors I never heard of, the writing and acting are a pleasant surprise. The dialogue is simple, direct and well in-character, even if clearly deliberately tropey at times. The family dad says all the things we’d expect, doesn’t listen to his understandably frightened wife, and makes the very mistakes of the genre’s design. So when they happen upon the same unsavory hillbillies again, this time with car trouble up the road, they give Billy an awkward ride to his remote family home where the phone reception is poor and neighbors are distant. It’s pretty amusing seeing the pressure of being well-mannered good Christians supersede our characters’ sense of danger and distrustful smiling strangers.
The country family includes Savannah (Brenna Llewellyn), Juli Ann (Cassandra Sawtell; Harper’s Island), their grandfather Neville (Kevin McNulty; The Uninvited), and the massive Big Mac (Dayleigh Nelson).
Another pleasant surprise from this movie is that it’s not going where we expect. When our family realizes the challenge presented before them in this remote house, the controlling “father knows best” allegory runs thick as Keith manages his wife’s nerves, his daughter’s sexual orientation and his son’s risky impulses—all while trying to survive this ordeal. And if you thought it was going to be a little campy, just wait until you see what’s in the meat freezer. Campy severed body parts galore.
The violence is gory and graphic, from visceral Achilles slashes and blood-spurting slit throats to slowly sawing off limbs, and it’s all on screen. But truly, the first hour of the movie packs little action and entertains more in the form of dangerous social situations. But in that third act we enjoy some solid gore gags and mean violence in this domestic survival horror.
Directors Tesh Guttikonda and Mitch Oliver’s first feature film is a decent one. I enjoyed this, and I’ll watch out for what they do next. Would I recommend this…? Sure. This is a low to moderate priority recommendation for someone who enjoys mean, gory, even somewhat cheeky horror.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 555 – The Proposal, Sandra Bullock and Romantic Comedies
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Erik discuss the 2009 romantic comedy The Proposal. Directed by Anne Fletcher and starring Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Betty White, and some unsweetened cinnamon light soy lattes, the blockbuster movie proves that Bullock is an all-timer romantic comedy star. In this episode, they also talk about rom-com tropes, movie posters, and coffee orders. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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Boy Kills World (2024) – Review
Quick thoughts – Grade – B – Boy Kills World is a gnarly delight that features solid performances from Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Andrew Koji, and Michelle Dockery.
Paying homage to Jackie Chan, Japanese anime, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Boy Kills World has its own Black Knight-type character), Moritz Mohr’s film is wildly violent and it successfully avoids becoming too precious with its inner-monologue narration and stylish action. It’s hard to dislike Boy Kills World because all it wants to do is entertain and showcase Dawid Szatarski’s inventive action design that features Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Andrew Koji and Yayan Ruhian beating people up in kitchens, hallways, and television studios. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Director Moritz Mohr said that he made the film because “We wanted to make something that had some fun because Germany rarely has fun. There’s no action movies, there’s a few horror movies. It’s mostly arthouse.” You can tell that Mohr and his cast definitely had fun as they all look great and helped selI a high-energy experience that showcases what happens to an armpit when it meets a cheese grater.
Boy Kills World, revolves around a boy named Boy (Skarsgård) seeking revenge on Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the psychopathic leader of an authoritarian regime, who controls the populace by holding an annual event called The Culling. The event keeps the populace in check by forcing Hilda’s most outspoken critics to battle to the death inside a television studio that broadcasts the event around the world. Boy wants revenge because Hilda killed his family and left him hung up in a tree with a noose slowly strangling him. In a good news-bad news situation, Boy is saved by Mentor (Ruhian) and forced to endure a decade’s worth of training that involves copious drug use and enough martial arts training to ensure that when he’s unleashed, he’ll be able overcome his demons (which include visions of his deceased sister that make him freeze during fights) to defeat Hilda and her murderous bodyguard named June 27 (Jessica Rothe).
In a unique twist, Boy becomes a deaf mute after Hilda’s attack, and since he cannot remember his own voice, his inner-narration comes from one of his favorite video game characters voiced by H. Jon Benjamin. It takes a few minutes to get into the rhythm of Boy Kills World as H. Jon Benjamin’s joke-heavy narration rules over the proceedings and makes you wonder if the unique storytelling device is a one-note gimmick. However, as the action kicks into gear and we are introduced to more of the world, it becomes easier to sit back and relax while Boy battles the world. The supporting cast made up of Michelle Dockery, Andrew Koji, Sharlto Copley, Brett Gelman, and Isaiah Mustafa is excellent, and they all get moments to shine as they complain about owls or push carts (instead of fighting) during action scenes.
