Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 46 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Carpenter's Son

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Lotfy Nathan

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Noah Jupe, FKA Twigs, Souheila Yacoub, Isla Johnston

Say what you will about this edgelord flick that tries to do a psychological horror take on the story of Jesus Christ, but it's interesting.  And it sure as hell isn't boring.  Nicolas Cage plays "The Carpenter," and unnamed protagonist based on Joseph, who protects "The Mother" and "The Son," AKA Mary and Jesus, from those who might harm them once learning that his "son" is actually the son of God.  Meanwhile, "The Son" resists temptation from "The Stranger," a sadistic little girl who represents you-know-who.  She spends most of the movie making "The Son" uncomfortable with her serpent's tongue.  No, that's not a metaphor, she has a literal "serpent's tongue," a snake that crawls our of her mouth.  She can do that.  As sacrilegious as the film might seem at first, I actually don't sense anything malicious about this movie toward religion in general.  It may very well be a movie made by an atheist wanting to shock with their heresy, but it actually comes off as having a more genuine heart than that.  It feels like it was made in the imagination that Jesus was a scared little boy surrounded by enemies, and it's a movie portraying his fear by inducing dread and utilizing gore.  Most movies depicting Jesus are much softer, wanting the be beautiful even if the period of time that Jesus lived in likely wasn't (The Passion of the Christ notwithstanding).  I kind of respect this movie for portraying a harsh surrounding that's usually sanitized.  This movie also could have been done better.  At it's heart, this movie is about a boy with overprotective parents keeping secrets from him who discovers he has superpowers.  This might as well be the pilot to Smallville.  But The Carpenter's Son will likely have cult appeal based on its unconventional approach to its subject matter.  Maybe some of that cult following might be in the Christian community.  The movie might surprise you.  I just hope you're comfortable with newborn babies burning to death in a blazing fire.  That happens in the first five minutes.  In close-up.  Buyer beware.

Keeper

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Osgood Perkins

Starring:  Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland

Most film directors bring about their latest project in about two to three years.  Osgood Perkins has pushed that to about six months, proving that, no matter who your favorite director is, they're a lazy son-of-a-bitch.  Perkins' second film this year, after The Monkey, was actually born from the writer and actor's strikes from 2023 while The Monkey was stalled from production.  Perkins worked some loopholes with Canadian writers and actors who were not part of the American unions and went to production on this movie.  I wish I could say it didn't look like a rush job but it kinda does.  Keeper is a horror movie that stars Tatiana Maslany, who agrees to a weekend at her boyfriend's cabin, where spooky stuff begins to happen.  It's a rather basic creepshow premise that isn't going to win much awards in originality.  In fact, the whole idea feels underdeveloped.  Perkins' distinct and exciting direction and Maslany's committed performance are both at war with a boring script, one that lacks thematic material, characterization, and just content in general.  The movie can be exceptionally creepy when it wants to be, but it suffers from slowdown and a dull performance by co-lead Rossif Sutherland doesn't help keep the film interesting.  Perkins is still one of the most distinct voices in genre work today, and even if Keeper ain't a keeper, he's still on full display and firing on all cylinders.  That's proof enough that he hasn't lost his mojo.  He just needs to find another Longlegs to put his best foot forth.

King Ivory

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  John Swab

Starring:  James Badge Dale, Ben Foster, Michael Mando, Graham Greene, Melissa Leo

Police officers hunt drug dealers and yadda yadda yadda...look, this movie sucks and I don't want to talk about it.  Chances are you've seen a dozen street movies of law vs. kingpins and drugs in the past.  This one does everything those movies do except does it slowly and dully.  Waiting for King Ivory to do something interesting is like waiting for grass to brown and die during the summer.  I got so bored during this movie that I started listening to the foley work.  It really started to weird me out, from drowning men making gurgling noises above the surface of the water to kissing noises that sound like someone aggressively tongue wrestling with a Tootsie Pop.  It's a hard-edged production done with grime and grit, but its screenplay can only interest in minor patches and doesn't seem to have the balls to really hit hard.  The movie has so little confidence in itself that it feels the need to subtitle Ben Foster, who is playing a character with a removed larynx.  His dialogue can be rough but it's really not that hard to make out, and it comes off as if the filmmakers are assuming their audience is full of idiots.

One positive note is that this is one of the last performances of the late Graham Greene, who passed away earlier this year.  MSTies will remember him best from Atlantic Rim and RiffTrax fans from the Twilight saga, but we won't hold either of those against him.  He really was a good actor.  Unfortunately, King Ivory isn't a great requiem for him.  Making a boring movie isn't a crime, but movies like King Ivory argue that maybe it should be.

Muzzle:  City of Wolves

⭐️

🏆"Hurts So Good" Must-See Bad Movie Award🏆

Genre:  Action, Thriller

Director:  John Stalberg Jr.

Starring:  Aaron Eckhart, Tanya van Graan, Karl Thaning, Nicole Fortuin, Adrian Collins, Hakeem Kae-Kazim

Muzzle:  City of Wolves is a sequel to a movie that I've never heard of.  If it's anywhere near as funny as this one, I'm going to have to check it out.  This movie has a full-blown police funeral for a dog, complete with Aaron Eckhart giving grief-stricken seething vengeance eyes.  If that doesn't perfectly sum up exactly what kind of movie this is, I don't know what does.

Eckhart plays a gruff hard-boiled cop who has a group of trained dogs by his side.  When an underground kingpin threatens to kill his family unless he willingly commits suicide, he goes on the run to shoot the bad guys and protect his wife and baby.  That premise might seem mundane but the way it's executed makes the movie a riot.  This movie has so many clichés that it might as well be a dark 'n' gritty reboot of Jack Slater from Last Action Hero.  The movie piles on so much outdated turns that weren't even good when they were popular that it feels like it should be a parody, but it's so fucking serious that it clearly sees itself as edgy.  This movie is utter crap.  It's really funny crap, based primarily on how misguidedly sincere it is, but it's still crap.  I wholeheartedly recommend this movie based on that, because its sincerity needs to be seen to be believed.

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Adventure

Director:  Ruben Fleischer

Starring:  Jessie Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosamund Pike, Morgan Freeman

I saw the first Now You See Me when it came out.  Didn't really like it.  I'm not even sure I understood what it was about, but the one thing that nagged at me that I never forgot was that the movie was focused on magicians and had an opportunity to pull off a lot of fun in-camera visual tricks and instead it was a bunch of CGI bullshit, answering the eternal question of "How'd they do that?!?!" with "They didn't."  I don't think I've ever seen a movie completely lose focus on its own appeal like that.  Anyway, I didn't watch the second one because I assumed it would be more of the same.  Now I'm here watching the third because I have nothing better to do.

This threequel sees a young group of magicians who are inspired by the legendary "Four Horsemen" to do small-scale "steal from the rich, give to the poor" jobs.  The actual Four Horsemen show up on their door, selecting them to help out with a bigger heist of a giant diamond.  It's all an excuse to showboat and do a lot of monologues about how in control of the situation everyone is.  I will admit I had more fun with this one that the last time I visited this franchise, though I share some of the same annoyances.  A convoluted plot, an over-reliance on computer graphics, a lot of running around without a visible goal, and a twist ending that mistskes "Huh?" for mind-blowing.  It's a collection of problems the Now You See Me franchise has had since movie one.  It's just in the most zippy and enjoyable package they've ever presented.  What I enjoyed about this movie is that, while it's aimless, it is very spirited.  The young blood characters have so much spunk that they bring zest to the proceedings.  That being said, there are probably too many characters in the movie.  There is a little bit of wiseness to how the film works with this because it's assuming the audience is already familiar with the Horsemen and selects to give the young stars more development time.  Ariana Greenblatt is the showstealer of the trio with a couple of parkour sequences that highlight the movie.  Meanwhile, the Horsemen are here more for bravado, talking about how great they are and chumming about because it has been a while, letting the audience know what they've been up to since they've last robbed someone.  There are a few surprises in store, some are genuinely good and others feel like post-production tinkering, but if you're a fan of Now You See Me, then I imagine this trilogy capper is mostly what you hope it would be.

