In Chopping Mall, a 1980s shopping mall buys a three-robot police force to protect capital from ~thieves~. A lightning strike makes the robots go on an overnight killing spree. A bunch of horny young people who stayed in a furniture store for an orgy and excessive use of hairspray get targeted by the killbots, and only the least-horny ones survive.

If that paragraph sounds good to you, then this is a five-star movie. If it doesn’t sound good, there is nothing in the movie you will enjoy. Nothing.

Director Jim Wynorski has never met a boner that didn’t turn into a film pitch. This is the man behind 2016’s “Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre,” which is like a less-horny version of his pitch for unmade cinema classic “Prison Planet,” all about naked prisoner women fighting mutant alien naked women. He had the idea for Sharkansas in the shower. Yeah, he was definitely doing what we all think, and then he was like “I’m going to find a producer for this!” after hosing his Jimshot off the wall.

So when I tell you this man boner’d his way through 80s slasher horror, you can imagine how many shots of boobies the movie features. A *significant* portion of the movie is horny hooligans in a furniture store. If he can think of any excuse for the women (and the men too, to be fair) to be partially nude, entirely nude, showing boobies, or showing butt, then HE WILL DO IT.

Everything about Chopping Mall is perfect.

Here are some snippets of dialogue to prove my thesis:

“I guess I’m just not used to being chased around a mall by killer robots in the middle of the night.”

Guy: You smell like pepperoni.
Girl: Well if THAT is how you feel–
Guy, more sexily: I like pepperoni.
Girl: In that case… (she gets her boobies out)

“You know Brennan, you’re becoming a real candidate for prickhood.”

Guy: Jesus! What’s that?
Another guy: Robot blood.

The character Allison Parks is literally named after a porn star. Whose name was Alison Parks.

As horny as Wynorski was for Allison Parks (and her actress, explicitly cast because Wynorski wanted to bone her, according to IMDB trivia), Chopping Mall nonetheless follow horror movie rules. There is a final girl, and she’s the one who doesn’t whip out her titties. I think she’s supposed to be ugly, fat, and smart? I’m never sure when the 80s intend for me to regard a character as fat and ugly because I think everyone’s hot. But she’s got cheeks and keeps her shirt on, AND she’s forced to date the nerd guy, so I’m pretty sure she’s fat and ugly.

The reason that Chopping Mall is ideal as a Valentine’s Day movie is because the final girl also gets her final boyfriend to survive at the very end. Isn’t that so cute and wholesome?

My absolute favorite moment in the movie is when a girl falls down holding a gas can, and her friends watch with extremely mild concern as a robot laser-blasts the gas can. The girl immediately turns into a flaming stuntman (quite burly) wearing a blonde wig while her screams play over his thrashing. I’m convinced the only reason that this character ever put on clothes was for this moment. Wynorski didn’t want to see the stuntman naked. Gross!

If reading this review didn’t convince you that Chopping Mall is great, then it won’t be. But I’m telling you this is CINEMA. REAL CINEMA.

(image credit: Concorde Pictures)

In Marry Me, a pair of characters best compared to IRL Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny agree to get married on stage during a concert, but the dude popstar turns out to be a cheater, so Character JLo marries an audience member on a whim because he’s holding a “Marry Me” sign. Much to her benefit, this audience member turns out to be Owen Wilson, who is very good at “I’m in love with this woman”-face.

As it turns out, Owen Wilson is a humble single dad math teacher. He respects the hell out of JLo’s character. He’s one of the nicest romcom heroes, and I just always love nice dad heroes. The match-up between a fabulous globe-trotting pop star and the Extremely Common Dude creates plenty of insecurity between them. Of course it all works out nicely.

That said, I was not terribly impressed the first time I watched Marry Me. I’d have probably given it a knee-jerk two stars of “what is this crap?” This was my first rewatch since release two years ago, and I loved it a lot more.

In the intervening years, I’ve watched a ton of romcoms, high and low budget. I also watched a movie with a similar hero/heroine duo, but at Christmastime, and with Freddie Prinze Junior: Christmas With You. I gave that one five stars because I was in *such* a Christmas romcom mood and it made me so happy. Marry Me isn’t quite as much of a happy-glow vibe for me, but it’s also way better than two stars now that I can compare it to many more flicks in the genre.

