J.R. “Bob” Dobbs & The Church Of The SubGenius: Review – Sometime in 1978, Ivan Stang (Douglass Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox) decided to write a pamphlet satirising religious gatherings and cults that had become widespread across America.
Their ethos was to gather all the people that felt that they didn’t fit in, they wanted to find the weirdos who thought that the ‘normal’ people were the crazy ones and that they and their followers, the SubGeniuses should have their voices heard. Little did they realise, but over 40 years later their idea would gain such a gathering that they may have even become a cult themselves. Whether they liked it or not.
J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and The Cult of The SubGenius is a documentary that tells the story of a joke between two friends that kind of got out of hand and in many ways (both of which they’d deny and confirm) would become a religion.
Their main belief being that ‘f*ck ‘em if they can’t take a joke’ has run right through their religion and the documentary tells how their initial idea came to rise in popularity (something that they were against), with celebrity fans such as Nick Offerman, Richard Linklater and Penn Gillette. However, it also tells of the repercussions that they had not considered when the joke kept rolling.
Going through the 80’s, 90’s and into the 21st Century, their core group belief in fun and not taking themselves too seriously stayed the same, but the documentary doesn’t shy away from those people who took it more seriously.
Talking frankly and honestly about its ‘members’, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and The Church of The SubGenius shows that although they never intended it, that view of ‘not everybody getting the joke’ could be harmful, particularly going into the changing climate of the 21st Century.
However, the documentary gives them a chance to tell their side of the story and admit to having to adapt as the world changes. J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and The Church of The SubGenius is an insightful look at the world today and the madness that engulfs us on a daily basis, and if you don’t get the joke then that’s ok. As for me, sign me up.
“The Debt of Maximilian” is a low-budget dramatic thriller that follows the life of Max (Travis Lee Eller.) Max is a pretty unlikeable lead character from the start; he suffers from a gambling addiction that he keeps his family in the dark about and has insurmountable amounts of debt to repay. At home Max has a pregnant, stressed out wife and a small child. As the couple is facing foreclosure on their home Max becomes desperate for cash, so much so that he is willing to do almost anything to get it.
Throughout the film Max strolls around town looking for money, trying to place gambling bets, and just being all around desperate. When he runs into his younger brother, Kyle, played by Mark Valeriano, who, in my opinion was the strongest actor in the entire movie, is where he gets into real trouble. Kyle has been selling drugs for cash, and asks Max to hide his money for a while. Max, who is unable to control himself around said wads of cash, of course runs himself into a mess again. There’s violence, threats, chase scenes, and some poorly choreographed fighting.
Which leads me to my next observation; let’s talk about the general quality of this film. Well, the editing is not good, the cinematography is not good, and the acting varies from passable to just bad where I can’t recommend this to a general audience. That being said, when I read the budget for this film, a mere 10,000 dollars I understood its shortcomings much more. It is very hard to make a film on that kind of money, a herculean effort by the director that should not be ignored.
That being said, there is potential here. Does the film fall into the “so bad it’s good” category? Yes, yes it does. Maybe that would make some of you reading this want to see it even, and, in theory, that’s not really such a bad place to be in for an unknown director. I think the filmmaker, Saxon Moen, could be a legitimate B-movie director on Lifetime or something similar. Heck, I could actually see this film being purchased by Lifetime in the edited state that it is in right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o95TwoiWlMo
Is this a film that would be a critical darling? No, but, I’ve seen other ultra low budget indies that have absolutely no potential to capture any sort of underground audience. The difference here is that this one does have something to the point where I think this director could gain a kind of cult following, and potentially even make a living off his efforts; and that is a feat in and of itself.
For Moen, I do hope that happens and he finds his way with an underground audience. If he made another film, I would be more than willing to watch it, this film did hold my attention as well. I got through the entire thing without feeling the endless need to skip forward, it had entertaining action bits and some fun sequences. If you do watch this though, take it for what it is, a bit of fun in a so bad it’s good way. I don’t think this film takes itself too seriously and it could serve as a guilty pleasure, or a bit of fun for a Friday or Saturday night.