The Running Man

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action, Adventure, Science Fiction

Director:  Edgar Wright

Starring:  Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo. William H. Macy, Michael Cera, Lee Pace, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Katy O'Brian, Sean Hayes

I have a polarized history with The Running Man.  I saw the 1987 Schwarzenegger movie when I was a tween and it established itself as the greatest movie my innocent eyes had ever gazed upon.  I then read the Stephen King (AKA Richard Bachman) book in high school and...didn't like it.  For the last few decades I attributed that to my rose-colored glasses of the movie version, which was quite different to the source material.  I re-read the book recently to confirm this, and no, the book just sucks.  It's a nihilistic and cynical work, admittedly for the right reasons, but it's one that just rages out without anything productive or enlightening in its content.  And the last fifty or so pages read as if King had written himself into a corner and just gave up on the entire thing, rendering the story just a angry rant that just abruptly cuts off.  I do not recommend the book on this one.  The 1987 movie, though, that's still a top tier camp classic.  10/10, will watch again, and if the choice were between The Godfather and The Running Man, I'd pick The Running Man in a heartbeat.

Now, Edgar Wright is here to put his own stamp on The Running Man.  My initial thought was yes, I absolutely want this.  Then it occurred to me it was probably going to be based on the book and not the Schwarzenegger movie, and that made me sad.  Wright's version of the King novel might have promise, but Wright's version of the Schwarzenegger movie would have been transcendent.  But I'll give it a look.  I love Wright as a filmmaker, and if anybody can whip that book into shape, it's him.  And he does break through and turn a shitty book into something that could potentially win me over.  But he's still held back by the not-so-good source material.

The Running Man sees Glen Powell playing Ben Richards, who desperately needs quick cash to buy medicine for his sick daughter.  He applies to the game shows on "The Network," and is selected for "The Running Man," where Richards must survive as a fugitive for thirty days, but if he gets caught, he dies.  Fans of the book will be more pleased that the concept hasn't been radically altered for this film, while the screenplay mostly stays faithful to the story's structure as well.  This is for better and for worse, because the book doesn't have a great structure to begin with.  The movie takes the worst aspects of the book and tries to salvage them by "Edgar Wright-ing" them up, which pays off in that it's no longer a dull work of stoic cynicism but a fast-paced work of cynicism that's kinda funny sometimes.  You can have fun watching this, but its social commentary is still clumsy.  It's bad enough that the parody concepts like "FreeVee" and "New Dollars" didn't even read well on the page but hearing them in live dialogue makes them sound even dumber.  But probably the worst aspect of this movie is something that can be said for m "person starts an uprising against the tyranical government" media, which is that the message can be easily misunderstood.  One can easily watch this movie and think it's about one brave "Republican" and his war against "Fake News" and "Liberal Media," and the only sources you can trust are "The People's Voices" on YouTube and Elon Musk's dumpster of a social media empire.  The Running Man's social satire is pretty irresponsibly delivered because, taken at face value without analysis, it might make the radicalized even more radical.

But the movie isn't all bad.  Most of its weaknesses can be attributed to the faults of its source.  The movie actually improves on the book in a number of ways.  The book is slow and not very exciting, Edgar Wright's film is a capable ride from start to finish.  Characters from the novel who jump in and leave are given fairly beefed up roles, a lot of it with mixed results (Michael Cera's additional action sequence is put into play out of stupidity) but I appreciate the effort.  The movie is also much funnier than its grumbling counterpart, which helps lighten some of the mood.  It's definitely helps the tryout stage of the story, which I think is supposed to be funny in the novel but is done through a lot of racist slurs and sexism.  Here, it actually is funny, because Powell is so in on playing someone who is so irritated about being there that my laughter couldn't be contained.  The movie also changes the book's objectively terrible ending.  Elements of the ending are still present, but there is an added post-script that recontextualizes as being less "life sucks and then you die."  To be honest, the new ending is pretty shitty too, but it is unquestionably a less abrupt note to go out on.

The Running Man is Wright's weakest movie.  If I were to take anything away from that, it's that Wright is starting look look like he's someone incapable of delivering an unentertaining movie.  This movie can be a hoot, it's also frustrates as much as it delights.  Just be prepared for that and you'll probably like it just fine.  And we'll always have the Schwarzenegger movie, which is destined to be the most iconic version of this story, faithfulness and quality be damned.

Trap House

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action

Director:  Michael Dowse

Starring:  Dave Bautista, Jack Champion, Sophia Lillis, Tony Dalton, Whitney Peak, Kate del Castillo, Bobby Cannavale, Inde Navarrette, Zaire Adams, Blu del Barrio

For a wrestler-turned-actor that most of the prime talent in Hollywood seems to have nothing but praise for, Dave Bautista has made a lot of schlock this year.  It feels like it's every few weeks I'm seeing him in an Afterburn or an In the Lost Lands.  This weekend he's in another low-budget action flick from another small-time distributor, though I am at the same time not surprised by what it is while also being surprised at how much fun I had watching it.  Trap House sees Bautista play a DEA agent who, for some reason, has gear readily available to his teenage son.  After a fellow agent is gunned down and the DEA fails at supporting his family, Bautista's son nabs a bunch of his father's gear and gathers a group of friends to crudely steal from the drug cartel in a series of hit-and-run robberies.  The cartel eventually notices the DEA gear and starts targeting DEA agents.  The story is a pretty solid groundwork for this movie, although it's not a particularly memorable screenplay.  The movie can be ripe with melodrama when it feels like it, but it counterweighs it with a lot of spirit.  The group comaraderie of the kids is flavorful and endearing, and watching them muck around from their clumsy first hit to being neck deep in something they can't handle is actually more investing than I expected to be.  Meanwhile, watching Bautista trying to figure out who is doing the hits has a quirky pleasure to it.  The movie is pedestrianly made, the action is nothing to write home about, and the movie's biggest twists are obvious from the get-go, but this movie is more fun than it has any right to be.  I could name a hundred ways it could be better, but I can't say I didn't enjoy the basic ride as presented.  If it ain't broke...

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Die My Love ⭐️⭐️

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Nuremberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Regretting You ⭐️⭐️1/2

Springsteen:  Deliver Me from Nowhere ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sarah's Oil ⭐️⭐️

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Kiss of the Spider Woman ⭐️⭐️

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Soul on Fire ⭐️

New To Physical

Caught Stealing ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Downton Abbey:  The Grand Finale ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Freakier Friday ⭐️⭐️1/2

Him ⭐️

The Naked Gun ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spinal Tap II:  The End Continues ⭐️⭐️1/2

Together ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 45 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Christy

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  David Michôd

Starring:  Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Katy O'Brian

Sydney Sweeney finally stars in a movie that's halfway decent, but she made Americana on her way there, so she still deserves to be given shit.  Christy is the second biopic of the year focusing on a groundbreaking women's sports icon, following the Millie Muscles biopic Queen of the Ring from many months ago.  This one focuses on women's boxing icon Christy Martin, chronicling the ups and downs of her career as well as the emotional and physical abuse she put up with from her manager/husband, James V. Martin.  Christy is a better film than Queen of the Ring, though this has a lot to do with Queen of the Ring's ill-advised tendencies to make shit up if they thought the story was getting boring.  Christy doesn't feel too far removed from what Christy Martin's life story actually was, whether it's dramatically engaging or not.  This mostly hurts the early portions, where the movie has this weird tendency to not let itself breathe.  It will switch to a scene for two lines then jump to the next two-line scene, wanting to cover as much ground as possible very rapidly and abruptly to get to the meat of Martin's story faster.  The film feels more balanced after this, though it isn't made with any particular flair.  Boxing scenes are brief and not very exciting, while the movie seems willing to coast on performance instead of screenplay.  Sweeney and co-star Ben Foster are pretty good, but they aren't given a lot that's interesting to do outside of their big pre-determined moments to shine.  Christy is a movie for the sports biopic enthusiast, though it likely won't have much of a lasting legacy because it isn't consistently impactful.

