Pennsylvania

‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ Movie and 4K Review

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit correspondent, Tony Farinella.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” is the final film in “The Conjuring” franchise, which has been wildly popular and a staple in the horror genre since the first film was released in 2013. In total, it is the ninth film in “The Conjuring” universe, which also includes the two “Nun” films along with three “Annabelle” films. While not all of them have been home runs, there is a certain style and craftsmanship that goes into the films which is hard to ignore. Most of all, the films are powered by the powerful performances of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the paranormal investigators who love helping those in trouble, but not as much as they love each other. They are the lifeblood of these films. Without them being the emotional compass, the films would simply be ghost stories with some jump scares here and there.

This film opens in 1964, as Ed and Lorraine Warren are investigating a mysterious murder at an antique shop while Lorraine is pregnant. While there, she comes across a mirror which holds ominous and sinister forces within it, which almost causes her to lose her child, Judy, during childbirth. Fast forward to two decades later, and Judy (Mia Tomlinson) is in a relationship with a former police officer named Tony (Ben Hardy), and they are on their way to meet up with the Warrens for Ed’s birthday party. Ed and Lorraine are in semi-retirement because of Ed’s heart, and they mostly are giving tours on college campuses, which are usually met with jokes about the Ghostbusters. They are struggling to find their purpose in life without being full-time paranormal investigators. Ed has the itch to get back into things, but he needs to look out for his health and slowdown, which isn’t coming naturally to him.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, the Smurl family, which includes the husband, wife, four daughters and two grandparents, are starting to have some real challenges after they come across a haunted mirror that was given as a gift to one of the daughters after her first communion. At the same time, Judy is starting to have visions, the same ones she had when she was younger. Her mother tells her to block them out, but that’s becoming harder to do each and every day. It won’t be long before the Warrens and the Smurls are forced to confront their problems and figure out how they are connected to each other and how they can fix them. If they don’t, it may be fatal for all parties involved.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” is directed by Michael Chaves, who is no stranger to this franchise, having directed the previous “Conjuring” film along with “The Nun 2.” He’s a talented director, and he knows how to create an atmospheric film that is moody and ominous, and he shows off the time and place in which it is set.  Chaves knows how to create haunting horror imagery on screen, but he doesn’t quite know how to make it all pay off in the third act. It also doesn’t help that the film is two hours and fifteen minutes, which makes it the longest film in “The Conjuring” universe. While it held my attention for a very long time, the payoff didn’t feel satisfying.  It left me feeling like the film ended on a flat and rather unremarkable note. All of the performances are top-notch, especially from Wilson and Farmiga. They know how to bring humor, pathos and intelligence to the film.

Overall, this is a case of trying to create the same magic time and time again, but sometimes it simply isn’t there. By no means is this a bad film, but it doesn’t have the impact or power it should have, especially considering this is the final film in this franchise. Of course, they can always do more “Annabelle” or “Nun” films, but as far as “The Conjuring” franchise, this is the end. However, you can’t always believe that when it comes to horror films, especially considering the money this one made. It is entertaining and made with style, but it doesn’t know how to wrap things up in a concise and efficient manner. By the time the shit hits the fan, the film has overstayed its welcome.  These films are best when they are about one hour and forty-five minutes, or maybe two hours. Anything longer than that, and they are overstaying their welcome.  There is no need for this film to be two hours and fifteen minutes.  There are certain scenes which feel like they would have been better as deleted scenes instead of being included in the final cut.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” is a film I enjoyed watching until I started to become disinterested and restless by what was happening on screen. I liked a good majority of it, but as stated previously, it really falls apart in the third act.  It had a feeling of “been there, done that.”  The strong points include the performances of its two leads, the direction of Michael Chaves, and the overall style and look.  Its weaker points include its length and its ending.  I was happy to have watched it and it’s a fun horror movie, but it didn’t have the sense of urgency and power of the previous installments in this franchise.

* * ½ out of * * * *

4K Info: “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is released on a single-disc 4K from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.  It comes with an impressive slipcover and a digital copy as well. It also comes in a steelbook version.  It has a running time of 135 minutes and is rated R for bloody and violent content along with intense terror.

4K Video/Audio Info: The film comes with a Dolby Vision transfer, which looks perfect on 4K.  The HDR really brings out the dark blacks of the film and creates a spooky experience watching it at home.  The same is true of the Dolby Atmos track, which really pops during the jump scares which are sprinkled throughout.

