Tag: The toxic avenger

2025 In Film: Day Two (The Bad)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Clown In A Cornfield
Ups: Some nice subversive character choices.
Some pretty decent shots; always looks clear.
Downs: Kevin Durand looks like a poundland Elon Musk
Predictable.
Doesn’t build up the villain.
Best Performer: Katie Douglas
Best Moment: The reveal that Cole and Rust are former lovers.
Worst Moment: The parade. Feels weak.
Opening: Party in a cornfield. Well, in a barn next to a cornfield. Close enough. Like all cool parties, there’s a teen playin with a windup doll. Her and a random dude strip off to fuck in a cornfield (feels like that’s how you’d get diseases). They die, obviously.
Closing: A damn sequel hook.
Best Line: You do realize that the ’80s are as far away from me as ’40s were to you, right?
Original review here

Ella McCay
Ups: Charming.
Some interesting moments.
Downs: Too unfocused.
Doing a political comedy this toothless feels cowardly.
Feels dated.
Inconsistent characterisation.
Best Performer: Jamie Lee Curtis
Best Moment: Ella’s freakout/monologue.
Worst Moment: The security working their way into overtime. Mainly because it has the air of something important and monumental, but really it doesn’t matter.
Opening: Narration by Julie Kavner giving us the history of Ella; basically, her dad was a dick.
Closing: Ella has started a non-profit that offers legal aid. Nice, but feels tacked. on.
Best Line:
Original review here

Nosferatu
Ups: Tense
Technically good.
Downs: Dull.
Feels too in debt to the original to really leave its own mark.
Uninteresting characters.
Best Performer: Nicholas Hoult
Best Moment: Orlock on the ship.
Worst Moment: The death of Friedrich feels a bit weird.
Opening: Ellen doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. She awakes an ancient creature and vows to pledge herself to him.
Closing: Nosferatu gets distracted and feeds until sunlight.
Best Line: God is beyond our morals! In vain! In vain! You run in vain! You cannot outrun her destiny! Her dark bond with the beast shall redeem us all, for when the sun’s pure light shall break upon the dawn, redemption! The plague shall be lifted! Redemption!
Original review here

Renner
Ups: Good performances.
Pretty visuals
Downs: Terrible script. I mean, there are moments where the visuals aren’t great, but the major problems (consistency, bad characters, genre confusion) are ALL down to the script, which is poor.
Best Performer: Violett Beane
Best Moment: Just after the monopoly scene there’s a wonderfully lit sequence.
Worst Moment: When he attacks the thieves. Purely because the way its shot (quick flashes whilst he’s asking what to do) makes it come off as a fantasy sequence rather than reality. The visually unclear storytelling happens a few times, but its most clear then.
Opening: I know it’s a common joke to make that the vanity cards that open up films are so long they seem like an actual movie, but the opening credits for this legit seem like a vanity card.
Closing: He gets shot. Reminds me of the original ending of Clerks where Kevin Smith was told “you killed off your character because you have no idea how to end your story”.
Best Line: Do you have a desire that remains unfulfilled because of your non-existent confidence?
Original review here

Silent Night, Deadly Night
Ups: Some decent kills.
Potential
Downs: Too bleak, stopped caring.
Falls apart if you think about it for more than a minute.
Best Performer: Ruby Modine
Best Moment: The many deaths of Nazi’s.
Worst Moment: When they encounter the snatcher. I’m still not sure whether we were supposed to recognise who they were.
Opening: The death of Billy’s grandparent, and parents. Sets up his character well, and pays homage to the original.
Closing: Billy dies, Pam is now the new Billy. So you have a non-white woman taking over a white male role. I’m sure the internet loved that.
Best Line: Punish
Original review here

The Alto Knights
Ups: Fans of the genre will enjoy it.
Well crafted atmosphere.
Good performances.
Suits the period.
Downs: Doesn’t bring anything new.
Maybe should have been made decades ago.
Best Performer: De Niro
Best Moment: Barber shop assassination.
Worst Moment: People testifying in front of congress. It’s edited terribly.
Opening: Frank Costello is shot in an elevator, then explains the history between him and Vito Genovese.
Closing: The Apalachin meeting. Much rather see a film about that.
Original review here