Die My Love

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Lynne Ramsay

Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek

Most trades are saying Die My Love is an allegory for postpartum depression.  If it is, it's a failure, because the movie comes off more as an allegory for monogamous boredom as Jennifer Lawrence moves into a country house with Robert Pattinson and grows more unhinged at her husband's seeming growing indifference to their relationship.  None of Lawrence's problems seem to stem from the birth of their child.  In fact, the baby almost seems to be collateral damage in the making.  Most of Lawrence's sufferings seem to specifically stem from lack of sexual gratification, as her partnership with Pattinson moves from "fucking wildly in every room on a whim" directly into the mundanity of a domestic life.  Is postpartum depression related?  Possibly.  Like most depression, postpartum is about psychology and chemical imbalance, which makes postpartum itself just a triggering circumstance, but the film uses postpartum as something incidental, symbolic of lifestyle trasition and not directly linked to motivation.  That's just my read of this film that's more symbolism than story, wanting the viewer to read between the lines rather than follow a narrative.  If the movie thinks it's sly, it's shockingly dense because it's not that hard to read.  Too much of the movie is obvious.  There are a lot of shots of Lawrence on all fours in a feral pose, crawling around like a wild animal in a cage who yearns for freedom.  It's one of the movie's stupidest metaphors but it seems obsessed with it.  As an experience, the movie just isn't interesting.  The film wants to thrill with the intense emotional state of the actors but everything is so heightened that their reactions stop being understandable even if the emotions behind them are relatable.  The most frustrating thing about it is that it could easily be something powerful but chooses to be intentionally impenetrable.  If only Lawrence got some penetrating, then this entire mess could have been avoided.  Am I right?  ::raises hand for high five::left hanging::

Grand Prix of Europe

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Sports

Director:  Waldemar Fast

Starring:  (English voice cast) Gemma Arterton, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Hayley Atwell, Lenny Henry, Rob Beckett

Unmemorable but spirited, this family film is a German/UK co-production, telling the story of a young mouse who is desperate to pay off her father's loan and jumps in as a driving double for the world's greatest race car driver when he injures himself.  The movie will never be a true contender for finest animated filmmaking, as it's very Saturday Morning in its vibes.  What it succeeds in doing is being a showcase of zippy setpieces, silly characters, and bright colors.  If your child's favorite Pixar movie is Cars, this could potentially be a movie they stumble upon on streaming and watch twice in an afternoon.  Of course, my personal interest piqued based on the sexy voices of British heartstoppers Gemma Arterton and Hayley Atwell.  It's not much, but I'll take what I can get.

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Fantasy

Director:  Mailys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han

Starring:  (English voice cast) Lily Gilliam, Victoria Grosbois, Yumi Fujimori, Cathy Cerdà, Marc Arnaud, Laetitia Coryn

This French animated film is an adaptation of the autobiographical novel The Character of Rain by Amélie Nothomb, telling the story of a Belgian toddler living in Japan who experiences everything in life for the first time.  She forms a deep bond with her nanny, who doesn't talk down to her about the joys and tragedies of life.  The film is a lushly animated depiction of innocence so that the darkest of its themes can feel threatening to the beauty of its joy.  Little Amélie is unafraid to be heavy and existential as it tackles things like death, predjudice, and change.  Each of these is something Amélie is learning about for the first time as she discovers the world isn't centered on her and there are things outside of her control that will make it more difficult.  Whether the film is a quality family option is up to the parents.  In addition to the thoughtful thematic material, the movie is a soft drama, so more hyperactive children likely won't sit and watch it.  The movie could be watched as a family if one chooses to, though.  Adult animation appreciators will likely be the ones to love it the most.

Long Shadows

⭐️

Genre:  Western

Director:  William Shockley

Starring:  Dermot Mulroney, Dominic Monaghan, Jacqueline Bisset, Blaine Maye, Sarah Cortez, Chris Mulkey, Anthony Skordi, Ronnie Gene Blevins

Schlocky western melodrama features an impossibly noble young man who seeks to avenge the deaths of his parents, learns to gunsling, and falls in love with a prostitute.  You know, a bunch of shit from the "Do-It-Yourself Western Movie" kit.  A cheap movie I can live with.  This movie is an underwritten and over-acted relation of a trite plot that hundreds of westerns have already done with the exception of a laughable ending that is admittedly exclusive to it.  And it's cheap.  A movie like this could save itself with charisma and character development, neither of which the movie feels like it's that interested in.  There are a couple of notable performers here, including Dermot Mulroney, Dominic Monaghan, and Jacqueline Bisset, all of which are wasted.  The movie's character personality is reduced to generic monologues about trauma and cheesy flashbacks.  Meanwhile, the film's third act twists feel like they're the only aspect of the film made with actual imagination, even if they're so stupid that the film crosses into accidental comedy territory.  The one virtue I can see in this movie is that it feels like it was made by people who have genuine love for the western genre and just want to do a simple period revenge flick.  But with that love comes blindness to its own faults, because the rose-colored glasses are strong with this flick.  Long Shadows feels like a modern day version of one of those low budget B-movie westerns that shot on convenient locations and backlot sets that were filmed in a week and flooded the market during the 1950's.  It's quickly put together and shoddy, made for an audience that exclusively watches movies exactly like it with little care for quality.  It's hard to justify going to the movies to see this when the sensible option for your western revenge fantasy kick is to stay home and replay Red Dead Redemption.

Lost & Found in Cleveland

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Drama

Director:  Marisa Guterman, Keith Gerchak

Starring:  Martin Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Yvette Yates Redick, Santino Fontana, Jon Lovitz

Television's biggest antique show, Lost & Found, comes to Cleveland and the various citizens gear up to put their heirlooms and valuables up for appraisal.  The people who created Lost & Found in Cleveland certainly love to get lost in their character work.  That's a good thing because the intention of the film is to contextualize all the personalities you might see at an event like this.  I like the idea of this movie, I'd have rather seen a version of this movie that doesn't feel this empty.  If I can state something admirable about the film's production, it's that it is made with consistency in its off-beat vibes.  What makes the movie frustrating is that its so busy vibing with itself that it rarely amuses.  I couldn't help but get impatient in waiting for it to actually tell a story.  Movies this lighthearted shouldn't be this boring.  The movie finally gains a pulse once it arrives at the antique show, but it has taken so long to get there and the path was such a lumbering slog that it doesn't hit like it should.  It's a shame because the movie can charm if its not meandering around, running with gags and plot beats that aren't working.  I'd like to see this production team work on a different movie, something more straightforward with fewer characters, and see if it brings about a better result.