Where Marry Me works, it works very well. I like JLo romcoms because she puts her whole doe-eyed heart into them. She has outstanding chemistry with Owen Wilson (kachow!). I believe that both of them have reasonable motivations to make a sincere effort to have a successful marriage with a stranger from disparate life circumstances.

This movie also features young Chloe Coleman as Lou, the daughter. You might recognize her from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves as Chris Pine’s adorable daughter. This lass has enormous talent, and she’s been exercising it since she started in 2013, locking in thirty roles on IMDB. Can you imagine a career starting on Glee and crossing through “daughter of Captain Kirk and Lightning McQueen” before you’re an adult? Although I *always* worry about kids working so much, I’m also impressed when kid actors are good enough to meet (possibly exceed) the abilities of the adults surrounding them.

The casting in general is notable for a romcom that feels a bit Hallmarky. Sarah Silverman gets to be the chaotic lesbian best friend, Samwell from Westeros is the manager guy for JLo, Maluma played Bad Bunny* (*not really), and Jameela Jamil even shows up for a minute with hardly a single pomp OR a circumstance. I was just looking at the casting for JLo’s upcoming music video movie, and it’s got an even more stacked cast list, so I’m thinking JLo has a lot of famous friends?

On a less glowing note, the setup stretched credulity a *little* too far. The whole wedding flipperoo early on still just feels extremely contrived to put these people together. I wouldn’t mind if the movie’s energy went a little harder in general–more stylized, more silly, more *something*. Matching the extreme sincerity of JLo’s interest in the “I still have hope for love” narrative (which is charming) with this concert wedding that suddenly involves a total stranger just doesn’t quite work for me personally. But I bet that’s the element that makes this a perfect fantasy for someone.

The soundtrack is solid if you like pop music, the chemistry and performances are worth the price of admission, and I genuinely enjoy every single look JLo’s character wears in Marry Me. I’m glad I spent eight bucks to buy this one because I know I’m going to keep rewatching it when my brain doesn’t want to brain and I just want to say “Wowwwww, kachow!” every time Owen Wilson is on screen.

Okay, but now let’s imagine that the “Hansel” theme played when Owen Wilson went on stage to marry JLo. That would have made this a six star movie, bare minimum.

(image credit: Universal Pictures)

Hey, I didn’t hate this one!

Long before I started forming (only slightly) more cogent movie opinions, my rule for answering “Is this movie any good?” was based upon whether or not it bores me. If I wasn’t bored watching a movie, it was Good Enough.

By 35-year-old Sara standards, The Marvels wasn’t really any good. The story was nigh incoherent. The stakes were flimsy. The movie did not take its own central drama seriously.

But I was Not Bored in a very pleasant way for most of The Marvels after the first twenty minutes or so, which means there is a solid hourish of watchable movie there. You can’t have any expectations for Actual Plot because, again, flimsy and incoherent. Let me tell you a little secret about American cape comics though: The writing is almost never the strong suit anyway. I don’t really care when Marvel movies are badly written. I’m willing to meet them on their level, like The Eternals.

What I hope to get is gonzo, Golden Age nonsense, and The Marvels delivered with alien kittens devouring people. Why is there a planet where people have to sing to understand each other? Who freakin cares. Did you notice that Kamala is dancing the whole time? It’s adorable. I want Captain Marvel’s dress. The graphics are pretty. Teyonah Parris. There’s just so much to speak for it.

Really, I’m mostly here for Baby Lesbian Kamala, who surely leaves The Marvels with a whole lotta brand-new confusing fetishes for violent mommies. I have never seen more of a Flop-Sweat Lesbian Panic than the moment where Kamala realizes that Captain Marvel was actually in her bedroom. That’s how I would feel if Brie Larson showed up in my house too. Kamala has so many fan-drawings of herself hugging/helping/living a beautiful life with Captain Marvel, and I relate so strongly.

