Multiplex Madness
The Dutchman
⭐️1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Andre Gaines
Starring: André Holland, Kate Mara, Zazie Beetz, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Aldis Hodge
The Dutchman is loosely based on the Dutchman play from 1964, and by "loosely based" I mean that it recontextualizes it in a meta narrative where the play exists but the events of reality start to mirror it. The purpose of this seems to be a statement on how people see themselves in art, and the framing device tries to project the play's portrayal of Caucasian power over the Black community as something that never became irrelevant. If there's one thing I'll give this movie, it's that it took a huge artistic swing. Unfortunately, it turns the narrative into a baffling mess littered with nonsense. What should be a story of a white woman exercising her societal power over a Black man is turned into something that is handling too much surrealism to take a tangible form. And even still, the film is written too clumsily to pull its ambitions off. The screenplay wants the audience to know for certain that it's a metaphor through constantly reminding you of its themes by saying them out loud. It also tells the audience that it still doesn't trust them to understand it with needless bookends explaining how themes work. This movie is a dull pain in the ass to watch. I really wish I saw the movie the filmmakers thought they were making instead.
The Plague
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Director: Charlie Polinger
Starring: Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Kenny Rasmussen, Joel Edgerton
Interesting psychological drama sees a boy struggling with social acceptance at water polo camp, where another outcast boy sits on the outskirts of the group and said to have "the plague." The film is a rather unsubtle portrayal of the psychology of social groups and outsiders in one's youth, especially the effect of rejection on one's psyche. It challenges the limiting societal "answer" of "being yourself," as the film steamrolls down a self-destructive path for its characters because scenarios are always in the extreme. The movie doesn't have a counter-moral, as its message is more or less "Life's a bitch and fuck everyone else." The movie can feel incomplete because of that, but it knows exactly what it's saying. It also doesn't care if it gives the viewer closure or not. It screams its message then walks away.
We Bury the Dead
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Horror
Director: Zak Hilditch
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Mark Coles Smith, Brenton Thwaits
This more subtle take on the zombie apocalypse subgenre has the U.S. testing an experimental weapon off the coast of Austrailia, which accidentally wipes a decent chunk of the Aussie population out with it. Volunteers are called in to haul corpses off, including Daisy Ridley, whose husband was within the blast radius. Making the job somewhat more complicated is that several of the deceased are reviving, wondering around as empty shells of themselves. Nobody knows why this happens, though it's enough to make Ridley sneak through the outback and search for her husband, wanting to see if he was one of the revived people or not. It's a quieter, more dramatic take on the zombie movie. The zombies in this movie aren't even necessarily a threat, they just exist. The core of the story lies in closure, the desire to know instead of living in uncertainty, which is the most existential take on a zombie flick in quite some time. The film's uniqueness is sometimes at odds with it leaning into tropes of its subgenre, even if they do prove to be thematically relevant. When the film is fully breathing as its own entity is when it shines brightest. Daisy Ridley is really good here, playing her character with the quiet persistence of needing to see the inevitable with her own two eyes in order to answer a vague question rattling in her head. She enhances the film's grief themes quite well. She's a minor gem in this bleak and sad little movie.
Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2
Wicked: For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2
Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
Wicked: For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2
New To Physical
Coming Soon!
