Dir - Ryan Kruger
Overall: GOOD
After over a decade of cranking out quite a collection of shorts, (including one of the same name that this is an expansion of), South African filmmaker Ryan Kruger delivered his full-length debut Fried Barry which is a flashy, funny, gross, naughty, and highly stylized "fish out of water" alien abduction bit of madness that is surely to please midnight movie aficionados. Local actor Gary Green is perfectly fitted for the title role; a towering, strikingly ravaged, odd looking man whose character passes through Cape Town's seedy underbelly as a drugged-out zombie when in fact he has either been taken over by or cloned by extraterrestrial forces. Six of one, half dozen of the other is essentially the joke since Kruger presents a universe so full of lowlifes, drug addicts, prostitutes, and homeless psychopaths that Green's Barry effortlessly glides through all of it, uttering almost no words with his bugged-out eyes and twitchy motions. Written as a series of set pieces, it is presented in a visually as well as sonically striking manner with eerie synth music setting a sinister mood even as the actual events of the film are often hilariously outrageous and need to be seen to be believed.
Dir - Josh Boone
Overall: MEH
Unceremoniously released during COVID-19's heyday over two years after it was initially completed due to Disney's corporate takeover of Fox, Marvel's The New Mutants unfortunately hits with a whimper in its attempts to bypass superhero movie burnout by being a straight ahead horror film, at least of sorts. The intention from co-writer/director Josh Boone is certainly admirable, especially considering that the cinematic X Men franchise has cranked out lackluster duds more often then not, all on top of the detrimentally formulaic framework that both Marvel and DC movies have been safety sticking by. Tone wise, this is indeed a different beast as its claustrophobic, single location, minimal cast, and lack of a world-ending threat is refreshing in and of itself. Even with their silly accents in tow, the performances are acceptable as are the cartoony special effects, but the story line still ends up falling victim to the same type of plot-hole heavy blunders that every comic book adaptation seems to possess. Having an entire establishment run by a single woman who is tasked with "helping" a handful of kids with little to no control over their immense powers, (well, no control when such a thing is convenient for the script), is still impossible to take seriously despite the standard scary movie tropes and less pizazz-heavy approach to the material. Not nearly as awful as its mangled reputation, but it is still assuredly a swing and a miss.
Dir - Justin G. Dyck
Overall: GOOD
Quite hilariously, the effectively wicked Anything for Jackson comes from the writer-director team of Justin G. Dyck and Keith Cooper, both of whom have made an otherwise career almost exclusively out of syrupy, made for television Holiday movies. In this sense, there work here represents a lighting bolt of bottled up, incredibly evil gruesomeness that even more surprisingly manages to balance a tone that is equally absurd and very creepy. Somewhat of a dark comedy reworking of Liam Gavin's exceptional, 2016 occult nightmare A Dark Song in which a grieving parent, (or in the case here, grandparents), embark on ancient, insanely risky rituals to find some sort of closure with a traumatic loss, there are various details here that keep it just fresh enough to be persistently interesting. Stand-out performances from both Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings in the leads, as well as deadly serious scary music on the soundtrack juxtapose some outrageous moments that nearly disguise their comedic nature. Even during the finale which does seem to show cracks a bit in the intricate, Satanic specifics of the plot, there is an aura of heaviness that leaves an unsettling, macabre aftertaste. Here is hoping that Dyck and Cooper find the need to make more 180 degree shifts from their Christmas extravaganzas and have more diabolically fun ideas like this up their sleeves.
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