Film / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / April 2024 / Gabriel Ricard

Image © BFI | Sony Pictures

When I think about how many movies are left for me to see, I can’t help but feel really good about that. Of course, there are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of movies that are completely lost to time, or are so deep in a vault buried in some rich loser’s asshole that no one’s going to dig it out until we’re all dead and gone and the aliens come by with a drill and some free time. Even if we take all of those out of the running, I’m still left with at least several thousand films I’d like to get around to seeing in my lifetime.

You’ve probably heard me say this before. If you’re sick of movies, maybe it’s time to crack open the deep, deep well of all that stuff you’ve been meaning to see. Maybe, it’s time to watch that one movie that sounds terrible, but you just can’t shake the notion that it might be some weird fun. Why waste your time on another 10-hour show that probably could have been a 2-hour movie without too much lost?

I’ll never get to see it all, and that remains a wonderous sort of miracle to me. There’s always something to watch. If I have to reach a little further to find that oddball or hidden gem, all the better.

Really, I don’t know if people actually realize how many movies there really are. Take a run through an entire genre on Tubi. That doesn’t even begin to cover it, but you’ll find yourself considering hundreds of movies you haven’t even heard of. Who says you have to watch the same 10 pieces of shit over and over again?

Unless you’re into that sort of thing. And I get it. I do.

Next Door (1994): D+

Don’t mind me. I suppose I’m just a little nostalgic for a time when James Wood and Randy Quaid only played craven, bottomlessly stupid assholes in movies and television. This satirical (I guess? We’ll get to that) film about two warring families in the suburbs came out at a point where both men could still be very easily considered good actors.

However, cast doesn’t guarantee anything in the way of a good comedy or successful skewering of suburban life and middle-aged white guy frustration (hey, I get it, man). Next Door is directed by Tony Bill, whose resume is compelling, and really solid in places like 5 Corners, but it doesn’t really scream “satire” to me. Nor does the name of screenwriter Barney Cohen, who also has some solid titles on his list of writer or screenwriter credits, including Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. But once again, there’s nothing here that tells me this dark comedy that isn’t particularly funny was a good vehicle for him. Next Door never fully settles on being a social commentary, a tense (no) thriller, a dark comedic tale of just how far seemingly normal people will go when they feel pushed, or much of anything. It simply introduces some characters, pushes them through some disconnected story beats together and apart, and hopes the performances will build tension where the rest of the movie can’t.

And no, no they don’t. Neither Woods nor Quaid ever get a grip with characters that do sound like they should be in their respective wheelhouses. Woods is a tense, well-meaning intellectual who almost immediately finds himself clashing with Quaid’s sneering, working class swagger and penchant for bullying. Woods completely fails at playing a guy who would let Randy Quaid push him around in the first place, and there’s nothing deep to what Quaid has to convey. It’s all stuff we’ve seen him do better in other movies, and in a movie that has no real identity or even seemingly a point behind it, it’s impossible to ignore. The mediocrity of Quaid and Woods in Next Door is such that you almost forget how badly miscast Kate Capshaw is as Woods’ wife. Lucinda Jenny fares best as Quaid’s wife with the only character I actually found interesting, but these women are written with even less depth than their husbands, which at least helps the movie remain a consistent, depressing slog.

So, while maybe some of the cast is promising for a story like Next Door, which is literally just about two families that start fighting with each other. Mostly the husbands, played by Quaid and Woods, who both seem to struggle with the odd blandness of their characters, and have virtually no antagonistic chemistry together. You’re tempted to think this might be a hidden gem, or at least an odd cultural artifact, but it’s neither. It’s just a movie you’re not surprised no one remembers.

Bad Girl Boogey (2022): B+

Bad Girl Boogey is the kind of movie that makes you excited to be a horror fan. This is a decidedly queer slasher that marries its story and plot to some powerful commentary on the constant threats faced by those in the trans community, and does so with the kind of blunt, creative mania that made some of the most political 70s horror movies so fucking good. Alice Maio Mackay is a name we’re going to want to save for later. She’s not even in her 20s, and she’s already displaying a singular voice with the promise of a messy, unshakable vision that’s only going to get more interesting. Bad Girl Boogey, written by MacKay and Benjamin Pahl Robinson, has a lot of cool shit going for it.

We meet Angel, a teenager whose mother was killed years earlier on Halloween night. As the holiday approaches in the present day, we see a young girl fighting with those memories, while suddenly finding herself and her friends in a brutal, terrifying, and seemingly bottomless fight against a masked killer targeting LGBTQIA+ kids. It’s easy to see where this meets the headlines of our shitty waking reality, but Bad Girl Boogey makes this all clear to us while sticking hard to story, plot, characters, and everything else that makes good horror truly a pleasure to behold.