It took seven years for Mohr to get his film made in South Africa, and he credits producer’s Sam Raimi and Roy Lee for helping him get funding after he and Dawid Szatarski showed them a proof-of-concept trailer and pre-viz reel that showcased the inventive fight scenes. The long delay helped clean up the script – which is a good thing because the movie successfully walks a tight-rope of stylish action and cheeky humor that could’ve easily slowed the move to a halt if it wasn’t handled correctly. In the end, the committed performances (Rothe and Skarsgård got shredded for this movie), likable characters, and inventive fight scenes win the day and I totally recommend that you watch Boy Kills World.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 554: Legion (2010) vs Priest (2011), Paul Bettany, and Rock Throwing
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Nathan pit Legion (2010) and Priest (2011) against each other to see which Paul Bettany film reigns supreme. It’s an incredibly close matchup that will be decided by 10 categories that cover topics like rock throwing, monotone monologues, and final fights. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) – Review
Quick thoughts – Grade – B+ – The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is an unabashedly violent and cheeky World War II caper that features well-dressed people being sent on an impossible mission. I love it.
Based on a true story (but still heavily fictionalized) and inspired The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops by author Damien Lewis, Guy Ritchie’s film about a special ops team blowing up boats in West Africa is an absolute delight. It brings together everything that Ritchie loves (cheeky characters, great sweaters, Henry Cavill, and heists), and blends them perfectly into a crowd-pleasing romp that features Alan Ritchson annihilating dozens of Nazi soldiers with perfectly shot arrows. The ensemble cast featuring Henry Cavill, Henry Golding, Eiza González, Cary Elwes, Babs Olusanmokun, Til Schweiger, Alex Pettyfer, and Til Schweiger is well curated, and you can tell that they understood the assignment while looking incredible in outfits designed by Loulou Bontemps (The Gentlemen – Netflix, The Covenant). The movie has been described as “Guy Ritchie’s Inglourious Basterds,” which feels obvious, but you should look at it more as “Guy Ritchie’s Cheeky WW2 romp that feels like The Dirty Dozen met Snatch and then hung out with Operation Fortune. If you haven’t watched any of the mentioned movies, just know that it is a delightful action film with simultaneously low and high stakes.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare revolves around a group of ne’er-do-well operatives led by Gus March-Phillips (Cavill), who are tasked with blowing up German boats that transport important filters and parts for the German U-boats that terrorize the Atlantic, and prevent the United States from entering the war. The mission is off any official books due to the German’s running operations out of Fernando Po, a Spanish-controlled island off the coast of western Africa, which means any interference from British troops would push Spain into the war on the side of Axis. This forces the crew to sail through dangerous waters, team up with spies embedded on the island, and battle hundreds of well-armed Nazi troops who occupy the island. It would be a shame to give away too much more of the plot, just know that the movie features excellent grenade usage, nipple torture, and Henry Cavill at his most comfortable and charming.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is the type of film that is always welcome because all it wants to do is make the audience smile. It’s cool seeing Eiza González getting bigger roles and I still think Henry Golding will become an action star (despite the Snake Eyes setback). I have a feeling that it will play well on streaming because of its rewatchability and likable cast, and I hope that it does well at the box office because I’d love to see more adventures featuring the cast.
Final thoughts – Go watch it. It’s a good time.
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Bad Movie Tuesday: Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy (1981), the bonkers Sci-Fi B-movie you didn’t know you needed to see.
MY CALL: Just weird, bizarre, Sci-Fi lunacy with one part love story and one part creature feature slapstick horror poured over a half-baked bonkers roast. MORE MOVIES LIKE Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy: Let’s keep things bonkers, shall we? So I’ll recommend Demon Seed (1977), The Visitor (1979), Altered States (1980), and Flash Gordon (1980).
Science fiction writer Robert (Zarko Potocnjak; The Rat Survivor) describes the other-worldly characters of his current book project. Led by the she-robot Andra on a mission to investigate Earth, the humanoids of the planet Tugador in the Arkana Galaxy have divine powers. Robert is the most genuine of Sci-Fi geeks. He wears a replica astronaut helmet as he records his ideas, discusses plot twists with a friend in place of casual conversation, and frustrates his girlfriend Biba (Lucie Zulová), who claims she is neglected in favor of Robert’s precious and fictitious Andra.
Manifesting in reality shortly after Robert’s own realization of these ideas for his book, Andra (Ksenia Prohaska; Transylvania 6-5000) and her alien offspring land on Earth, bringing with them the almost Lovecraftian monster Mumu. Her emotionless children are mildly eerie with Village of the Damned-platinum blond hair. These aliens have the power to alter time, shoot deadly eye lasers, change their form and the form of others, and employ telekinesis.
As if the very concept of this movie was not yet deeply rooted enough in fantasy, there are some truly bizarre moments. For example, a father spontaneously grows breasts to breastfeed his infant; one of Andra’s offspring lasers off her finger, which she regenerates, and then punishes him by whipping his hands with finger lasers; Biba is transformed into a small metal cube; and a large group of people strip buck naked (because nothing says I come in peace like nudity) in a seaside cave to welcome to the aliens to Earth.
As weird little things keep happening, the plot seems to be going nowhere fast. Andra takes it upon herself to assume a more domestic role. She manifests a vacuum extension to her arm, tidies Robert’s home, manifests super-mini steak and fries from her abdomen microwave oven, and dispenses coffee and milk from two of her fingertips. There is even a sensual scene with Andra which leads to a sexy competitive outburst from Biba. Don’t try to take Biba’s man!
