Just the Ticket

Hey, Hallowed Readers! It's the night a tenth of you have all been waiting for; Halloween is here, and so is the one-hundredth issue of Just the Ticket ! And because it's All Hallows' Eve, a special collection of Halloween-themed Critical Quickies  are in order. But not particularly. Umm. Maybe if I start writing the reviews, I can come up with something more clever than that. So here goes: October Gale -- Patricia Clarkson ( The East ), Tim Roth ( Funny Games ), Scott Speedman ( Underworld ): Although the synopsis would lead one to believe this is one of those couple-trapped-in-a-storm-with-a-possible-killer thrillers, the only thing Halloween-related about October Gale is the month in its title. Clarkson was cast solely for her ability to look monotonously depressed, Speedman plays a mysterious man with a gunshot wound who provides Clarkson's widow doctor ample opportunity to be more monotonously depressed than she already is, and Tim Roth is underutilized as the...

Halloween's just around the bend, Ticketholders! And that means the Countdown  event is just about over. I have neither time nor creativity enough to say anything stupid or clever at the moment, but what better way to close out than with the last SW@ Ticket review I ever wrote? Here it comes, straight  FROM July 23, 2008 (SW@ Ticket #59: Not-So-Childish "Games"): I thoroughly enjoyed not enjoying  Funny Games , Michael Haneke's English-language remake of his 1997 movie of the same name and plot. The update stars Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Devon Gearhart as a family who unwittingly fall into the middle of a sociopath-psychopath sandwich while on vacation at their lake-front summer home. Will they win the bet their two young captors have proposed to them and survive beyond 9am the next morning? I can't tell you that because this is a review, people! The beautiful thing about  Funny Games  is that it has all the earmarks of a film that might fit into the...

Six. Six. Six issues into the Countdown to Hallows' Eve  event! Don't worry, Ticketholders. I'm not into Satanism. I just felt a spontaneous urge to type in the accent of the Count from Sesame Street . Is that better or worse? While you ponder that, I will be posting a retro-view FROM July 21, 2008 (SW@ Ticket #58: Pulling the Wool "Clover" My Eyes) . At the time I was first re-posting this, I was still using MySpace as my chosen avenue of self-exhibition, and I was less than a year away from graduating from San Diego State University (barely). I had also decided to get what I deemed an "early start" on the job hunt. I use sarcastic quotes here because in hindsight I realize that a true early start would have involved me applying for an internship as soon as I was admitted, rather than waiting until seven years later when I had no major-relevant work experience and no further desire to apply my knowledge in my chosen field. I had decided near the end of...

Hi, Ticketholders! I'm the Ticketmaster formerly known as SWAT (and then formerly known as SW@), and you're not  watching Jackass . Because it's not on anymore. So if I'm trying to clean out all of the Halloween-related posts from my old blogs and post them here, why would I be making a Jackass  reference FROM November 22, 2004 (SWAT Ticke t #24: Parcel of Posthumous) , and then bring you an old movie review that has absolutely nothing to do with the horror genre? Because the movie has a dead body in it, and I felt like doing it. So here it is, slightly re-worded for my maturity and professionalism (ha-ha): After getting shot with a beanbag gun, destroying rental cars, putting a muscle stimulator on his testicles, having a toy shoved up his ass, and being beaten up countless times, Johnny Knoxville finally has a leading roll that isn't (so) bad for his health. In Grand Theft Parsons , Knoxville plays Phil Kaufman, an ex-roadie who abducts (sort of) famous countr...

Welcome, once again, to the first ever Countdown to Hallows' Eve  event! We're four issues into this thing with four days to go, and while we're counting backwards, let's go back in time to July 19, 2008 ( SW@ Ticket #56: Descend into Darkness and Feast Your Eyes)  for this special trilogy of fear: You know what that means, folks; you're in for several minutes of big-chested women and wannabe macho men making stupid decisions to the benefit of mutants, monsters, and tool-wielding maniacs everywhere. And by "everywhere," I mean run-down buildings and roads in the middle of nowhere. So let's get critical! If I'm going to write this without using too many more exclamation points, I'll have to get some inspiration by first reviewing the horror movies that didn't really scare me. Most recently, I tried to indulge in Feast: Unrated , the latest Project Greenlight ...umm...project from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (co-created with Wes Craven, t...