It's not always perfect, with some kill scenes that are occasionally a little clunky, but the low-budget imagination, believable dialog supporting wonderful performances, and constant sense of impending oblivion of Bad Girl Boogey all create one of the best Shudder exclusives to come along in quite some time.

Sweet Home (1989): B+

Image © Itami Productions | Toho

Writing recently about the 1989 Capcom video game Sweet Home, a game which would eventually provide the foundation for a slightly more famous Capcom horror game called Resident Evil, I realized that I had never actually seen the movie Sweet Home was developed to tie in with.

It’s an easy movie to like, packed with excellent haunted house atmosphere, a cast of genuinely compelling characters, and a quirky sense of humor that doesn’t run away with the whole endeavor. There are a few sincerely unsettling moments in the film, which tells the story of a film crew that sets up shop in an abandoned house that once belonged to a great artist. Shrouded in mystery and potential tragedy, the film crew soon learn the shocking secrets of the artist and his family. It’s nothing groundbreaking as stories go, but Sweet Home reminds us that horror in particular is all about how the story is being told. 

And in the sense of how the story is being told, Sweet Home is extremely effective. Good performances abound among those who play the film crew, especially Shingo Yamashiro, Nobuko Miyamoto, and popular 80s singer Nokko, and the whole backstory of the family who lived in the house builds up alongside our growing desire to see our three main players get out of this nightmare house in one piece.

Sweet Home isn’t very deep, but that’s fine because the movie doesn’t try to be. It’s just a genre film that goes for broke and doesn’t overstep itself. Sometimes, that’s more than enough, but let it also be said that Sweet Home has some surprises, as well.

The Appointment (1982): A-

Image © BFI | Sony Pictures

Developed for a TV show that didn’t go anywhere, all I can do is mourn the loss of what could have been a slew of extraordinary, strange British TV horror movies. The one we did get is close to a minor masterpiece in my mind, with The Appointment currently standing as the best new (to me) horror film I’ve seen this year.

But I’m also a person who appreciates the slow burn when it’s working for me. You give me atmosphere and characters that keep my attention, and I’ll stay with the tour for hours if necessary. The Appointment clocks in at a mere 90 minutes, but the crawl one experiences across a day in the life of a British family who may or may not be the targets of a powerful supernatural threat can leave you feeling mildly delirious. It’s the sort of pace that feels like a snail’s descent into a hell with no floor to land on. Helping this along are great performances by the cast. Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man and Hot Fuzz) is outstanding as a husband and father who slowly comes to realize that something is very, very wrong. As he struggles to figure things out, we watch his existence unfold in some of the most unsettling examples of liminal horror I’ve seen in quite some time.

Such a buildup and atmosphere can be great to watch, but it doesn’t mean shit if the actual shock at the end doesn’t have the visual and psychological punch the movie needs to be more than just some spooky vibes. Thankfully, The Appointment flawlessly and hauntingly puts an exclamation point on the strange fate of Woodward’s character, who we only know as Ian. Stillness has never been quite this devastating.

His Motorbike, Her Island (1986): A-

Image © Kadokawa Haruki Jimusho | Toho

Best known as the director of the 1977 weirdo masterpiece House, writer/director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi amassed an extraordinary body of work over a period of some sixty years. There’s a lot in his filmography that’s worth your time, and His Motorbike, Her Island, an enthusiastically offbeat love store revolving around motorcycles, is one of his most captivating. It’s certainly not the type of romantic movie you’re going to encounter very often, but it’s also a movie with an accessible plot and characters who are easy to get behind.

A young motorcycle enthusiast named Ko meets a young girl from a nearby island named Miyo. After a handful of chance meetings, they eventually begin a relationship, with Ko teaching an enthusiastic Miyo everything he knows about bikes.

Circumstances pull them apart, and His Motorbike, Her Island does a nice job of building up something between these two where it becomes important to see where these two will go.

His Motorbike, Her Island is a sweet movie that has plenty of quirkiness in its film language and sense of presentation, but at its heart, it’s a love story that also touches deeply and profoundly on the notion of love with the knowledge that you can’t protect them from everything. Fear of the unknown can be destructive to everything from the hope inherent in the everyday, to our dreams, and to the people we want to be with. His Motorbike, Her Island shows two people working through those thoughts and going for it anyway. It’s a moving romantic film that should be able to win over most cynics, and it’s easy enough to track this one down online.