Multiplex Madness
Alpha
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Horror
Director: Julia Ducournau
Starring: Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey
The new body horror flick from Raw and Titane director Julia Ducournau has proven divisive even within the niche fangroup of the divisive filmmaker. I haven't seen Raw or Titane and know little about them other than being about cannibalism and/or having sex with cars or something, so I have no preconceived notions of what to expect from Ducournau. Maybe that works in Alpha's favor, because it's interesting, if unwieldy. Alpha is about a girl who gets a tattoo from a stranger, and in the aftermath is treated as a carrier of a disease that turns people into marble by everyone around her. The movie deals with a lot of metaphors, such as teenage rebellion, carrying trauma, and outcast status. These are all themes that should go well together, but the movie somehow finds a way to make them feel disjointed and unrelated, even when they are intertwined. It's never uninteresting to see what the movie is doing with these ideas, both narratively and visually, which makes up some ground without actually fully mending the fracture it has created within itself. Alpha is over two hours long, which is quite a hike to humor its eccentricities. There are perks along the way but few rewards. Do I recommend it? Only if you're curious about it. Otherwise, it's hard to justify saying that one needs to seek it out.
Forbidden Fruits
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Director: Meredith Alloway
Starring: Lily Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, Gabrielle Union
For those who love The Craft, Charmed, Practical Magic and all that witchcrafty media but demand it to be more like Mean Girls meets The Devil Wears Prada, Forbidden Fruits is looking to fill that void. A group of mall fashion store sales ladies take in a new hire, who also becomes a part of their coven in their afterhours. Playing on the title, each one has a fruit-inspired name: Apple, Cherry, Fig, and Pumpkin. I honestly didn't know pumpkin was considered a fruit until this movie, but I also never thought about it. Toss that into the "Tomato is also a fruit, probably" pile of information I'll never use. Anyway, it adds to the vibes of this movie, and this movie is nothing if not about vibes. Honestly, it seems solely about vibes. I would have liked a narrative to go with them, but I also think this movie would consider me a loser and ignore me if it were a conscious sentient entity. There are base aspects of this movie that I find very eccentric in a charmless way. For example, I think a lot of the outfits in this movie look stupid, but I also know nothing about fashion, so maybe they're actually fire and I'm just old. It all feels very intentional in what it is but it also feels like it's not going anywhere most of the time and is just there to make the normies jealous. I'm not sure I understood this movie, right up to its end credits tag that I think is trying to set up a sequel but is so perplexingly presented that I don't know what it wants me to leave the theater with because it implies that the movie never finished its own story. This movie is like a shallow popular girl. Maybe she looks good with that hair but, if you got to know her, she really isn't that interesting.
Holy Days
⭐️1/2
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Nat Boltt
Starring: Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes, Elijah Tamati, Jacki Weaver
This quirky indie with tonal shifts that will give you whiplash hails from New Zealand, chronicling three nuns on a road trip with the goal of saving their modest little convent. Holy Days was made with the hypothesis that nuns are funny when they are sassy, but it can't deliver because it doesn't understand that sass is more than raising your eyebrows, putting your hand on your hip, and emphasizing random words that mean nothing. A lot of the punchlines are just random nonsense, and I guess we're supposed to laugh at it because it came out of the mouth of a nun. An example comes early on, when the little boy who occompanies them cracks a remark about the age of the ladies. One of them pipes back "I may be old, but at least I'm not pregnant!"
...what?
That about sums up what my whole experience with the movie was, where it would just throw out random word salad and call it a joke. The film's sense of humor is that if it presents itself as off-balance enough, someone might consider it off-beat, in a simple family friendly way. One could easily show a child this movie and they could easily understand it, even if the simplistic logic of the film will puzzle a fully formed adult. And if one wants to have a minorly religious-themed film to counter more outrageous Nickelodeon fare, the this movie might do the job. Holy Days' sole ambition is to bring simple joys, which makes calling it out on its bullshit feel mean-spirited because of how harmless it's presentation is. It's just a charmless movie that lacks competent story craftsmanship, and it grows increasingly irritating that it wants me to smile at it when it's not doing anything.
They Will Kill You
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Action, Horror, Comedy
Director: Kirill Sokolov
Starring: Zazie Beetz, Myha'la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette
So blatantly a copy of Ready or Not that they stole a joke directly from that movie and used it in the trailer (and it's not the only joke it steals, either), They Will Kill You uses the exact same concept and leans heavier in being an action exploitation homage than a suspense thriller. Zazie Beetz plays a recent recruit in a posh hotel for the wealthy, only to fight for her life when they intend to use her for ritual sacrifice. I was willing to overlook the film's lack of originality if it were fun. I did not have fun watching this movie. Honestly, I was surprised at how not into this movie I was. It's actually shockingly dull for a movie this frantic. It's almost as if there are too many scenes where everything is happening and they default to feeling as if nothing is happening. The movie wants to win points with style and it certainly feels as if it were made by someone who had every Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez poster all over their college dorm, to the point where watching the movie is like being cornered at a frat party by this nerd and being drunkenly boasted to about how Kill Bill and Sin City changed their lives. The movie is playful in spirit but lacking any actual reason to play along with it, as its small breather scenes where the movie tries to have a narrative housing a load of melodrama that feels like it was knocked out in ten minutes. The action sequences feel remarkably unremarkable, despite how graphic they are, and they all feel similar to each other. The only one that I kind of thought had any flavor was a fight in a darkened room with a flaming ax. That's the only actual highlight to this movie, which fulfills a role as a whatever time-killer movie but gave me zero reason to appreciate it's cult film ambition.
You're Dating a Narcissist!
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: Ann Marie Allison
Starring: Marissa Tomei, Sherry Cola, Ciara Bravo, Marco Pigossi, José Maria Yazpik, Jonah Platt
An absolutely glowing Marissa Tomei plays a psychologist who published a book on narcissism finds out her daughter is getting married. Tomei meets the groom cautiously, looking for signs of narcissistic behavior with his every move. It's a budding idea for cute romcom wedding shenanigans, though it's one that is awkwardly presented. I don't think I've ever seen a movie reject spacious terminology more than this movie, wanting the audience to know that the movie is about narcissism but hates saying the word "narcissist" because it's too long. It shortens it to the word "narc," which is bizarre because that word already means something else, which seems to really irritate the screenwriters so they clunkily acknowledge it and double down. It's really weird hearing the word "narc" used like this because the movie just arbitrarily decided the English language sucks and it should make up its own rules. When getting into the actual meat of the movie, there are more promising notes than you'd probably expect for a through-the-motions romantic farce. Its really the screenplay that lets it down because it doesn't pack deft plotting or comedic power, as most dialogue defaults to some form of "You're dating a narcissist!"/"No, I'm not!" The movie can be cute, but that's mostly because Marissa Tomei and Sherry Cola are naturally charismatic. When it comes to actually laying out the storyline, the movie has no poker face. When the moment calls for subtlety, it tries to go for a bang and completely misfires. There is very little to dislike about this movie, it's trying too hard to be goofy fun and not hard enough to make something out of itself.
Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Reminders of Him ⭐️⭐️
Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️
Undertone ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
New To Physical
BlackBerry ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The History of Sound ⭐️⭐️1/2
Killers of the Flower Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Coming Soon!
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