Cake (Daniel Barnz, 2014)

6.5/10
I wasn't expecting too much from this, and about half an hour in I was sure I was going to hate it. Jennifer Aniston stars as Claire, a pain-riddled, grief-stricken, drug-addicted woman who initially appears to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Another woman in her chronic pain sufferers support group, Nina, commits suicide, and Claire is fascinated by the incident to the point of being visited by Nina in hallucinations. Claire eventually tracks down Nina's windower, and the fact that he's blindingly handsome and charming and accepts crazy Claire and all her problems without a hitch...well the movie starts to shape up as another one of those dreadful things where all of a woman's problems are magically solved once she finally meets A Good Man.
Mercifully (and unexpectedly) the movie doesn't really take that path. That's not to say it's totally cliche-free, because it has its share of them, and much of the staging for the incidents that occur feel more like hacky screenwriter gimmicks and less like things that would actually occur to real people. But in the last act or so the movie does finally turn out to be an emotionally honest and rather sad portrayal of grief. I've never cared for Jennifer Aniston in anything but she does a very good job in a role that easily could have been histrionic and over-acted. No classic, but ultimately better than I thought it would be.

The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

8/10
As far as horror movies go I found this did a really job of embracing certain conventions while subverting others (the mother/son relationship, to say no more for fear of spoilers). Like It Follows, it mostly disposes of cheap jump scares and ends up creeping its way under your skin, although I can understand some feeling let down that there's no major "payoff scare". The story is compelling and a pleasingly new twist on an age old monster movie story and the acting is exceptional, in particular Essie Davis as the mother. I liked the throwback-ness of the Babadook itself, it has a kind of charming lo-fi aesthetic that brought me back to the days when horror movies weren't all CGI and makeup. Overall it was smart, well-crafted, respectful of genre conventions but innovative as well, and delivered on the scares. Very little not to like.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)

6.5/10
More or less exactly what you'd expect to be, despite its odd existence ("black and white Iranian-language Spaghetti Western vampire movie ala Jim Jarmusch"). The B&W photography is very nice and the movie is well directed, and it has a great soundtrack. It moves at a glacial pace, but it feels a bit like it's leaning heavily on the "slow = artistic" trend and not because it serves the film any particular purpose. In fact the more I watched the harder I found it to shake this niggling feeling that if it weren't for all its pre-packaged exotica and bells and whistles ("A slow-paced vampire movie? Shot in black and white? In Persian?!?"), A Girl Walks Home wouldn't be talked about nearly as much as it is. Once you strip away those call-them-gimmicks-if-you-will, there's a concerning lack of story and depth to the movie. It's pretty and kind of cool but not something I see myself returning to, although I'll remain curious to see what else writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour comes up with next. I'd give the soundtrack a few more listens if I could find it, though.

It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

8.5/10
It Follows has that rare thing in horror movies these days, a truly great, original premise. It also (mostly) leaves the cheap jump-scares which have become so prolific lately at the door and generates its scares from nightmarish, surreal scenes of dread and general creepynees. That combined with its incredible score give it an appealing "old school horror" feel (not unlike the score of the last movie I reviewed, You're Next, but even better). Writer/director David Robert Mitchell directs with a lot of visual flare, there are numerous great shots that are mostly atypical of what we've come to expect from the genre. It is well acted by its young ensemble, and in particular by its star, Maika Monroe.
That said, the nature of the film's own "monster movie logic" means that the scares and creep-factor are diminished the longer the movie goes on (once we're used to "it" walking toward its heroine at a calm pace and accept the fact that our heroine will continue to escape, the tension lessens...not to mention that because of the fact that "it" is only targeting and can only be seen by our heroine, we know can let our guard down when the camera isn't fixed on her). Compounding that, I think the movie noticeably falters in its final act. Mitchell has built a great premise and executes it very well, but doesn't seem to know where to take it. A last-act confrontation (the swimming pool scene) feels clumsy and doesn't appear to serve the story in any real way, although I did like the end of the film.
Unfortunately, the nature of the "evil" in the movie makes it completely open to being sequel-fodder, and it's hard to imagine further installments being as effective as this one was, especially if Mitchell is not at the helm.

You're Next (Adam Wingard, 2011)

7.5/10
As a festival crowd pleaser, You're Next probably would have been great fun. Watched at home, its impact feels diminished, and the disconnect between its existence as both a violent home invasion horror and a borderline-goofy black comedy becomes more emphasized and feels weirdly jarring. It's hard to tell how seriously the movie takes itself, especially when it features an absurd exchange like the following, which may set new highs of brilliant stupidity (spoilers within):
-"You never want to do anything fun. Come on, fuck me on the bed next to your dead mother."
-"This discussion is over."
You're Next mostly comes out looking better than it should the strength of the direction and score, which are both completely on point. The score in particularly is perfectly evocative of some of John Carpenter's best, or the poppy Italian synth stuff that was smeared all over every horror in the late 70's and 80's. The acting is solid all-around too and it's difficult not to root for its central hero/heroine. The humor, when it crops up, is sharp too. But it's not really a scary movie at all and I feel like the ending was a missed opportunity to do something cooler. All in all not bad and does some things very well but not as great as I'd hoped.

White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932)

4/10
A Haitian zombie movie from the 30's starring Bela Lugosi, it mostly wastes its Haitian setting for a predictable love-story-with-zombies thing. I thought it was fairly boring and nothing really stood out in any way.

Neighbors (Nicholas Stoller, 2014)

3/10
It goes to rather ludicrous, unrealistic lengths to pit a whole fraternity against a young family (Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne and their 1ish year old) and once you accept this silly premise, it forgets to pepper the script with jokes. The movie mostly glides by inoffensively enough on the charm of its actors, who are all very good (can someone explain to me why I still like Dave Franco despite the fact that he always plays the same character?). But it revisits a central concern that was dealt with many years ago in Knocked Up - that whole Judd Apatow brand of, "partying and getting high all the time was awesome and now I feel constricted by this new familial role I'm expected to play!" shtick. And seeing the same actor, Rogen, doing it again made it feel especially tired.
I did enjoy Rose Byrne a lot and her character too, and I liked how they made a point of not making her out to be the nagging shrew chastising her oafish husband's harebrained schemes (with a pointed reference to every Kevin James movie ever). Her character very much gets her hands dirty and it feels like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise boring and generally uninteresting movie.