Multiplex Madness
Eddington
⭐️⭐️
I Know What You Did Last Summer
I Know What You Did Last Summer is probably one of the weirder horror franchises to have had any sort of impact. Its origins date back to 1973, when Lois Duncan released the original young adult novel, which centered on a group of friends who were involved in a hit-and-run accident, only to recieve mysterious messages a year later. In the 90's, screenwriter Kevin Williamson used the rather tame mystery novel as the basis for a slasher movie screenplay, which was far removed from what its source material was. Williamson also wrote another slasher movie around the same time called Scream, which took off, and I Know What You Did Last Summer was put into production to capitalize off of Williamson's success. The movie is stylish, but pretty mid, with a lot of nonsensical plot details that fail to make sense. Still, the movie was a success. It was the right mixture of high-concept premise aimed at teenagers presented by the who's who of late-90's teen heartthrobs, including (Munchie's own) Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe, and Gellar's eventual husband, Freddie Prinze Jr. Like all great/mediocre slasher movies, it spawned an immediate sequel a year later, which was so bad that the parody film Scary Movie wasted an entire joke to just tear it down (especially roasting Jack Black's slight role, who was an unknown at the time). Also like all the best slasher franchises, it also eventually went direct to video, with a threequel which everyone immediately forgot existed. It is the only film thusfar without the involvement of Hewitt and Prinze, instead starring a handful of unknowns and Z-listers, the nost notable being Animorphs star Brooke Nevin and Chicago Med's Torrey DeVitto, while the Fisherman was played by former Michael Myers maskwearer Don Shanks of Halloween 5. The series was effectively dead until Amazon Prime ordered a moderately entertaining TV series reinvention a few years ago, which gets so increasingly off-the-rails that I have no choice but to recommend it because it needs to be seen to be believed. It was canceled after one season, ending on a bizarre cliffhanger where the main final girl, played by Jumanji's Madison Iseman, begins a lesbian love affair with the mystery killer and runs off into the sunset with her, pinning the blame on the guy who was set up to be her love interest throughout the season. Best ending ever. 10/10. No notes.
Smurfs
Sony made Smurf movies for a while. A couple of them made money, but I honestly can't think of a single person who has seen them, let alone liked them. But the first two had Hank Azaria in them. Good for them! Anyway, Sony let the rights to the little blue freaks lapse and Paramount quickly nabbed them up, thinking "Fuck yeah, now we can make the Smurfs movie the world has demanded."
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Thriller
Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O'Connell, Michael Ward
I don't know why Ari Aster made the pivot from making thematic horror movies to satirical cringe comedies, but whatever works for him, I guess. All I'm saying is that he was clearly better at one over the other. And I say this as someone who generally liked Beau Is Afraid. It's themes were interesting, even if it became overlong and tiresome by the end. But I could also say the same about Midsommar, so maybe it's an Aster thing. And, to a lesser extent, I can say the same thing about Eddington. Eddington is just more inconsistent about it before going completely haywire in its finale.
Eddington centers around a small town in New Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, where Joaquin Phoenix plays a right-wing sheriff who is at odds with liberal mayor Pedro Pascal, mostly because he doesn't like the mask mandates that are being enforced. In retaliation, Phoenix decides to run for mayor against Pascal, and soon finds both his campaign and his life spiraling. Thematically, the movie is about how politicized news outlets and social media can radicalize those who are obsessed with it, and to Aster's credit, he has very keen observations on the subject. But his attempts to be a "both sides" satire can grow tiresome and inconsistent. Austin Butler's role as a media personality that is assimilating easily outraged right-wing followers is understandable in concept, but the movie doesn't actually make a point worth making with it. There are interesting scenes of Caucasian protesters hassling a Black cop at a Black Lives Matter rally, trying to rashly explain to him about the things he should be outraged about, which is a smart parody, but the film also never fleshes out the police officer enough as anything more than a prop for scenes like this. But as muddled as the movie can be, Aster's message is clear enough to resonate as easily as it frustrates. The movie is not only frustrating because Aster wants it to be frustrating, but unfortunately also because it deals with a lot of garbage that most audience members (or maybe I'm speaking for myself) have moved past and have zero desire to revisit, even in artistic form. But the movie takes a turn for the more demented in the second-half, as Aster's flair for keeping the audience guessing where he's going finally kicks in. The first turn is more than enough, but Aster insists on going further, rolling the dice on an absolutely bonkers finale that probably sounded fun on paper but feels misguided in practice. The finale cements that the movie never overcomes its shortcomings and ensures that the audience leaves with a bitter taste in their mouths, remembering the film not for the thought-provocation that it's going for, but rather the feeling that Ari Aster was running at you, flailing his arms and screaming.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Starring: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols
I Know What You Did Last Summer is probably one of the weirder horror franchises to have had any sort of impact. Its origins date back to 1973, when Lois Duncan released the original young adult novel, which centered on a group of friends who were involved in a hit-and-run accident, only to recieve mysterious messages a year later. In the 90's, screenwriter Kevin Williamson used the rather tame mystery novel as the basis for a slasher movie screenplay, which was far removed from what its source material was. Williamson also wrote another slasher movie around the same time called Scream, which took off, and I Know What You Did Last Summer was put into production to capitalize off of Williamson's success. The movie is stylish, but pretty mid, with a lot of nonsensical plot details that fail to make sense. Still, the movie was a success. It was the right mixture of high-concept premise aimed at teenagers presented by the who's who of late-90's teen heartthrobs, including (Munchie's own) Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe, and Gellar's eventual husband, Freddie Prinze Jr. Like all great/mediocre slasher movies, it spawned an immediate sequel a year later, which was so bad that the parody film Scary Movie wasted an entire joke to just tear it down (especially roasting Jack Black's slight role, who was an unknown at the time). Also like all the best slasher franchises, it also eventually went direct to video, with a threequel which everyone immediately forgot existed. It is the only film thusfar without the involvement of Hewitt and Prinze, instead starring a handful of unknowns and Z-listers, the nost notable being Animorphs star Brooke Nevin and Chicago Med's Torrey DeVitto, while the Fisherman was played by former Michael Myers maskwearer Don Shanks of Halloween 5. The series was effectively dead until Amazon Prime ordered a moderately entertaining TV series reinvention a few years ago, which gets so increasingly off-the-rails that I have no choice but to recommend it because it needs to be seen to be believed. It was canceled after one season, ending on a bizarre cliffhanger where the main final girl, played by Jumanji's Madison Iseman, begins a lesbian love affair with the mystery killer and runs off into the sunset with her, pinning the blame on the guy who was set up to be her love interest throughout the season. Best ending ever. 10/10. No notes.