Nuremberg

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  James Vanderbilt

Starring:  Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O'Brien, Colin Hanks, Wren Schmidt, Lydia Peckham, Richard E. Grant, Michael Shannon

If Nuremberg was released thirty years ago it probably would have been a heavy award season favorite.  Today, it's old fashioned to a fault, though if one looks at it through the lens of those historical "actors doing ACTING" dramas of yesteryear, the movie is above average.  The film is a dramatization of the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, concentrating heavily on Hitler's trusted officer Hermann Göring, played by Russell Crowe.  The framing device uses Rami Malek as a psychiatrist who analyzes Göring to keep him mentally stable for trial.  It's an interesting storytelling device because it has an approach of getting to know the humans behind the atrocity, while also being cautious of a silver tongue, framing their own crimes in the most innocent possible light.  I think this was done in a more compelling way in Zone of Interest, though I'll admit Nuremberg is satisfying in a "meat and potatoes" kind of way.  It's a movie more likely to satisfy Boomers than the modern cinephile who is used to more nuance.  But there is still something that hits about two dudes in a room getting pissy at each other.  Maybe it's a bit too long, but Nuremberg has the sauce.

Predator:  Badlands

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Action

Director:  Dan Trachtenberg

Starring:  Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi

Two good Predator movies in a row was unprecedented.  Three is a miracle.  Predator usually works best as a gung ho actioneer of gruff antagonistic protagonists squaring off against something even more antagonistic than they are, which is why I'll always prefer the original Predator and 2010's Predators to 2022's Prey, which is a very adequate "girl defies the patriarchy" movie with an alien in it.  It's a good movie, but not as memorable or as rousing as muscles vs. lasers.  That being said, Prey director Dan Trachtenberg has also proven he's the shot-in-the-arm that the franchise needed after Shane Black's The Predator strangled it and left it for dead.  Trachtenberg takes the franchise in unexpected directions, scaling it back for Prey, animating an anthology in Killer of Killers, and finally focusing on the Predator as the protagonist in Badlands.  This is kind of what Adam Wingard was going for in Godzilla x Kong:  The New Empire last year, where he wanted the movie monsters to be the central plot-moving characters of his story.  Trachtenberg has an advantage in that the Predator race is more humanoid than Godzilla or Kong, being much smaller and able to communicate more clearly.  This also effectively brings it back to the idea that the protagonist is a badass (ugly) motherfucker being terrorized by something big and nasty, which I appreciated.

Predator:  Badlands sees a young "Yautja" (this is the nerd name for the Predator race) named Dek who goes on a dangerous hunt for an "unkillable" apex predator known as the Kalisk, wanting to prove he is worthy of his clan.  Along the way, he is aided by a damaged robot by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (the fist tie-in between Alien and Predator film media that was not specifically in an Alien vs. Predator movie), who was tasked to capture the Kalisk.  It's not a complicated narrative, but it successfully lore-expanding without being and exposition dump.  If it seems overly familiar, that's because the Predator's rituals have basically evolved into that of the Klingons from Star Trek.  And here we basically have a buddy movie between a Klingon and an android.  The movie is little more than a lost Next Generation episode focusing on Worf and Data, just modded with Predator skins.  It's a solid Next Generation episode, though.

The film is nothing if it's not an action spectacle.  The film embraces the sci-fi action of the Predator franchise on a level we have yet to see from it.  Dek is an interesting protagonist to the story, one that speaks no English and is absurdly stoic.  Levity is brought to the film by Elle Fanning's robot character Thia, who is constantly plucky and pleasant, contrasting Dek's sour mood.  The duo make a pretty effective pairing, and it's their interplay that makes the movie a fun watch to counterweight the flashy action.  And that's the one word I'd use to describe this movie:  fun.  The movie is practically a non-stop ride, and even ends on a note showing the ride isn't going to stop any time soon, similar to Predators.

If there were one thing that kind of irks me about this movie, it's that it feels way too animated.  The movie uses CGI to enhance Dek's facial expressions, but he's almost "too expressive," in a way that makes a Predator's facial features look silly.  The film is filled with crazy setpieces that are pretty cool, but they also feel bloodless and without consequence, and some of them defy reasonable physics.  And the cap on this is that they also give Dek a cute little pet as a sidekick.  That's not really what I'd call a Predator vibe, if I can speak for myself.  Sometimes the movie feels like a cartoon, and that's when it starts to feel exhausting.  It's also a testament to its skilled production team that it can win me back when it's at risk of losing me.  Because of this, Predator:  Badlands most certainly is not the best Predator movie, but it's another win for Trachtenberg and further proof that the keys are in safe hands.

Sarah's Oil

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Cyrus Nowrasteh

Starring:  Naya Desir-Johnson, Zachary Levi, Sonequa Martin-Green, Garret Dillahunt

There's a scene in Sarah's Oil where Zachary Levi has an urgent discussion with lady supporting player Bridget Regan and a newly introduced Black supporting player.  White performers Levi and Regan have all the dialogue in this scene, arguing over the rights of a little Black girl, while the nameless Black man just stands to the side and stays silent.  Boy, if I could sum up this movie in one image, it would be that.

The film centers on a young Black girl named Sarah who inherits a piece of land and suspects there might be oil on it.  She entrusts prospector Zachary Levi to help her mine it, but he might also need to help her protect it from claim jumpers.  The movie is clearly a dumbed-down portrayal of the Black experience designed to ensure a white guy's non-racism is the hero of the story, and the movie's heights of melodrama can be absurdly shameless.  On the plus side, it's a mostly harmless, if heartless, depiction of an interesting story.  Zachary Levi does fairly well here, playing a generic "I'm one of the good ones" trusted white friend, one that talks fast like a grifter but wears his heart on his sleeve, the type of role he has always played just fine.  The problem is that he's wrestling the spotlight away from the person who should be the protagonist, and it feels as if it's done so because the movie needs a minor brand name celeb who also isn't a minority.  Add in his comedic personality wrestling with the film's melodrama, the film is just an odd flavor.  On the scale of movies about Black people made for white people, Sarah's Oil does it's job in convincing its conservative viewers that they aren't racist because they watched a movie and sympathized with a Black child.  It's very clear it has limits of how compelling it's willing to be, taking cheap shots in sentimentality rather than forming anything with gravitas.

Unexpected Christmas

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Romance

Director:  Michael Vaughn Hernandez

Starring:  Tabitha Brown, Lil Rel Howrey, Anna Marie Horsford, DomiNque Perry, Reagan Gomez-Preston

Oh snap!  Holiday family tension is about to boil!  A recently dumped woman returns home for Christmas only to discover the man who broke up with her is dating her sister.  She the decides to ramp up the tension by setting up her gay best friend as her own boyfriend.  It's a movie that doesn't seek to reinvent the wheel in any shape or form, though it does overcomplicate its simplicity with a subplot about land being purchased something something something big business vs. community.  It's largely not important, but generic plot beats might weigh you down with a melodramatic presentation of holiday farce.  The film's strangest aspect is how it seems to give up on being a comedy halfway through and becomes a bunch of senseless flailing dramatic outbursts.  An undemanding audience might find the film to be cozy.  What comedy it does have is played up, rarely doing a well-staged comedic moment, but its humor is lightly amusing while never crossing into unpleasant.  It's an unambitious film that just exists to exist.  There's not much to gain from watching this movie, but the best thing that can be said about it is that its an inoffensive presentation of almost nothing.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Back to the Future ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Regretting You ⭐️⭐️1/2

Roofman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Shelby Oaks ⭐️1/2

Springsteen:  Deliver Me from Nowhere ⭐️⭐️1/2

Stitch Head ⭐️⭐️1/2

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

Violent Ends ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

No Other Land ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Smashing Machine ⭐️⭐️1/2

Waltzing with Brando ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

CODA ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 44 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Anniversary