Fox Richardson’s husband, Rob, has been in prison for over twenty years for attempted armed robbery (which Fox was also involved in). Nobody has ever denied his guilt, least of all Rob, who pleaded guilty at the time, but Fox believes his sentence (sixty years without the possibility of parole) to be drastically disproportionate for a crime in which nobody was hurt.
The couple carried out the robbery after an investor pulled out of a plan to support their new business in 1997. As Fox says, ‘desperate people do desperate things.’ They made a big mistake. They’re well aware of that, but Fox believes that Rob has more than served his time, and she’s spent every year since arguing that he was poorly represented and campaigning for his release. Time, the new documentary from director Garrett Bradley, brings that story to the screen.
In many ways, Time feels almost like a spiritual successor to Ava DuVernay’s 2016 Oscar nominee 13th, dealing with America’s mass incarceration problem, albeit in a more personal manner. Time opts to approach this issue through the eyes of one family, delivering its message in a relatable yet equally successful way. Richardson and Bradley’s argument clearly is that the problem lies in incarcerating people for far longer than they need to be; that the system is utterly broken.
At the heart of this film is the abundance of archive footage provided by Fox; a combination of family home videos and personal diaries from Fox herself. It tells its own story, and it brings the audience on the journey with them. We feel the ‘time’ that’s passed and, in turn, understand the sheer anguish that the family have experienced. It articulates emotions in a way that no amount of talking heads could achieve, and also creates some form of character arc for the film’s protagonist, Fox, showcasing her evolution from a scared young mother to a brave and impressive woman, capable of achieving the impossible.
Fox has managed to raise six delightful sons mostly on her own, all the while running a busy car dealership and constantly trying to get her husband out of prison. She is intelligent and articulate, persistent and patient. A frankly remarkable person, Fox brings so much energy to the story; impassioned in her speech, determined in her journey and endlessly watchable.
Time, which boasts a hauntingly beautiful score from Jamieson Shaw and Edwin Montgomery, is also brilliantly presented in black-and-white, adding some consistency in tone and evoking the feeling of the film as a family memory; the past, not the future. An excellent choice on Bradley’s part.
Perhaps the only criticism that could be labelled at the film is that it is simply too short. At just 81 minutes, many details are brushed over, with the viewer offered little information with regards to Rob’s appeal or in fact the initial crime itself. Of course, the family is the heart of this story, but a little more context would’ve certainly been welcome.
Overall, Time is extremely effective; a personal and melancholic look at an ongoing problem. Thematically rich, it focuses on all the negative effects of the topic at hand, while never losing sight of the heart of its story; Fox, Rob and their sons. It gives us a family worth reuniting, and two people worthy of a second chance.
Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) is a mortician on the verge of retirement. He still very much enjoys his work, but with a Help Wanted sign outside, Montgomery Dark is looking for new blood. Then one day a young woman named Sam (Caitlin Fisher) answers that wanted ad and applies for the position, whatever that may be. What follows is a series of short stories as told by Montgomery to his new apprentice on what could be the very last night of their lives.
The Mortuary Collection is a horror anthology movie coming to Shudder with a spectacular looking production value, all tipped off nicely by a creepy and sometimes comical script and a larger than life performance by cult actor Clancy Brown.
A collection of Morality tales, The Mortuary Collection sets its tale in decades gone by, evoking the Fifties right through to the Seventies although it’s difficult to tell when exactly the movie is set.
Supposedly this adds to the timeless quality of the movie, where fans of horror can indulge in anything from Lovecraftian bathroom scares to Halloween slasher pastiches. However, it could be said that the subgenres that it ties itself to so closely are its constraint, because as well done it is and as lovely it is to look at, The Mortuary Collection sometimes feels like style over substance.
Having a horror anthology with a single writer/director (Ryan Spindell) also limits the range of the stories, although often critiqued by the characters themselves for their unoriginality, some different voices with different things to bring to the table may have added more variety.
All the actors play their parts well, but there isn’t really one story that stands out over any other and some different artistic styles and visions may have helped to liven it up.
