Three Films Make A Post: Her clothes torn away, screaming in terror!

Ant-Man (2015): Peyton Reed’s film is the clever little caper comedy superhero movie with bouts of perfectly appropriate sentimentality the Marvel film universe was looking for, and I, for one, am quite happy with and about it, and am now waiting with bated breathe on DC and Warner making the appropriate move. Ha, who am I kidding?

Anyway, I found this one a rather joyful experience that on one hand keeps with the Marvel idea of heroism, and on the other hand knows how to vary the formula, while making a lot of jokes I actually found funny.

Chopping Mall aka Killbots (1986): Keeping in mind the awful, boring tit-fests most of director Jim Wynorski’s movies are, this one’s a little oasis of quality. Things being relative and all, that doesn’t actually mean this slasher/survivalist killer robot epic is all that great, it just means its generally watchable, doesn’t break down under a cornucopia of unfunny jokes, and does entertain in its cheap and stupid way without anyone having to work to get through watching it. That’s faint praise indeed, but being perfectly watchable and generally entertaining, if not spectacularly exciting, makes this one of Wynorski’s best.

The Diabolical (2015): At first, Alistair Legrand’s film pretends to be another piece of Insidious-style mainstream horror, but it quickly turns into something more interesting, and not just through its much more controlled approach to jump scares. No, this is a film whose last act plot reveals actually make sense in the context of what came before and are in fact actual parts of the film’s narrative, and that does try to mix up various things we’ve seen before in ways we don’t necessarily have. Having said that – and also giving a friendly nod to some more than decent acting performances by people like Ali Larter and Arjun Gupta – I never truly warmed the film.

I think that has a lot to do with the overload approach it takes to its plot and characters, where nobody can’t just have a single problem, and no probably supernatural manifestation ever comes alone, which might give the film variety but also robs it of the focus it would need to actually make me care about its characters or its plot. Still, at least its interesting and trying to be more than just dross.