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Jan Komasa

Starring:  Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Madeline Brewer, Zoey Deutch, Phoebe Dynevor, Mckenna Grace, Daryl McCormack, Dylan O'Brien

I'd hate to get political up in here but the movie made me do it.  Let's blame Diane Lane for this.  Lane plays a college professor who finds her son, Dylan O'Brien, is dating a woman she used to teach, Phoebe Dynevor, who has a radical political ideology that Lane found to be frighteningly anti-democracy, hypothesizing that the current political party system can't be saved and the country needs to evolve to a different, more singular system (I don't believe the movie ever mentions the words "fascism" or "dictatorship" but this is clearly what's implied).  Dynever publishes her theory as a political book called "The Change," which begins a political movement within America.  Of course, the premise of this movie is complete bollocks because a book such as this wouldn't change the world.  It would end up like all political books, purchased then placed on a shelf to collect dust by people who pretended to read it and/or asked their intern to write up bullet points from it so they can scream about it on social media before forgetting about it completely, while most voters might start it, get bored, and read a Jack Reacher book instead.  If I were to hazard a guess, the movie is a commentary on a dozen things within the political landscape, from "Make America Great Again" to the polarized political party system fueled by a media landscape that sells outrage.  I think the movie is supposed to be an imagining of what such present attitudes might result in at their most extreme, but, honestly, the movie feels like a half-assed prequel to a garbage young adult dystopian book series.  You could probably label this as a Hunger Games prequel and it would have more value than it's current stand-alone status.

If one looks at this movie as simply a satire of how political ideology makes everyone a petty little bitch, the movie could accidentally convince you that it's smart.  The problem is that it's doing so through a made-up ideology that's supposed to be both inspiring and threatening at the same time and the movie is so generalized and vague about it that it just comes off as a load of bullshit.  The movie is at its most interesting when it's about the uncomfortable tension between two sides of the same dinner table that loathe each other's ideology.  Unfortunately, the movie wants to be more than that, shifting into a "new world order" gradually, though seemingly in the blink of an eye given the film's time jump presentation.  Weirdly enough, the movie brought to mind a Spanish movie from a few years ago called New Order (I did not think I was going to reference this movie anytime soon), which chronicled an overthrowing of the government from the perspective of a wealthy family who found their power meant nothing almost instantly.  That movie has its ups and downs but it plays its status quo change better than Anniversary, which wants to do the same thing but also wants its characters to be relevant to the events that are happening outside the house they are stuck in.  It's a bit messy to show off world changing players in an environment that is this boxed in.  In both commentary and vibes, Anniversary is more like The Purge, but with passive aggressiveness instead of murder.  I miss the murder.  I kind of wish this movie pulled it off, because clearly thought was put into it and the cast is giving it their A-game.  The movie is at least smarter about its provocative presentation than After the Hunt was a few weeks ago, but like After the Hunt, it's not the hot button discussion piece it thinks it is.

Bugonia

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Drama, Thriller, Science Fiction

Director:  Yorgos Lanthimos

Starring:  Emma Stone, Jessie Plemons, Aiden Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone

Conspiracy theorist Jessie Plemons kidnaps wealthy CEO Emma Stone under the assumption that she is an alien who is set to destroy the world in three days time.  Obviously that's just crazy.  Except this is a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, and letting Stone actually be an alien can't be ruled out.  In fact, it's pretty much the most Lanthimos thing this movie could do, so she can't be an alien because that's too obviously the actual ending.  Unless that's what he wants me to think.  This is the problem with transcending expectations.  If you do it all the time, your attempts at transcending become transparent.  Lanthimos might have just achieved this point in his career.  Lanthimos's movies work better for me when his subject matter is bizarre enough to carry his idiosyncracies.  I loved Poor Things for this reason, while The Favorite drowned for me because a Lanthimos costume drama just came off as a bunch of people in dress-up acting like dipshits.  Bugonia lies closer on the Poor Things side of the spectrum, as the subject of extraterrestrial conspiracy is inherently odd and kinda funny.  Lanthimos is also odd and kinda funny, so it works out.  The downside of Bugonia is that it's almost disappointingly straightforward for a Lanthimos movie.  This is the rare case where I almost wish he went weirder.  The film mostly his mocking of Plemons' bubbled existence, and many of the jokes are obvious conspiracy nut jokes.  But the film almost exists in the same headspace as Ari Aster's Eddington where it wants to have its cake and eat it too by mocking such people then throwing us into an absurdist look of what might be if they were actually correct.  Bugonia succeeds at that idea better than Eddington, but it still can't escape the fact that it feels like it's eating its own tail.  It's amusing enough, and it's playful enough with the "rabbit hole" mockery that it shows time transition with a visual of a "Flat Earth."  That's worth the price of admission, by itself.

Stitch Head

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Steve Hudson

Starring:  Asa Butterfield, Joel Fry, Tia Bannon, Rob Brydon, Alison Steadman, Fern Brady, Jamali Maddix

This animated comedy starts at the castle of a local mad scientist, who creates monstrous creations daily and casts them aside so he can create more.  His first creation is named Stitch Head, who becomes the doctor's neglected assistant in his experiments.  Stitch Head becomes disillusioned in his role and runs off to join the circus, where he befriends a local girl.  Stitch Head has modest ambitions of being a family friendly Halloween option to take the kids to when they're done Trick 'r Treating, though it probably doesn't have the personality to really hit it off.  One of the things Tim Burton's production team did right with films like Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie is that they're productions that embrace the macabre.  Stitch Head is one of those movies made by people who clearly love productions like that but fall into the temptation of making everything cute as not to give children nightmares.  It's the idea that the macabre can be cute that sidesteps the temptation of the macabre.  Stitch Head probably wants to be closer to Monsters Inc. than Nightmare Before Christmas, though it's more of a subdued slapstick comedy, leaning it more toward Hotel Transylvania without the energy to back it up.  The movie's themes are about phobias and bigotry, as everyone in the movie has preconceived notions that make humans afraid of monsters and monsters afraid of humans.  The movie's comedy is mostly making fun of the theatrical, albeit the movie isn't very theatrical itself, which hurts it.  Stitch Head is an okay-to-solid Halloween option for kids, but when most theaters have Corpse Bride in re-release, why would you pick this instead?

Violent Ends

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  John-Michael Powell

Starring:  Billy Magnusen, James Badge Dale, Nick Stahl, Alexandra Shipp, Ray McKinnon, Bruce McKinnon, Kate Burton

Is it chilly in here?  Because someone's about to get fridged.  A man who is trying to leave his family business of drug dealing finds his fiancée murdered in a robbery gone wrong.  Because we know how this story goes, it's good ol' fashioned retribution.  Violent Ends is a movie that is very content in that it's a jigsaw of tropes in a competent package of predictability.  In all fairness to it, it delivers its package with minor effectiveness, but effectiveness nonetheless.  Damn near every scene in this movie feels like deja vu, as if it were lifted straight from another movie and stitched into this one.  I had to remind myself that I hadn't already seen this movie because it was in the new releases.  This is the kind of mundane storytelling that Chris Stuckmann stumbled with last week with Shelby Oaks, where they're mostly mimicking the type of films they love but don't write it with enough characterization or personality to form an actual identity (there are no characters in this movie, just a group of Southern accents).  Violent Ends wears it better than Shelby Oaks does because it actually has content in it.  It's not unique content but it'll please it's audience, not because it's good but because it's good enough.  Those who watch revenge thrillers religiously will watch it and think it's was worth the money.  It's unlikely they'll remember the title by the next day, though.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Back to the Future ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Last Days ⭐️