Although for fans of a bit of tongue in cheek horror with buckets of blood, gore and… um, well other bodily fluids, then The Mortuary Collection may just be what you’re looking for. After all, who could deny themselves the pleasure of watching Clancy Brown camping it up for a few laughs?
I don’t know whether it was the 2.00am start, the fact that I’d just finished The Haunting of Bly Manor, or that I was absolutely shattered after a long, hard days work, but Blumhouse’s newest entry into the Welcome to the Blumhouse canon creeped up on me like a faceless lady wandering mindlessly around a old English stately home.
After watching Black Box a couple of weeks ago and coming out somewhat underwhelmed but its made-for-television aesthetic and inconsistent and half-baked plot, I had started to wonder whether I’d made the wrong choice in what to watch. I’ve since checked out The Lie (which was the other option that night) on Amazon Prime and came away figuring that Black Box probably was the better of the two. This whole experience left me somewhat apprehensive about Nocturne, my choice for last night’s virtual premiere. I could have checked out Evil Eye instead, but Nocturne, written and directed by Zu Quirke, looked the more interesting option.
Still, I can’t say I was expecting much. As I said, I’ve already been left underwhelmed by this series, and so part of me was assuming I’d be met with yet another not-good-enough-for-cinema-release offering. So, I was pleasantly surprised when it actually did sort of unsettle me.
Let’s be clear, it isn’t perfect. Playing out like a sort of schlocky rendition of Black Swan set in a classical music school, Nocturne stumbles along, never entirely sure what to do with its admittedly intriguing premise. The concept of passion, obsession, possession and the like is right up my street, so I’ll hold my hand up now and say I’m somewhat biased. But even though it suffers from long stretches of dullness and an inability to effectively use what could be a genuinely frightening image of a dead girl to its advantage, the typical, now almost formulaic, Blumhouse approach of jump scares and sudden loud music stingers were enough to keep me entertained, while the subtler aspects of a slow decent into obsession and madness were enough to keep me engaged.
Much like Black Box before it, Nocturne definitely suffers from that kind of horrible made-for-television feel. There are things here that just look cheap and, as a result, cheapen their impact (hello aforementioned dead girl), but there is also enough meat to the concept that it never feels like its overcomplicating itself or getting itself tangled in a mess of plot holes and inconsistencies in the way I felt with Black Box.
The lead performance, but star Sydney Sweeney, is solid. She manages to capture that sense of bubbling resentment, frustration, and a longing for something more, incredibly well. Given recent events surrounding the arts here in the UK, as well, there is something to be said about a film that acknowledges just how important art can be to some people, and how, so often as it is, unflinchingly cruel, unfair, and miserable pursuing your dreams can be.
The story revolves around Sweeney’s Juliet, a shy music student who lacks the confidence, bravado, and talent of her twin sister, Vivian (played by Madison Iseman), despite her willingness to put in more work, and her obvious passion for the subject. For Juliet music isn’t just a thing she does for fun, it is her calling and her entire reason for being, and that kind of devotion to an art speaks to me. When Juliet discovers a mysterious notebook belonging to a classmate who recently committed suicide by throwing herself out a window, things take a more genre-like turn as our protagonist starts to experience strange visions, bizarre goings on, and begins to change in a far more outspoken, brash, and almost arrogant individual.
Whether or not any of this is real or is simply the result of a mind so consumed by obsession and desire is left somewhat ambiguous, and although the ending was so obvious as to be almost pointless, the journey to get there had just enough twists, turns, interesting moments, and engaging performances to keep me watching.
Of the three Welcome to the Blumhouse projects I’ve seen so far, Nocturne is easily my favorite. It may not be entirely successful in its attempts to portray the struggles of those of us who do see certain artforms as a calling, but it is smart enough to offer up plenty of distraction in the form of weird imagery and ghost-train style scares here and there to paper over those cracks.
Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity, however, is the way in which the film lands on what could be a truly chilling and thoughtful ending before undermining it with the more obvious and schlocky one. In a way that small issue is a microcosm of the movie as a whole. An enjoyable but predictable experience that is so close to being so much more than it ultimately is.