Special Features:

Last Rites: An Era Ends – featurette

The Conjuring: Crafting Scares – featurette

Michael Chaves: Believer – featurette

Should You Buy It?

As I was watching “The Conjuring: Last Rites” with my wife for the first hour and a half, I was saying to her, “I’m really enjoying this movie.  It has me on the edge of my seat, and the story is unfolding perfectly.” However, all of that good mojo started to fade in the rearview mirror by the time the film was wrapping things up with its third act.  I started to become fatigued and disinterested in the conclusion of the story. It took a long time to get where they needed to go, and when they finally did wrap things up, it didn’t seem to matter much anymore. Still, this is an OK film that will play well on HBO Max or on streaming. I don’t think it’s the kind of film you need to run out and purchase right away, unless you want to own all four of “The Conjuring” films on physical media. I’m still waiting for the second film to hit 4K, which will hopefully be very soon. This film looks and sounds terrific on 4K, and I really liked the slipcover version of it. I really wanted to recommend it, but the ending was flatter than four o’clock.

**Disclaimer** I received a copy of this film from Warner Bros. to review for free.  The opinions and statements in the review are mine and mine alone.

Underseen Movie: Alan Parker’s ‘Birdy’ Starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

“Birdy” is a great movie and a deeply felt character study about two young men who grow up together, and who are forever changed by the war they are drafted into. The movie is based on a book by William Wharton which chronicles two characters who are thrown into World War II. For the film, it was changed to Vietnam as the screenwriters, Sandy Kroopf and Jack Behr, wanted to work with their own youthful experiences. The story starts out with the two main characters who are now out of the Vietnam War, but who are forever scared by it permanently. In the end, they see all they have is each other.

Events move back and forth in time as we first see Nicolas Cage’s character of Alfonso “Al” Columbato coming out of the hospital following a bomb explosion which seriously disfigured his face. Bandaged like a Frankenstein creation, or like Michael Myers at the beginning of “Halloween 4,” he is no longer the ladies’ man we see getting to first base in scenes from his past. From there, Al travels to another army hospital where Birdy (Matthew Modine) is holed up in a cell not saying a word. After the damage the war has done to him, Birdy (we never learn his real name) has seemingly accomplished what he has set out to do – to become a bird in his own mind.

“Birdy” then shifts to their high school years in Philadelphia when Al and Birdy first met. While they initially seem like complete opposites, we come to see they want the same thing in life: to fly away from their problems. With Al, he has an abusive father to deal with who thinks nothing of smacking his son around when he screws up, and being on the high school wrestling team helps him deal with his utter frustration of not being able to stand up to him. With Birdy, he has a tough as nails father who is nowhere as sympathetic and understanding as his janitor father, and who is always taking away the baseballs that the kids unintentionally keep batting into her yard. Both Al and Birdy keep coming up with schemes to make money while hoping for an escape from their meager existence. But when it comes to flying away, Birdy is a far more literal about it.

Al really represents Birdy’s strongest link to the outside world as he falls deeper and deeper into his obsession with birds and in wanting to fly like one. He never shows much interest in anything you expect teenagers to indulge themselves in like girlfriends, making out, or being normal. One of the funniest expressions Birdy has is when he talks about how bad he feels for women as they have to have breasts which they just have to carry around and how they flop all over the place. I can’t think of anyone else who would make such a ridiculous argument, man or woman.

The scenes in which Birdy spends time with a beautiful yellow canary he gets and names Perta are some of the most memorable to found here. This is not just some National Geographic special you are watching as we see him studying birds ever so closely, almost making love to them. There is one amazing sequence where he dreams he is flying like a bird and director Alan Parker shoots the scene from a bird’s eye view as we go around people and fly over cars and then way up into the sky above. All this done to the instrumental version of Peter Gabriel’s “Not One of Us,” and this is one first movies to make use of the Skycam which is used to incredible effect.

While all this may make this movie sound like a nostalgic journey to the past, it is really a very hard-hitting movie which has its funny and nostalgic moments and also many awkward and painful ones. Seeing Birdy going to a prom, only because his mom threatens to get rid of his birds if he doesn’t, is painful in terms of how much we know he doesn’t want to be there, and you feel for his date who has the biggest crush on him. Hell, I would have killed to date the girl he goes out with! And seeing at the start how these guys are now at living in a time where they are forever changed, we know they are on an emotional descent which may permanently rob them of what is left of their humanity.