Pets on a Train ⭐️⭐️

Regretting You ⭐️⭐️1/2

Roofman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Shelby Oaks ⭐️1/2

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Springsteen:  Deliver Me from Nowhere ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Strangers:  Chapter 2 ⭐️

Truth & Treason ⭐️⭐️1/2

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Eleanor the Great ⭐️⭐️1/2

The History of Sound ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Americana ⭐️⭐️

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Relay ⭐️⭐️1/2

Smurfs ⭐️1/2

The Toxic Avenger ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 43 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Blue Moon

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Richard Linklater

Starring:  Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott

Blue Moon is a single-set performance and monologue drama that centers on Lorenz Hart, the former partner of Richard Rodgers before his teaming up with Oscar Hammerstein II for a very illustrious career, who helped Rodgers write songs like My Funny Valentine, Manhattan, and, of course, Blue Moon.  The film sees Hart months before his death, hanging around a hotel bar and discussing life, sex, and his faltering career with the people who come and go, while his partner is celebrating the release of Oklahoma!, the greatest success of his career.  The movie is largely an excuse for Ethan Hawke to disappear into his role and try to turn heads during award season.  Hawke is really good here, playing Hart with flaming flamboyance, being a petty little bitch with criticism, performativly positive when he needs to be, acting like a desperate dumped girlfriend when he's around his former partner, and fawning over newfound muse Margaret Qualley (can relate).  If there is any fault to the production it's that it's fully transparent that it's a one man show and there is little room for anybody else to shine.  Occasionally, someone gets an amusing one-liner and Qualley is in full heartbreaker mode (which I feel comes naturally to her), but Hawke kind of bullies everyone else off-screen with his presence.  Because of that, the movie has little value outside of admiring Hawke, but it's a good showcase for a quality performance.

Frankenstein

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Science Fiction

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Starring:  Oscar Issac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christopher Waltz, Charles Dance

If you were to ask me what my favorite novel was, I'd probably say Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.  This might have less to do with the text itself, as the book is little more a lengthy rant from the main character about his inner guilt and turmoil in ways that are more apt in poetry and theatricality.  Despite this, the story being told touches me emotionally in ways very few other stories do.  Because of that, I hold a lot of endearment for the text and probably will gleefully sit down for any film based upon it that gets made.  The most beloved adaptations are James Whale's 1931 film and his nutty 1935 sequel, the latter of which adapted unused portions of the book to almost create a two-part production of the novel, and the 1957 Terrence Fisher film The Curse of Frankenstein, which jumpstarted Hammer Films' reign of horror films for several decades (which included their own takes on Dracula, The Mummy, Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde).  The most faithful adaptation of the book that I've personally seen is a 2004 Hallmark miniseries with Donald Sutherland, William Hurt, Luke Goss and a young, pre-Downton Abbey Dan Stevens (and, of MST3K note, it was directed by The Land That Time Forgot and At the Earth's Core director Kevin Connor).  It's very much a Hallmark production, taking both the positive and negative of that, but if you want something that hits close to every beat of the source material (if embellished, as the book is limited to very few perspectives and they had to fill four hours of airtime), this is the one to watch.  The most faithful that was actually a theatrical movie was Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which is a much more grandiose production in Branagh's go-big-or-go-home style.  He certainly went for it.  I choose not to comment on whether he succeeded, though I confess a soft spot for the large-and-in-charge grotesque Shakespearian tragedy take.  Say what you will about this movie, Branagh didn't half-ass a single second of it.

But most people these days probably just watch Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein and call it good.  I don't blame them, because that movie is great, though that film is a parody of a very specific Frankenstein movie, 1939's Son of Frankenstein, so you're missing out on half the jokes if you haven't at least seen the Karloff films.  And just the tip of the iceberg if we're discussing comedies based on the story, from Abbott and Costello

Meet Frankenstein to Frankenhooker, right up to last year's Lisa Frankenstein.  It's a rich film history based on this one little story a woman wrote on a dare two hundred years ago.

And now, Guillermo del Toro is directing one.  Hook this movie into my veins right fucking now.

Del Toro is one of the most unique monster movie filmmakers to have ever graced this planet, taking the framing device of a strange, violent creature's personal history of tragedy and taking it to its maximum level of sympathetic light, turning the grotesque and strange into something sad and beautiful.  This framing device that he has spent decades mastering is absolutely perfect for the story of Frankenstein, which has always been a story of a monster that was created through the cruelty of the world around him.  My one hesitance about letting him go wild with the story is that this seems to be a passion project for him and, from my experience, I should always be weary of that.  That last time a monster story I cared about was handed to a big director for a "passion project" was Peter Jackson's King Kong, which was a lot of muchness to the point that, while it's technically good, I actually began to find it somewhat obnoxious while watching it.  I don't think there was a movie this year that I was rooting for harder than this movie.  I wanted Del Toro and Frankenstein to be an absolute perfect marriage.

I will settle for imperfection, especially if the experience is this exquisite.  While flawed, Del Toro's Frankenstein is a rousing, haunting, beautiful success that reinforces how much I love this story.

Those expecting a true adaptation of the novel will leave disappointed.  Del Toro took the basic synopsis but spun it in his own web.  I could list numerous differences from the book, a lot of which I don't think are necessarily improvements but are certainly interesting takes on this oft-told material.  To be frank, both James Whale and Terrence Fisher's productions were also loose adaptations and have both gone on to be classics that stand on their own.  I'm perfectly willing to accept Del Toro's movie on its own terms because he has his own sensibilities.  It's clear very early on that Del Toro wants to tell a story where Victor is the clear-cut villain of the movie, while nearly every vicious decision the Monster does in his rage has been excised.  That goes back to Del Toro's tendency to sympathize with the monsters in his movies, wanting to double down on the story being the tragic tale of an abused child who just wanted to be loved.  He also romanticizes the Monster.  Not to the extent that he does in The Shape of Water, but he has a slight romance with Elizabeth that was not on my Bingo card for this movie.  Traditionally, Elizabeth doesn't meet the Monster until her final scene, while in Del Toro's version, she helps care for him while Victor is failing to be patient with him.  I found this romantic idea a little off-putting, if I'm being honest, because Elizabeth and the Monster's early scenes seem maternal, as if Elizabeth is evoking the role of Victor's loving mother from the prologue while Victor is becoming cold and harsh like his own father.  Underlining a romantic undercurrent between the two seems like it's recontextualizing those scenes in a way that hurts the film.

Bringing up both book divergence and Elizabeth, her role in the story is entirely re-written.  I suppose this doesn't matter.  Elizabeth is traditionally something of a generic fretting love interest who meets a fate that furthers Victor's guilt and sorrow, and by completely reinventing her they give her more power and control over the story.  Additionally, Victor's brother William is entirely re-written alongside her, no longer a child that is murdered by the Monster, becoming Elizabeth's fiancée while Victor is too obsessed with his work to get laid.  Victor does become infatuated with Elizabeth, though it proves to be one-sided, making this quite possibly the only adaptation where Elizabeth hates Victor.

Additionally, minor roles like Henry and Justine were eliminated entirely.  Since Del Toro has shed most of the Monster's personal guilty deeds in the story, they really had no role left to play, so I suppose this is understandable.  Justine, in particular, has practically zero relevance on the remodeled story since William's character has been changed so drastically.  One character has been added in their stead, Henrich Harlander, played by Christoph Waltz.  I will be honest, while Waltz is good here, he is a bit underutilized.  Henrich's character mostly exists to be a benefactor for Victor, explaining his resources for the creation of the Monster.  Once his role in story is fulfilled, he is swiftly discarded because there is nothing left for him to do.  There have been similar characters that have filled a sort of "Doctor Pretorius" role for Victor across many adaptations.  Most find ways to keep them relevant until the end of the story.  This version just kind of tosses him in the garbage can.  I did find it kind of funny that his ultimate goal was the same as Ygor's goal in 1942's Ghost of Frankenstein, but that's about the most that I took from the role.  Between that and the weak romance, those are the biggest knocks I have on the movie.

