Sean Lemme

I started blogging as a way to lazily pass my high school senior project and somehow I've kept doing it for more than half my life

Shocktober: The Last Exorcism

The Last Exorcism (2010)

The second half of my PG-13 horror week is 2010’s The Last Exorcism directed by Daniel Stamm. A German filmmaker, Stamm directed this and another low budget indie found footage movie before he kind of disappeared in Hollywood. The Last Exorcism‘s success cast Stamm into M. Night Shyamalan’s orbit just as the cinematic universe trend was taking off, setting in motion the now familiar story of the low budget filmmaker suddenly thrown into a massive studio opportunity. In this case, he was to direct “Reincarnate,” a movie that would have formed the middle chapter of “The Night Chronicles” a series that apparently began with Devil, the scary elevator movie also from 2010. Except “Reincarnate” never got off the ground (although also it apparently hasn’t officially been cancelled) and instead Shyamalan had to make a bunch of movies to rehabilitate his own reputation, leaving Stamm to spend last decade plus grinding it out.

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Shocktober: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

A good PG-13 horror film is a rare and beautiful thing. Because of the way the genre has evolved, as perhaps the only type of movie that can find audiences despite budget, star power, or IP; I think it makes sense that the luminaries are drawn toward taking advantage of the most creative freedom they possibly can… and that means an R rating. But every once in a while, someone who really knows their shit takes a shot at playing within the boundaries that confine most bigger movies. Sam Raimi, hot off doing his Spider-Man trilogy, was extremely up for that challenge when he made Drag Me to Hell. He had worked his spooky quirks into the mainstream and succeeded and naturally the next step was to see if he could bring his new audience with him to something much further out of their comfort zone. So he went and found out exactly how gross a movie can be and still get a PG-13 rating. Bless him for it.

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Shocktober: Constantine

Constantine (2005)

Honestly, watching Constantine left me with more questions than answers. As one of the dwindling number of comic book super hero movies I hadn’t seen, this has been on my radar ever since it came out 18 years ago. And yet, back then people HATED Constantine. On the other hand, it was really trendy to make fun of Keanu Reeves in those days too, and we all know how wrong the haters were. Now Constantine is a cult classic with some passionate fans and maybe a sequel coming someday. But also, it’s a mid-2000s Alan Moore adaptation, and those tended to always miss the point. So I didn’t know if I would like it or not, and that kept me away until John dared me to take it on. And now that I’m on the other side, I still don’t know how to feel!

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Shocktober: Ninja III: The Domination

Ninja III: The Domination (1984)

Did you ever see the parody short film Kung Fury? It’s an over-the-top homage to 1980s action movies that has a martial artist detective take on robots, mutants, dinosaurs, and, of course, Hitler, all in the name of revenge. It’s a lot… but also not actually as far from what was really coming out back then as you might think. Ninja III: The Domination, the third and final entry in a anthology series from the legendary low-budget production company Cannon Films, is so relentlessly Eighties you might not actually believe it. Let me tell you about it! And I promise, nothing I write will be an exaggeration, this movie doesn’t need that.

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Criterion Month Day 30: Moonage Daydream

Moonage Daydream (2022)

Why do we watch movies? Why do we care about them? Why do they matter? Cinema has been facing an existential threat ever since streaming picked up steam, and the pandemic and ongoing strikes have really pushed the medium to the brink. When I write about movies and when I talk about movies, I find that mostly I focus on story and characters. Even with documentaries, my focus is on what they’re about. And you don’t need movies to tell stories. We’ve got books, and podcasts, and shows, and miniseries, and TikTok. So why do we need movies?

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Criterion Month Day 28: Memories of Murder

Memories of Murder (2003)

It’s funny that the last post I wrote was about an Asian film that was later remade by a legendary American director, because it really feels like I’m doing it again here. David Fincher’s 2007 true crime thriller Zodiac may not be a direct remake of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, but in terms of style and substance it’s hard to think of one without thinking of the other. Both are based on yearslong investigations into serial killings, both depict detectives who are complicated, flawed people, both resolves in a deliberately unsatisfying way. But you’ve got to hand it to Bong, Memories of Murder has way more scenes of people getting dropkicked.

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Criterion Month Day 27: Infernal Affairs

Infernal Affairs (2002)

One of my guiding principles in life comes from John Hodgman, who after toying with this idea for years laid it out in his book Vacationland:

Nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn’t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can’t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox news. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory-in Appalachia in particular-of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire and cramped-up city creep who, if he ever did go up to Rocky Top in real life, would never come down again.

But even Hodgman admits that nostalgia feels good. So I’ll come out and boldly admit: there’s a lot of Eighties and Nineties a e s t h e t i c that I’m really into. Movies like Chungking Express and shows like ER really tap into that for me. I know I wouldn’t like going back to a world without smart phones or our beloved AI overlords (please spare me) but it’s fun to look at. And while I’ve tried to kind of embrace that in an attempt just to feel good, there’s another idea I’ve been toying with lately. And that is that I have no nostalgia for the 2000s. In fact, as Infernal Affairs reminded me, this aesthetic sucked.

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