Seeing these two actors early on in their careers reminds you of just how talented they are. Cage’s role of Al is one of my favorites of his as we see him as a fun-loving guy, and then as a frightened war veteran who is terribly uncertain of what lies ahead for him. Having to spend so much of this movie in bandages could seem so limiting to many actors, but not to Mr. Cage. Before production began, it was said he had his wisdom teeth removed and without Novocaine. Learning this really made my mouth hurt! Talk about suffering for your art! Still, it did make his performance feel rawer and more genuine, and I still look forward to seeing more work from him like this even as he continues to dwell in the direct to video realm.

Modine has an especially hard role to play because he could have played it far too broadly, but he makes Birdy’s love for birds seem so real to where it is perfectly understandable why he has since withdrawn from reality. When we see him at the hospital, he is almost completely speechless and has to convey how he feels through his eyes, something actors need to learn if they want to be great at their job. This is one his best performances as well, and it led him to a career where he has played many different roles, and he continues to do so.

This is one of Parker’s best movies, and it stands alongside his strongest efforts including “Midnight Express” and “Mississippi Burning.” With “Birdy,” he has not just made some simple antiwar movie about how unnecessary and brutal war is, but of the bond of friendship and how it can never be completely broken, especially when you are in need. In essence, the scars, both physically and mentally, which have been inflicted on these two men bring them together because it seems like no one else can ever truly understand them. The heart of this movie is in the way these two men lean on each other, and how they recognize each other’s strengths. Parker gets this and makes it the main thrust of this excellent motion picture. In the end, most of his movies deal with people in a place which seems so alien and unwelcome to them, and of the rough and tumble journey to get back to the land of the living.

And, of course, I cannot complete this interview without mentioning Peter Gabriel’s film score as it has provided me with a soundtrack I never get sick of listening to. While it may seem weird to compose music to a period movie with electronic instruments, his music fits perfectly into the themes Parker deals with here. Like the characters, it is in its own world and dwells in both the beauty and pain of life. The music is cribbed from a lot of Gabriel’s other albums (which he has he freely admitted to many times), and it would have been interesting if he did include some of the lyrics to the songs used here like “Wallflower” as they illustrate the mental health obstacles these two men have to overcome.

Seriously, I love “Birdy,” and when the name Alan Parker comes up, this is one of the first movies of his I think of. It also contains one of the best endings of any movie I have ever seen, and you have to watch “Birdy” all the way through to the end in order to fully appreciate it. Trust me, it is worth the trouble, and it makes this Grand Prix Spécial du Jury prize winner from the Cannes Film Festival all the more unforgettable.

* * * * out of * * * *

‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’ Goes Down in a, You Know, Pleasurable Way

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Zack and Miri Make a Porno movie poster

Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is the first movie he made which takes place outside of New Jersey. Instead, he takes us to Pittsburgh where we follow the exploits of the title characters who share an apartment and have been the best of friends since they were kids. When we first meet them, their lives are hanging by a thread as they are behind on all their bills, and soon after they lose their water and electricity. Both work at a Starbucks-like shop called Bean n’ Gone where they waste their lives away like those two guys from “Clerks. “Sound like anyone you know?

These two end up going to their high school reunion where Miri ends up connecting with her biggest crush, football hero Bobby Long (Brandon Routh), in the hopes of having a nice little fling. She has yet to find Bobby doesn’t “swing that way.” This soon becomes clear as we see Zack talking with Bobby’s boyfriend, Brandon (Justin Long, who is frackin’ hilarious), who reveals to Zack he is in fact an actor in gay porno films, the stuff Zack doesn’t quite fit the demographic for.

Later on, when both Zack and Miri are in very dire straits, Zack comes up with the idea of the two of them doing a porno. Miri is not quite up to the idea, but the way Zack sees it, porno is now so mainstream that even Paris Hilton (albeit unintentionally) did one and now hawks her own line of perfume to “tweens.” They end up committing to it despite one thing; they have never had sex with each other before. The way they saw it beforehand was they get along so great that they both believe sex will just get in the way of the friendship they have a la “When Harry Met Sally.” Of course, you can’t help but get the feeling Zack would love an opportunity to get up close and personal with Miri, you know?