Del Toro is most in his element when the focus of the movie is on the Monster.  When it comes time to tell the creature's tale away from Victor, hidden in the wilderness and befriending a blind man, the movie is touching and breathtaking, with some of the best sequences in any movie this year.  Del Toro's tender touch for the shunned outsider is exquisite and heart-wrenching.  Victor's side of the story feels like it suffers because Del Toro's take on the character is so reviling and Victor is so singular-minded with little connection to any other character that the film can be frustrating to watch, by design.  We're supposed to want to be with the Monster because Victor is the larger evil:  a man of reckless ambition who refused responsibility of his endeavors and what spawned from them.  Also known as a shit father.  Is this movie about daddy issues?  Maybe.  But maybe all Frankenstein stories are about daddy issues.

Since this is a Del Toro production, there are technical details that should go without saying.  The set design is outstanding.  The costumes are gorgeous.  The cinematography is some of the most breathtaking you'll ever see.  Alexandre Desplat's score is a wonderful accompaniment.  As a work of art, the movie is a visual stimulus.

I think the stories of both Dracula and Frankenstein have both achieved this status where every generation deserves their own definitive film adaptations, like a Gothic A Star Is Born.  Ideally, they come in pairs, like in the 1930's, 50's, and 90's, though there doesn't seem like there's a Dracula movie on the horizon anytime soon.  However, we did have Nosferatu last year, which is pretty much just Dracula with all the names scratched out, so we can just count that as this generation's Dracula adaptation to pair with Del Toro's Frankenstein.  This won't be the last Frankenstein movie, and Nosferatu won't be the last Dracula movie.  I look forward to seeing what filmmakers in thirty years time will bring to both these stories.  In the meantime, I'm happy to see my favorite novel brought to life by one of my favorite filmmakers.  But I am fortuitous in that this book has has so many talents that took such an interest in it, from Whale to Fisher and, yes, even Branagh.  Hell, even Ishiro Honda made a Frankenstein movie.  In that one, the Monster fought a giant firebreathing dinosaur.  There's nothing in Del Toro's movie that is as awesome as that, but it's pretty good, I guess.

Last Days

⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Justin Lin

Starring:  Sky Yang, Radhika Apte, Ken Leung, Toby Wallace, Naveen Andrews

Justin Lin wasn't always an action movie director.  He initially made a name for himself with a critically acclaimed crime drama called Better Luck Tomorrow, and he just kinda got cornered by the Fast & Furious franchise for most of his remaining career.  Now he tries to return to his roots with a drama called Last Days, chronicling the true story of John Allen Chau, a mercenary who died trying to bring Christianity to the isolated tribe of North Sentinel islanders.  I have a soft spot for Justin Lin, if for no other reason than I think both Fast & Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond are ridiculously entertaining.  Watching him drown in melodrama with Last Days is really testing that.  Ultimately, Lin is telling an subjective story that's trying to humanize someone who made a series of rash, delusional decisions that cost him his own life.  The story being told is hard to sympathize with, as much as Lin tries to empathize Chau.  The more the movie tries to rationalize him, the worse his choices seem.  Furthermore, ignoring the questionable story, Last Days isn't a very compellingly told drama.  It's dreary and melancholy, also weirdly sentimental at times, as if Lin finds this story inspirational, somehow.  The mishmash tone is odd and off-putting.  But then again, the story is odd and off-putting.  Comparatively, last week we had the movie Urchin, which was a story of someone who was in a self-induced spiral being portrayed through a neutral observer lens.  That was more compelling because the main character was a subject of study that we were to try to understand, not get emotionally connected to.  It's not easy to make a movie based on someone who made terrible life decisions and treat it with full reverence.  Unfortunately, Lin proves that you probably shouldn't.

Regretting You

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Director:  Josh Boone

Starring:  Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald, Clancy Brown

Fuck yeah!  It's a Colleen Hoover novel adaptation!  The last time this happened, everyone involved wound up suing each other and we ended up with hot tabloid goss for an entire year!  By all means, let's do another one!

Thoroughly for Hoover fans and romcom enthusiasts (of which I am neither, but will try to stay as neutral as possible), Regretting You centers on Allison Williams, who finds out her sister and husband were having an affair after they have both been killed in a car accident.  She tries to keep the newfound information from spoiling daughter Mckenna Grace's perfect image of her aunt, who wrestles with the aftermath while finding a relationship blossoming with classmate Mason Thames, who may or may not be with his on-and-off girlfriend (who is never present in the movie, for some weird reason).  Meanwhile, Williams' emotions become even more complicated as she confronts her feelings for her sister's husband, Dave Franco, who is the romantic partner she felt she missed out on.  That's a lot of love triangles for one movie.  I'm sure its core audience is more than satisfied by that.  The very base ambition that the movie shoots for is to turn summer beach reading soap operatics into something housewives cuddle up in a blanket and watch when their husband is working late.  It's not much, but to say it doesn't succeed at that is a filthy lie.  If I can say anything about this movie, it would be that it's a more even production than last year's It Ends with Us.  Regretting You has (mostly) better acting and some of its levity is more than welcome.  Williams and Grace by themselves have more charisma than anybody in It Ends with Us, if I'm laying all cards on the table.  I watched the movie just fine and didn't hate it, even if I'll be more than okay with never watching it again.  There are certainly things in the movie that don't work.  The CGI de-aging is horrifically smooth in the flashbacks and everyone looks like a doll.  Mason Thames' character often reacts to situations that don't seem like default human reactions.  Dave Franco struggles hard to deliver his melodrama with any believability.  Hell, there's even a running joke with a "city limits" sign that is just dumb.  It's certainly a jumbled movie of ups and downs.  It was made for very specific people and the question is whether or not it's a quality option for them.  The answer is that quality was likely never on the menu, but that doesn't mean it won't get the job done.

Shelby Oaks

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Chris Stuckmann

Starring:  Camille Sullivan

Shelby Oaks is the long-awaited film debut of popular YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann.  Unfortunately for Stuckmann, it's not the first horror movie by a YouTuber we've seen this year.  Hell, it's not even the second.  Not only did KallMeKris make her directorial debut with House on Eden a few months ago, we also saw the guys from RackaRacka continue their dynamite horror career with their second movie, Bring Her Back.  Consider Stuckmann's thunder officially stolen.  But Stuckmann is actually one of the least toxic, most digestable voices in the compost heap that is YouTube film discussion, and he is a noted horror film buff with some wordy, specific, and sometimes stubbornly biased and opinionated ideas of what makes a quality horror movie that he has repeated over the years.  Shelby Oaks is his chance to prove he knows what he's talking about.  After all, House on Eden was a horror movie made by a couple of people who were fucking around and just made a goofy homage movie.  Stuckmann wants Shelby Oaks to be the first step of a long-term career shift.  All I'll say is that anyone who loves M. Night Shyamalan as much as he does is someone I probably will never see eye-to-eye with on what constitutes "good horror filmmaking," but I'll hear him out.  All I need to do is enter the theater and "Get Stuckmann-ized," whatever the fuck that means.

Maybe getting "Stuckmann-ized" is being befuddled and a little bored.  If it is, I am thoroughly Stuckmann-ized right now.