Welcome back, Kotter! And other Hallowed Readers and Ticketholders! It's time once again for time to move closer to All Hallow's Eve. Wait. It's time for time? I don't have time for all of this philosophical redundancy! I need to get some more cobwebs cleared off of my interwebs so I can keep this Countdown  event going! Speaking of webs, here's a little piece of inter-cobwebbery I spun back on June 26, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #48: Exorcise your Rights):  Anyone remember The Exorcist ? With Linda Blair's spinning head, the horrible make-up, and that infamous green vomit, it's pretty unforgettable. But it seems that Hollywood's way of remembering something as legendary as The Exorcist  is to do a bunch of remakes, which try in vain to keep the poor quality and vomit to a minimum while still turning heads (and stomachs). But what eventually followed was The Exorcism of Emily Rose ; a re-imagining of The Exorcist (and this time Hollywood actually means it to...

Good evening again, Hallowed Readers and Ticketholders! Another collection of new old reviews awaits you as we count closer to the day of the dead. They say flattery will get you nowhere, and I plan on going places, starting with this unflattering selection FROM October 18, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #44: Amittville - High On Tension, Low On Horror):  What happened to all of the scary movies? All I've seen lately are "scary" movies, and folks, I really miss pissing my pants. You know the kind of movies I'm talking about, right? The kind of movies that shock your senses into a dulled state with a bunch of blood and gore, forget to synchronize the pop-up scare with a crescendo, and make the psycho killer a psycho for all the wrong reasons? I thought you might know that kind of thing. As you might have guessed from the title, I'm going to review High Tension (a dubbed French "horror" film about a lesbian serial killer with a male split personality) and The Amit...

Good evening, Hallowed Readers and Ticketholders! As promised, I am back to cleaning up my old blogs and re-posting their contents as part of my Countdown to Hallows' Eve  event (I'm calling it an event even though I just came up with the name for it five seconds ago. Isn't that awesomely presumptuous of me?). I begin the countdown with something I pulled from my sick imagination after reading Entertainment Weekly  and drinking a vat of coffee on July 2, 2012 (Piece Offerings #20: Found Dead Near):  I was reading News and Notes in this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly (y'know, the section that says who's getting a divorce, who's having a baby, who died, and so forth), and in the Deaths section, it said that some old movie actor was "found dead near" his home at the age of 74. With those three little monosyllabic words, I couldn't help feeling sorry for the guy because the semantics painted a grisly picture in my head. I mean, it...

Good evening again, Ticketholders! As we tiptoe up to the hundredth issue of Just the Ticket , I bring you a collection of cinematic callbacks. That is, reviews and Critical Quickies  that refer back to the content of the previous issue in some way. Also, between now and Halloween, I will be re-posting callbacks to some ghosts from the SW@ Ticket Archive  and my Greatest Hits  before getting into some scary new material for All Hallows' Eve. But first, let's dive into this thing the only way I know how: butt first. Cannonball! Boulevard -- Robin Williams ( The Birdcage ), Bob Odenkirk ( Fargo ), Kathy Baker ( Age of Adaline --Callback Alert!): Sorry. That "butt first" remark was a bad choice of words on my part. In his final role, Robin Williams awkwardly portrays a play-it-safe loan officer who develops a platonic relationship with a male escort. Some speculate Boulevard  is "the movie that made Robin Williams kill himself." And although I was not so p...

Greetings, Ticketholders! We at Timedrop Publications (by which I mean myself, one small parrot, and all the voices in my head--just kidding) have returned after an extensive lack of inspiration to bring you the latest in my locally valued opinion of recent rental releases. On to the  Critical Quickies , folks! Big Game --Samuel L. Jackson ( Avengers ), Ray Stevenson ( Dexter ), Ted Levine ( The Bridge ): A low-production, high-action feature with Jackson as a timid Obama stand-in who gets stranded in the Finnish woodlands when Air Force One is shot down by heavily-armed terrorists. His only salvation lies with a local boy on his coming-of-age quest, who can barely draw a bow. The plot is predictable for movies of its kind, and the villains' motivation is thin at best, but the pacing of the film as a whole and the resourcefulness of its protagonists elevate  Big Game   to a level slightly above mindless fun. B Age of Adaline -- Blake Lively ( Gossip Girl ), Harr...