There’s this line from “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones” which keeps floating around in my head of when Anakin meets up with Padme again and tells her how she has grown more beautiful since the last time they were together. To this, Padme replies, “Anakin, you’ll always be that little boy I remember from Tatooine.” I totally remember the audiences groaning after she said this, and the line kind of sums up the relationship between Zack and Miri, and we feel we have a pretty good idea of where their relationship will end up.

Zack is played Seth Rogen who, for a moment, appeared to be Smith’s new man crush since Ben Affleck was far too busy with his acting career at the time. Rogen is perfect as he handles the raunchy and profane material of the movie with the confidence of a pro, and at the same time he projects a sweet side to his character which really wins the audience over. Elizabeth Banks (“W.“) plays Miri who stays close to Zack throughout their hardships and spends nights with him in front of a trash can in which all their unpaid bills are burned to a crisp. The chemistry between these two is very good, and they play off of each other really well.

In addition, Smith has rounded out a great cast to keep the laughs going throughout this ode to porn. Some of his regulars show up here like Jason Mewes who plays Lester, a hopelessly dense individual who also yearns to be a porn star. Another is Jeff Anderson (the immortal Randal Graves from “Clerks”) who plays Deacon the cameraman. How he manages to get a movie out of all this insanity is beyond me.

Smith even goes out of his way to even cast actual porno stars as well. The most noticeable one is Katie Morgan who has been featured on some documentaries on HBO about her career (how I know this, I refuse to reveal). She is as perky here as she is in those interviews, and her cheerful presence here is kind of a surprise compared to other actresses in her line of work. Traci Lords co-stars as well, and she shows us an amazing new way to blow bubbles. A former porn actress herself, Lords has long since escaped adult entertainment and has dived into the bad taste escapades of John Waters to a delightful effect. Both of the actresses being in this movie should show just how mainstream porn is getting and of how much this scares conservative politicians to death.

But one of the truly scene stealing performances in this movie belongs to Craig Robinson who plays the producer of the porno, Delaney. Robinson is a big kick to watch here as he delivers his lines in a terrifically deadpan manner. At once disgusted at what he has been hired to do, Delaney suddenly becomes incredibly enthusiastic when he realizes he gets to do. He also has a pretty hilarious response to when he is asked to work “Black Friday,” and it serves as a reminder of how some people take things a little too literally.

Smith also has loads of fun skewering the porn films we know from our past but never really admit to ever having watched. Zack and Miri end up coming up with the title “Star Whores” for their porno, and this in reference to how so many of these pornos are typically named after Hollywood blockbusters. See if any of these remind you of anything (some of these I made up):

“Pulp Friction”

“Robocock”

“The Hard Knight”

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Boner” (Justin Long’s character could easily be cast in this one.)

Smith directs this movie to those who are more familiar with pornos than they would ever admit during a sales pitch. It’s also an ode to when he started as a filmmaker all those years ago with “Clerks.” Using a hockey stick as a boom mike holder? You can believe he utilized things like these to get his first movie done.

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is not as consistently funny as some of Smith’s other movies like “Clerks” or “Dogma” among others. Like “Jersey Girl,” it follows a certain formula to where we pretty much know where the story is going to end up. At the same time, he gleefully skewers the formula by adding his own brand of raunchy humor. There was one moment I laughed so hard that I almost passed out, something which does not always happen if at all. I fell over, the color went out of my eyes for a second, and things got fuzzy. Yes, that’s how hard I was laughing. I refuse to spoil this particular moment for you, but I will say I will never look at cake frosting in the same way ever again.

Smith also makes clear the difference between having sex and making love, and this difference is made clear at a pivotal moment in the movie which changes everything for the characters. There’s the one nighter, and then there’s the sex which reveals true feelings and which proves to be more than extraordinary. I may not be an expert on the subject for reasons I will plead the fifth on, but I do know this much. Smith, after all these years, still gives us down to earth characters which shows how he has not come even close to forgetting where he came from.

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” may not be the best movie of Kevin Smith’s career, but it definitely has its moments of utter hilarity. It also shows there is more to him than making movies in New Jersey. By making a break from his usual comic territory, we can and should expect him to go beyond his comfort zone for a good dose of naughty laughs filled with heart from here on out.

* * * out of * * * *