There’s no heterosexual explanation for anything happening with Captain Marvel. She doesn’t have to grapple the generic hot mommy villain so intimately, but she does, and bless her heart for it. There’s no denying Captain Marvel is Monica’s lesbian mommy and they can’t reconcile missing Captain Marvel’s wife. You just can’t!

Only a lesbian would look at the prince of the magical singing ocean planet and think, “Yeah, let’s make this a marriage of convenience rather than hanging out to rail this hot guy wearing this beautiful dress.”

Only a lesbian would have this much of her hero arc based upon the activity of an orange cat. If you read that sentence and thought, “But I’m not a lesbian and I’d have a hero arc based on an orange cat?” then you’re a lesbian. I don’t make the rules.

Baby Lesbian Kamala’s family is also a very sparkling highlight of the movie, much with the family in Blue Beetle, and I was happy to see them even if they got better writing on Kamala’s show. I also really enjoyed Samuel L. Jackson’s commitment to enjoying himself throughout the film. This man is tired of taking life seriously, and I enjoyed the haze of compersion from watching Nick Fury ham it up alongside kittens, family, and my sweet flaw-free niece Kamala.

This whole thing is really a rollicking good time for families, if you ask me. I rewound the scene with the kittens eating people twice to show my kids. I’ll probably make my spouse watch this later because I think he’ll also love Kamala and kittens. Kamala, kittens, and “this one is for the girls and gays” as an overwhelming priority makes this one of the most tolerable MCU entries I’ve watched since the Kamala show.

(image credit: Disney)

Plus One is about a couple of friends who decide to become each other’s plus-ones at ten weddings over the course of the year. As one would expect with heterosexuality in a romance-oriented movie, it develops into Something More.

This is about eighty percent of a movie I *adored* and then a massive letdown of a final twenty percent.

I was poised to love this one, since it has Jack Quaid, who I like to call Twink Meg Ryan. He’s the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, but takes much more after his mother. He’s got her charisma and good looks and then he’s also tall, which is basically a royal flush for a white guy.

I wasn’t familiar with Maya Erskine before this, but she became my favorite immediately. Her performance is so funny. She’s got tons of range, great nuance, and she is adorably tiny compared to Jack Quaid. (Height disparity is always cute to me.)

The problem is that Maya Erskine could have carried this movie alone (like a dirtbag Meg Ryan), but the film was more concerned with Jack Quaid’s character. It felt as though it were written primarily as a vehicle for Meg Ryan’s son to do a romcom. But then it failed to do romcom well: the messy breakup happens, and Quaid’s character makes no grand gesture to earn her love in return. He talks to her briefly after changing his mind, and that’s it.

We follow Quaid’s character through his personal development. We do not see the reason Erskine’s character ends up with her ex again, or why they break up again in favor of Quaid, nor do we see Erskine’s character arc in regards to her parents completed. Plus One skips over the most critical climactic elements of romance in favor of Quaid’s character piece.

Suddenly, at the end of the movie, they are together again. There is no catharsis. We are deprived of genuine satisfaction.

It’s not enough for one person in a romance to overcome their issues. The point of romances is for both people to change through the darkest moment because the other person has what they need, so they grow for each other. Here, all Erskine “needed” was for Quaid to change his mind–at least, based on what we can tell happening on screen. Even Erskine’s family issues ended up serving Quaid’s character: it was only an opportunity to show his fear of commitment, not her growth.

Keeping their reconciliation off-screen, reflected on in brief montage, is basically criminal. Like, why’d you even make a romcom?

The first hour-ish of the movie was a hoot. Their relationship was adorable. Only One Bed In The Hotel Room is among my favorite tropes. By the time they hooked up, I was making zoo animal noises and banging around my living room. I was ready to give this six stars up until the moment I realized that, yes, we were going to spend the whole last twenty minutes with Quaid’s character, relegating Erskine to the prize he wins by having a heart-to-heart with his drugged up dad.

A bad dismount generally ruins an entire movie for me, especially when it feels like they flunked something so integral to the genre. It’s like if they didn’t show Aragorn at his coronation in Return of the King, or The Matrix skipping over a climactic fight scene, or a mystery shrugging off finding the answer. It’s really frustrating how often people make romcoms and don’t actually understand the payoff points of romance.