The Electric State
Ups: The robots look spectacular.
Downs: Bland story
They don’t seem like brother/sister. To be honest, the way they react is more like lovers. Hard to explain why.
Chris Pratt REALLY wants to be Harrison Ford doesn’t he?
Best Performer: Millie Bobby Brown
Best Moment: The Christopher reveal. Horrifying.
Worst Moment: The death of Clark Amherst. Has no emotional weight.
Opening: It’s 1990, “before the war”. Well it says “before the war”, but war is on the horizon and humanity already hates robots. Sweet interactions between the sibilings. We then get a background on the world, how robots were invented and came to take part in an uprising. I kind of think the “robot uprising” part of should have come first, the siblings part didn’t accomplish anything that couldn’t have been accomplished better elsewhere.
Closing: The robot character we thought was dead stands up so is still alive. oh no, what a shock.
Best Line: I have a condition where I can only live in reality. Sucks, but you go right ahead!
Original review here

The Toxic Avenger
Ups: Bloody
Fun
Actually helped people.
Downs: Too self-aware at times.
Oddly restrained in parts.
Needs a better soundtrack.
Best Performer: Dinklage
Best Moment: The diner robbery. Political, violent, and fun.
Worst Moment: The random guy in the woods. Mainly because it feels like a diversion.
Opening: Dramatic voiceover, met with quick highlights of what we’re about to see. Perfect for this.
Closing: The bad guys die, good guys win.
Best Line: My God you people are tedious!
Original review here

Y2K
Ups: Full of nostalgia.
Some good music choices.
Downs: A little too dumb.
Some unrealistic deaths.
The main character comes off a bit too “nice guy” at times.
Who is it aimed at?
Best Performer: Rachel Zegler
Best Moment: The sing-along to Tubthumbing. Kind of cute.
Worst Moment: The skating death. After seeing people being impaled and set on fire, a 1 foot drop while skating will always seem shitty.,
Opening: The “internet connection” noise. Then AOL. What ever happened to them? They WERE the internet.
Closing: Five years later, the glitch face appears on an iPod. Because God forbid a horror film be self-contained and not aim for a sequel.
Best Line: You think this’ll work because you saw it in a movie? I think movies have warped your mind. God damn, now I’m sounding like Tipper Gore.
Original review here

The Toxic Avenger (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A janitor is turned into a superhero when he’s dumped in toxic waste.

Gonna get this out of the way now; I was not a fan of this movie. I know quite a few people are, and the reasons they like it are likely to be the same reasons I don’t: the tone, the shoddy quality of the filmmaking, the feeling that it’s outdated. That’s fine, there is no right or wrong when it comes to liking a movie; it’s entirely subjective (unless you like the Ice Cube version of War Of The Worlds, which was objectively bad).

I’ve always been interested in works made by Troma, ever since I heard about Tromeo and Juliet, but this is the first time I’ve actually watched one, and I have to believe the others are different from this. My main problem is that it feels deliberate. It feels like the cinematic equivalent of buying pre-torn clothes; a lot of effort put in to seem low effort. Some of the editing choices are a bit weird, and I feel like the soundtrack could have been better (with two notable musical choices which are pretty damn perfect).

It has a unique look, but I can’t quite figure out how. It doesn’t look like it’s been heavily altered in post-production, but there’s something weirdly crystal clear about the visuals; everything looks sharp and real, with great focus work. There are good performances too; you can tell that everybody is having a lot of fun, and while I do criticise this film, there is a small part of me that is jealous of the obvious camaraderie that everybody involved in it has.

This film is gory as hell, kind of. Heads get chopped off, guts are displayed, there’s so much blood that even track 8 of AC/DC’s 1979 album Highway To Hell would say “yeah, we get the point”. Mostly, there are times when it feels weirdly restrained; when it cuts away from violence that is in no way more violent than what we just saw. There’s also one death that I think should have been more violent. When Winston kills a band onstage, almost every death is violent and brutal, full of blood and gore. But then he kills the only female member of the band by electrocution. It’s hard to believe that that was an accident; it feels like the director made a conscious decision to shy away from showing extreme violence against women, even if they have been responsible for deaths. For a film based around chaos and gore, it feels weirdly conservative and politically correct. It is consistent with the tone, though, all of the deaths happen to truly terrible people. There’s no attempt to humanise the villains, which is refreshing. If someone is dumping toxic waste into lakes, they shouldn’t be humanised because they are vile, evil scum who deserve life in prison. No matter how violent and gory this movie is, it does have heart. Not just in the film itself, but the fact that the studio has declared it will wipe out (at a minimum) $5 million of medical debt. That is admirable.

As I said, there is quite a bit to like about this. And I’m glad it was made. I saw it in a cinema with (at most) 8 other people in, on a cold, damp Saturday night after a 6-day run at work which left me exhausted both physically and mentally. That’s not the right place to watch this. You want to watch it either at home with your friends while you’re drunk/high as fuck, or in a room full of people who are excited and audibly reacting. So yes, this is a negative review, but with caveats.