And now for something completely different. Eventually Mumu is unleashed on a household where it spews green slime gore all over the place, and all over people. Mumu is a gloriously ridiculous rubber monster suit of an alien horror covered in horns and projections of generally strange morphology. You’d think this scene was from a totally different movie! The creature comically decapitates and dismembers guests at a high society dinner party, and then gouts poisonous gas from tubercles on its back and spews flames from its prehensile trunk, which also projects a long tongue to strangle victims. Mumu is pure lunacy on the screen.
For 1981, Yugoslavian director Dusan Vukotic did well enough that I wish he did more like this. This film starts slowly, very slowly. But it truly does build cumulative entertainment value as it progresses to increasingly ridiculous scenarios in this occasionally slapstick, science fiction fever dream. Does it ever reach B-movie greatness? Not quite. But this is just one-of-a-kind enough to make up for a lot of its shortcomings.
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MY CALL: Slow and plotty, perhaps quite overly thought out, and slow as a consequence. But this film has a lot of intriguing ideas for the patient, thoughtful, and entomophilic viewer. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Sect: For more solid Italian horror of the era, consider The Church (1989) or The Wax Mask (1997).
What did I just watch? I thought I was walking into a breasty, campy, gory Italian jaunt that would struggle to exceed 80 minutes. But this was unexpectedly 116 minutes long, quite pithy (even overly so), and only features nudity in ways that made scenes more visceral (and not at all salacious).
An older man (Herbert Lom; The Dead Zone) of questionable health and even more questionable purpose is helped by schoolteacher Miriam (Kelly Curtis). She brings him to her home, which is strangely familiar to the man, and helps the man to rest. In her sleep, the man awakens and purposefully places a rove beetle (Staphylinidae) on her face which crawls up her nose. Then the man dies with his handkerchief tightly affixed to his face… like, weirdly tightly affixed.
This seems quite plotty for something so marginally interesting. There’s a lot of dialogue that just idles on. Every now and then there’s a really intriguing detail… but then it seems to take way too many boringly pithy scenes in order to reach the next item of substance.
Apparently there is a vast sewer system, boiler room and a well deep beneath Miriam’s home. The old man, who we learn was a long-missing (since the 70s) scholar of Satanism, clearly intended to come to Miriam’s home, find this secret well, and infect it with… something. Blue worms? Whatever.
The mother of one of Miriam’s students is an academic studying arctic fossil insects (rove beetles) which we are told have religious significance (a symbol of fertility and evil). This fictitious account of rove beetles suggests they lay their eggs in your brain (like the urban myth of an earwig). So is that what the old guy was doing… planting a preggers beetle on her to infest her brain?
Miriam’s co-worker Kathryn (Mariangela Giordano; Burial Ground, Patrick Still Lives) is attacked by the bewitched handkerchief that was on the old man’s face when he died—perhaps the influence of gypsy’s possessed handkerchief in Drag Me to Hell (2009). Now perhaps possessed herself, Kathryn out of nowhere seduces a trucker, who then is caught stabbing her to death and is horrified to discover what he’s done. It’s senselessly insane, but told with a calm straight face. Then, naked and bloodied and pronounced dead by a surgeon, Kathryn leaps up alive and well and attacks Miriam in the operating room and then slits her own throat! Lunacy.
More weird stuff? Sure. The old man leaves a message on Miriam’s answering machine that he left his diary at her house. But this diary fell from his hands when the coroner removed his dead body from her house earlier! Later, the message on her machine is not there. A ghost message! Dun dun dunnnnnn!
A bunch of hippie types and their kids camping in southern California are murdered (all off-camera) by a Jesus-like wanderer and his Lucifer-praising biker friends in a 1970 flashback. The murders show the swing of the knife hand and blood in spilled milk, but not the stab there-between. So, generally unsatisfying. As is most of the horror of this movie. Although the “stork attacks” were weird delights in this clunky Italian horror. Clunky, but satisfying. There’s also a very strange sewer water birth scene.
So that Jesus-like guy from California in 1970, well here he is in Germany 21 years later to do more Devil-worshipping stuff. It turns out that Kathryn’s ER doctor is a part of his trans-continental Satanic cult, and so is the husband of the paleo-entomologist who studies rove beetles. This cult gathers in the woods and plays with Hellraiser (1987) hooks. It’s one of the few effects we see realized on screen. They cut and snare a ring of hooks around their victim’s face, forehead to neck, and then yank and peel off her face, placing it over the dead old man’s face to bring him back to life. So yeah, a lot is going on here… although it’s not adding up to anything sensible by my math.
I wasn’t particularly pleased or impressed with this movie. But it wasn’t bad at all, it was way better than I expected, and much more serious of a filmmaking endeavor than I thought I was going to see today. Director Michele Soavi (Cemetery Man, The Church, StageFright) and co-writer Dario Argento (Dracula 3D, Mother of Tears, Two Evil Eyes, The Church, Demons 1-2, Suspiria, The Wax Mask) did alright. But I’d favor his other work very strongly above The Sect.
Movies, Films & Flix 