Sorry, Twink Meg Ryan, but this wasn’t it. I hope to see him in another romcom because it’s cute watching him Bold Boimler his way through hookups, but hopefully he gets better writing next time. And I’m going to go try Erskine in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where I hope she gets better writing too.

(image source: RLJ Entertainment)

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a weatherman named Phil who sucks so thoroughly, he has to live the same day a thousand+ times in order to become remotely deserving of Andy McDowell.

Time loops are a wonderful SFF trope ripe for all sorts of narrative opportunities. Groundhog Day is probably the definitive example. Star Trek aired their take earlier (the episode “Cause and Effect” aired in 1992), but Groundhog Day has a slant both more spiritual and funnier.

It’s hard not to talk about Groundhog Day without also talking about my favorite movie, Palm Springs, which was a response to Groundhog Day and reuses/reconceives/expands upon almost every element. Most notably, Palm Springs puts both of the romantic couple inside of the time loop; Groundhog Day leaves the guy in the relationship looped while he’s desperately in love with the woman who remains outside the loop. The former feels more relevant to actually having a relationship with someone. The latter leaves Phil gamifying his meet-cute with Rita in ways that are terribly creepy.

In fact, the conceit of Groundhog Day – an awful cynic needs to loop through time in order to grow some humanity – demands that we spend a lot of time with someone thoroughly unlikable making unpleasant decisions. Sure, he grows out of manipulating women to get them in the sack. He grows out of pushing his way past Rita’s boundaries to try to hook up with her before time resets. But he doesn’t do it until we get a full montage of this asshole trying his best to violate her verbal and physical refusals, which makes me hate him no matter how he changes.

With infinite time, Phil becomes a master pianist, an expert in French poetry, and someone who actually commits to helping people. His desire to become kind springs from his love for Rita. He admires how she approaches the world with kindness, and he has to internalize it to get better. I can say this nodding along with myself, like, “Yeah, the whole thing is about someone so stubborn he needs intervention from God to stop sucking and fall in love for real,” and I still just don’t like the guy or want him to end up with Rita. Even once he’s a zen coolguy sculptor who changes tires.

The movie teaches Phil that he cannot save everyone, and that some people simply must die because it’s their time. But there is no lesson that he cannot have whoever he wants, whenever he wants. People are something he can learn to manipulate so effectively that he can get anything. He is still rewarded by winning Rita at the end. Despite being given loads of details and opportunities to refuse him, Rita still feels like a hollowly warm feminine character whose approval mostly serves as a metric of how well Phil is growing.

Did you know some of us learn to be kind through the normal course of life, despite having trouble, despite being abused, despite trauma? Why does the universe need to massively intercede with this one asshole anyway?

But I know that this is emotional metaphor, really. It’s about the seismic way that love can change you and make you hope to be better for the right person. Whatever.

As a Harold Ramis movie, this is a National Lampoon-style comedy where you just have to swallow the cynical shitty protagonists and their attitudes whole in order to enjoy the great elements of filmmaking. The crappy characters are always drawn with full humanity. They feel vividly real. You’d believe that any of these people lived around your corner back in the 90s. I wouldn’t want to know or befriend them, but…

I also love this screenplay, frankly. I love how little handholding it does on the subject matter. There isn’t ever an answer as to why the loop happens, and there is little dialogue or textual explanation of Phil’s growth. When something happens, the emotional impact on viewers is so profound that you know what Bill Murray’s thinking with That Look in the morning, and it’s all the narrative necessary.

The jokes are hilarious, when it wants to be funny; it’s incredibly moving when it wants to be sad. I never get tired of looking at a chunky lil groundhog either. They move through concepts at a proper clip. This was always very watchable for me as a kid, and my 13yo sat through it with joy. I just find all the comedies with National Lampoon adjacency to have a too-bleak edge, and it evokes memories of people I don’t like, but Groundhog Day remains a philosophical and romantic scientific classic. It’s a staple. I have fun watching it, especially with my family. I kinda hate it.