Shelby Oaks starts out similarly to another horror film from a few months ago called Strange Harvest, where it seems to be setting up a documentary format of collected found footage, chronicling a group of paranormal investigator YouTubers who went missing.  This is a mislead, because it eventually cuts off as new footage is uncovered that sends the sister of one of them trying to follow the trail and find out what happened.  If I were to be frank, the premise of this movie feels like Stuckmann trying to do the sequel to The Blair Witch Project that Adam Wingard thought he was making in 2016, with family members following the lead of the infamous found footage and entering into the horror themselves.  This is also kinda what happens in Book of Shadows:  Blair Witch 2 where it's a bunch of kids who saw the movie and go where it took place where spooky shit happens.  Stuckmann takes this idea that Blair Witch has been struggling with and strips it down and tries to personalize it with a single main protagonist, which is very efficient of him.  Everything else he does doesn't live up to the same efficiency.

Stuckmann has a very clear idea in his head of what he wants certain visuals to look like, so much so that it feels like he cares little for what strings them together.  Occasionally, he'll offer a shot that feels striking in a vacuum but, within the context of the movie, there is so much mundanity about how we got to this visual that it loses all effectiveness.  Writing seems a very low secondary to directing here, which is a problem if you're both the writer and the director.  So much of this movie rides on star Camille Sullivan's shoulders because we're solely focused on her but when it comes to actually giving her a character, all we really have to go on is a motive.  Otherwise, the only thing Stuckmann asks Sullivan to do is look into darkness and do shuddered breathing noises.  Stuckmann really loves shots of her looking at the camera and doing shuddered breathing noises.  It starts to feel like a fetish at some point.  And she's the most fleshed-out character.  Everyone else, and I mean everyone, is just a person for her to have a slight, melancholy exchange with for some exposition.  Her husband comes off the worst because he doesn't do anything in this movie except to sit in place with a grimace that makes him look like he has soiled himself.  He's a fucking NPC in a goddamn movie and, I gotta be honest, that's kind of unforgivable.  If your writing is so barren that you're including non-characters like this that are supposed to be an important part of your protagonist's life, you need a new draft.

This isn't even getting to the mystery that unfolds, which is just not anything worth watching.  Sullivan finds locations on her tape and she travels to them, where she stands in place and stares into darkness.  This isn't a properly functioning narrative.  Sullivan just stumbles into new settings and, instead of finding anything new, it feels like she encounters the same shit:  a void of darkness for her to shudder into, a pair of sparkly demon eyes, and sometimes a CGI wolf, for some reason.  The experience of the story of this movie is that of a free demo horror game on Steam where it's just the player wandering around in the woods with a flashlight waiting for Slender Man to pop out and stare at them.

Then there is the finale, which Stuckmann seems to be getting the most flack for.  Honestly, I think the movie has bigger problems than this but it is a bit underwhelming.  Shelby Oaks seemingly wants to end both ambiguously and with finality at the same time.  If nothing else, I admire that the movie wants to bring about closure to its narrative with a dreadful openness to the bigger picture, not unlike The Omen.  I think the problem is that there is such a vagueness still hanging over to what is actually happening that certain plot threads don't feel paid off and the movie almost seems in a panic as to what to conclude and what to leave up in the air.  It feels clunky and you almost wish the movie would just stop for a second, take a breath, and regroup, think this shit out.  Instead, it just jumps out of a window and screams on the way down.  Both figuratively and literally.

These are all the functional flaws that were bothering me about this movie.  I could do a deep dive on nit-picks of certain little touches that make the movie feel artificial and lifeless.  To be honest, I already feel like I've spent way too much time thinking about this movie and I could be talking about Frankenstein some more instead.  I'm just going to throw my hands up and say "Didn't like it."  The sad truth is that of all the horror movies made by YouTubers this year, even though we can all agree that Bring Her Back was easily the best (even Stuckmann is probably nodding his head), I might have actually enjoyed House on Eden more than Shelby Oaks.  Shelby Oaks takes more swings but, as little ambition as House on Eden had, it barely met its low goals.  Shelby Oaks is a lot of high hopes for shooting in the dark.

Stuckmann has a loyal following that has already generated a decent amount of homebrew hype around the movie, to the point that even the lukewarm reviews seem to be trying to declare him an "exciting new voice in horror" even if they didn't care for the movie.  I have a hard time believing this would be the case if he weren't already an internet petsonality.  I have nothing against Stuckmann but it's more productive to not kiss his ass and tell him my genuine thoughts about the movie he made.  And, frankly, Shelby Oaks is the same type of horror film I've seen from many directors who cut their teeth on the genre and disappear into the night without making an impact.  And I don't want to say this because I was genuinely hoping this movie would work out for him.  It seemed like it would have been a nice, inspiring end to his unique personal journey.  But I've seen Stuckmann videos where he has savaged movies for making less than half the mistakes he makes here, and I want to chalk this up to amateur status but that makes it sound like has learned nothing from the film criticism he has performed for over a decade.  I am honestly shocked that this specific journey resulted in this specific movie.  The more I think about Stuckmann's journey to this point, the more it seems like the lesson to be taken from it is that it's easy to criticize art but it's hard to make it.  That's not me being a shit, that's just me trying to wrap my head around how this movie exists as it is coming from this specific artist.  If anything, I sympathize with it as someone who dabs in writing and also puts my thoughts of films onto the internet.

Here's the thing, though:  as belittling as all of this might sound, Stuckmann did take the leap, got his movie funded, and made it.  He is now a director, and a negative response to his first movie isn't going to change that.  What I want right now is to see him make another one and change my mind.  I hope he does.

Springsteen:  Deliver Me from Nowhere

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Scott Cooper

Starring:  Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young

Oh boy.  It's time for the annual award season biopic based on a musician.  Couldn't we just pretend Blue Moon was it?  But I guess we need this year's Oscar nominee for cowards, where someone like Timothée Chalamet straps a guitar to his back and puts on a forced voice so assholes in their seventies stand up and cheer "BRILLIANT!"

Yes, I have a chip on my shoulder about nothing performances like that pushing out actual resonating performers every year.  I will die on this hill.

I'm going to do the same song and dance I do every time a biopic like this comes out.  I don't know music.  I've heard the name Bruce Springsteen, but I don't know nor care what songs I've heard that he has written and/or performed, so I'm not familiar with any of this.  The chosen one for this biopic that is hoping for Oscar contention is Jeremy Allen White, who most everybody knows from The Bear.  I love The Bear and quite like Allen White.  While he plays Springsteen with intensity, I don't think there is enough here for anybody to take notice of him.  He commits to the film but he very much just looks like Carmy from The Bear in Springsteen cosplay.  But overall, the acting is good, but the story feels fragmented.  I never felt like I was witnessing a whole movie, just flash cards with pictures on them being drawn and set on a table.  The movie will depict one thing, then forget about it for a while with no clear fluidity of how its relevant, then switch to something entirely different and do the same thing.  The connective tissue is Springsteen struggling through a creative process, which is an okay throughline but also creatively frustrating itself.  The major theme is Springsteen sinking into depression, letting it affect his work and relationships, intermixed with slight flashbacks of a drunk father which feel like they could have come from any movie.  The film's final message is "Men need therapy."  I don't disagree.  Maybe some Springsteen fans need therapy.  I hope this movie helps them with that.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

After the Hunt ⭐️⭐️

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Corpse Bride ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Boy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Long Walk ⭐️⭐️⭐️

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Pets on a Train ⭐️⭐️

Roofman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Truth & Treason ⭐️⭐️1/2

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Afterburn ⭐️⭐️1/2

Dead of Winter ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Boy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Long Walk ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Roses ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Eddington ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!