Skip to main content

 JOHN DIES AT THE 


Spoiler alert: He doesn't.


Because he doesn't, I'm ignoring all this film's many virtues. I'm ignoring its anarchic sensibility. I'm ignoring its hyper-aware, self-referential humor. I'm ignoring its deliberately-cheesy effects. I'm ignoring Paul Giamatti, who exec produced and gives a terrific performance, and veteran character actor Clancy Brown, who has a great deal of fun.

I'm ignoring everything that ought to make me ecstatically recommend this movie. If the title is John Dies at the End and John doesn't die at the end, the best you can say of yourself is that you're too clever for your own good. The worst you can say is that your film is a lie and a failure.

John Dies at the End is too clever for its own good. Fail. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cuck Fiction: Charles Vidor's GILDA

 Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George MacReady, Steven Geray. Dir. Charles Vidor, Columbia, 1946 My favorite erotic fiction deals with cuckolding. The stories fascinate me. As people, cuckolds don't seem to think they're worth nice things. Or happiness. On the other hand, the cuckolding partners and their multiple lovers don't come over as the clear victors, either. Part of the fascination - maybe most of it - lies in trying to decide which party comes out the MOST degraded.  Is it the submissive, sensitive husband and his unsatisfactory size/staying power? Is it the "slutwife" who finds satiety in being transformed into a fuckdoll to humilate her husband? Or is it the lover - often black - who gets to degrade the sexy white lady but who doesn't otherwise matter? As in bdsm scenes, if the cuck is most degraded, that means he also "wins," as his desires to see his wife turned into a promiscuous slut while he gets to be bi without shame are most fulfi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collected&Directed #2:John Carpenter's DARK STAR & ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13

  DARK STAR Dan O'Bannon, Brian Norelle, Cal Kuniholm, Dre Pahich. Dir. John Carpenter, Bryanston Distributing, 1975 My first real film-nerd buddy was named Tom. We went to the same prep school, where our interest in Monty Python, horror movies, & shooting our own productions with Tom's dad's movie camera (not a little Super8 job, either, it had sound) did not earn us invites to the cool kids' parties. Tom had two legs up on me when it came to movies:1.The financial support of his parents. 2.Cable, including Movie Channel. He had access to infinitely more films, uncut films, uncensored films, foreign films - he had a freakin' movie library living inside his TV and his parents didn't care if he stayed up all weekend watching it. Tom had seen many more movies than I, but it wasn't competition. It was friendship - that wondrous sensation of mutual delight when you meet someone who GETS IT. Tom loved to share the films Movie Channel & openminded paren...
Post a Comment
Read more

I love Twinkies: Tommy Lee Wallace's IT

 Harry Anderson, Richard Thomas, Dennis Christopher, Tim Reid, Annette O'Toole, Tim Curry. Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace, Warner Bros., 1990 I had one problem with the 1990 TV movie (run over two nights back in '90, NBC called it a miniseries, but as a dvd-feature it runs three hours and six minutes, a little longer than Avengers:End Game) and it's a big one. I loved all the stuff with the cast as kids, in the first part. Only Seth Green among them went on to be household-name actors and their anonymity at this remove gave their performances a spontanaeity and freshness that helped me buy them as screen versions of the novel's characters. The adult versions, essayed by an ensemble of B-listers and small screen stars, however, didn't do much for me.  I'm willing to lay that off on a poor screenplay to some extent, but IT proves definitively that Harry Anderson, despite two hit sitcoms, cannot act. At all. It goes on to prove that Richard Thomas, Dennis Christopher, An...
1 comment
Read more