(image source: Columbia Pictures)

Scream is a slasher flick about a killer who taunts his victims over the phone (mostly about scary movies) before killing them. The final girl, Sidney, is still mourning the death of her mother the prior year; her life was disrupted by accusations, rumors, and reporters months before more killings began to strike. It’s a mix of genuine horror and intelligent satire of horror.

I only recently began watching slashers, since I have a friend who is a horror scholar and she loves slashers. I had to get this meta framing on what slashers *do* in order to appreciate the movies. I’ve only ever been into supernatural horror, really – The Shining, 13 Ghosts, The Others – and I didn’t understand the appeal in watching normal people try to kill each other. My impression was one of meaningless gore and screaming.

I’d argue that slasher horror is an experiential genre: the gore/screaming isn’t exactly *meaningless*, but most of what you get out of it is the excitement of a chase, and the social experience of watching it with friends. The meaning is punching your bro in the arm saying “omg omg omg” because it’s getting tense, throwing pillows at the screen when the heroine is stupid, and then being too scared to sleep with the lights on later.

But there is actually a lot more going on with slasher movies, and Scream isn’t keeping any secrets about it. Scream is like a magician doing a trick while also explaining exactly how it’s done. Scream is so good at doing the trick, you can know what it’s doing and you still get the full exciting experience.

The fact there’s a bigger cultural discussion about slasher movies “rules” and final girls in horror is thanks to Scream. Aside from the Ghostface Killer’s fascination with bringing up classic slasher cinema, like Halloween and Friday the 13th, we’ve also got a bunch of teenagers talking about horror movie tropes at a party near the end. This alone makes Scream an utterly seismic moment in pop culture: it didn’t *just* bring slashers back, and it isn’t *just* a good movie, but it consciously educated people on how movies should be done, creating whole generations of intelligent moviegoers like my lovely horror scholar friend.

Wes Craven directed Scream, and he’s responsible for a lot horror classics: Nightmare on Elm Street, The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, etc. It’s hard to imagine another director taking Kevin Williamson’s screenplay and turning it into such a success. IMDB trivia tells me slashers were considered dead at this point, so Scream was a risky proposition in the first place, and other directors considered for the project wanted to take it more like comedy. Wes Craven said “no way” and jumped feet-first into making it exactly as scary and splattery and sincere as any other flick.

The comedy aspects arise on their own from extremely smart writing. When the movie teens watch Halloween at a party, they’re yelling “look behind you!” at Jamie Lee Curtis as the Ghostface Killer approaches from behind them. And then we have another layer because there is a reporter spying on them from outside, with her camera guy watching on a time delayed monitor, and the camera guy is yelling “look behind you!” because he sees the Ghostface Killer approaching the teens watching Halloween.

It’s these kinds of moments that function as both meta commentary and as compelling sources of fear. You know exactly what it’s doing, yet you’re still excited as hell, the way that a toddler gets really excited about Daddy saying “ooh I’m gonna get you” and swiping with clawed hands. The rules of the game have been laid out on the table. Now it’s just time for us to play.

Somehow the smart writing and sincere directing isn’t the only charm. The casting of Scream is a minor miracle of excellence. Apparently Matthew Lillard was cast sort of accidentally (he was accompanying a girlfriend on an audition when spotted) and his performance of a character with minimal backstory is an absolute riot. Skeet Ulrich is so cute and steamy, I’m betting most girls kinda didn’t care if he was a baddy. Watching Courtney Cox and David Arquette flirt with each other, knowing they were actually in love at the time, electrifies their entire subplot. I could give paragraphs to everyone: Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Rose McGowan, even friggin Fonzie. There’s just so much charisma around every corner, the actors could have made a much worse script successful. Having a good script with this much charm in performance is almost TOO MUCH.

Although I remain more interested in the supernatural, being who I am, this launched itself straight onto my favorite horror movies list as soon as I watched it. It’s sheer competency porn with a love of genre that shines out of every frame. It’s amazing when a culture-shifting blockbuster is as smart as it is deliciously fun. Dare I say that Scream was the 90s horror version of Barbie? I dare.

(image credit: Paramount Pictures)