And now, I Know What You Did Last Summer has been pegged to do what the Scream franchise has affectionately called a "re-quel," a film that effectively remakes the original film but brings back legacy characters to keep it in canon to the previous films. My only question is whether or not it was still canon to the third film, which was already a re-quel in its own right, and had built up to a mystery reveal where they discovered the identity of the killer, only for the reveal to be that it was the OG Fisherman who had come back as a zombie who exclusively murders teenagers a year after they accidentally kill people on the Fourth of July. If the same thing happened in this movie, I'd be ecstatic.
Or the return of the lesbian runaways from the TV show. Whatever works.
True to form for a I Know What You Did Last Summer movie, the new one starts with a group of friends involved in an accident that leaves someone dead. One year later, they begin receiving notes from someone who knows what they did and begins murdering them one-by-one. If one has a fondness for the original, this new film is probably a must-watch, because it's the closest the series has gotten to hitting the same notes that made it such a Gen-X/Millennial classic. This could even arguably be the best one. It's still aggressively stupid, but it wears it better than the other movies. Mileage may very as it gets into the grind, because the film's murder spree tends to feel soulless after a while and the finale killer reveal starts off underwhelming before taking a huge swing that is ballsy but arguably the wrong move to make. But the killer reveal in each Last Summer movie has always been kinda dumb and eyebrow raising, as opposed to Scream reveals which invite rewatches just to see what the killer is doing in any given scene. The value in Last Summer has always been about guilt and karma, which the film delivers on...though, like other films in the series, the killer seems to have no problem with offing innocent bystanders to avenge the murder of an innocent bystander. I always have to level criticisms like that with a wave of a hand in a "doesn't matter" motion. These are just traits that this franchise has always had. If the movie's biggest crime is that it recreates the experience of the original that thoroughly, then maybe it got the job done.
Smurfs
⭐️1/2
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Musical
Director: Chris Miller
Starring: Rhianna, John Goodman, James Corden, Nick Offerman, Kurt Russell, J.P. Karliak
Sony made Smurf movies for a while. A couple of them made money, but I honestly can't think of a single person who has seen them, let alone liked them. But the first two had Hank Azaria in them. Good for them! Anyway, Sony let the rights to the little blue freaks lapse and Paramount quickly nabbed them up, thinking "Fuck yeah, now we can make the Smurfs movie the world has demanded."
There's this old Don Adams bit where he plays a defense attorney which has one of the funniest line deliveries I've ever heard in my entire life: "Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for the last twenty minutes I have sat idly by while my opponent, the prosecuting attorney, has stood up here and made a complete jackass out of himself. Now, it's my turn." This feels like this is what Paramount just did.
Now, I haven't seen anything Smurf related since I was in the single-digits, so I'm going to try and keep up with the dense Smurf lore the best I can. This new Smurfs movie sees evil wizard Gargamel's brother Razamel searching for a magic book that has been hidden in Smurf Village for a century, and kidnaps Papa Smurf trying to find it. A group of Smurfs then venture out of Smurf Village to find Papa Smurf's brother Ken and rescue Papa. I guess this is an okay enough story for a Smurfs movie, though it never feels to me as if the Smurfs could adequately carry a feature film. A group of cutesy characters who are defined by simplistic personality traits work best in small doses on television, and venturing into feature film territory overwhelms them. But then again, there are four Smurfs movies, so maybe I'm wrong about that. This new Smurfs movie doesn't convince me of that, though. I'm not trying to be Smurfist, but the inherent problem with doing a Smurf movie with a dozen protagonists is that most of the Smurfs look alike, and the main Smurf's defining trait is that he has no defining trait. The main protagonist is called "No Name" and his character arc is that he doesn't have "a thing." This leads to the film's central moral for children about finding out who you are in your own time, but it's really hard to grasp onto a main character who isn't actually a character when he's surrounded by other character models that are exactly the same as his. Humor-wise, the movie is stylized like a comic strip, with a lot of gags that are amusing in panel form but fall flat as they try to pull them off in motion. It doesn't really hit the same, though very young children might be amused. Otherwise, the movie just sets itself to a pop soundtrack that allows its blue heroes to just do a little dance when they can't think of anything else that's funny to do. The movie isn't much, though it might be tempting to throw it on streaming to keep children occupied while you leave the room and do something else. I can't promise those children won't get bored, find you, and request that you change it, though.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
28 Years Later... ⭐️⭐️
Abraham's Boys ⭐️⭐️1/2
Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2
F1 ⭐️⭐️
Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2
Lilo & Stitch ⭐️⭐️
Superman ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
Bride Hard ⭐️
M3GAN 2.0 ⭐️⭐️
New To Physical
The Surfer ⭐️⭐️1/2
Coming Soon!
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