Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 2 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Better Man

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Comedy, Musical

Director:  Michael Gracey

Starring:  Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Damon Herriman, Raechelle Banno, Alison Steadman, Kate Mulvany

A biopic where APES EVOLVE FROM MEN?!?!?!?!?

2024 was the year for unconventional musician biopics, probably.  I didn't get that memo, but here we are.  Look, the Lego one I get, because it works as a playful metaphor for lifelong, outside-the-box creativity.  I'm not sure I understand why Robbie Williams wants his biopic to be about a CGI ape, unless he just wants to blow out the budget for the sake of eccentricity.  Thematically, maybe he's saying he's "a dancing monkey," I think?  The closest they come to actually justifying it in the movie itself is when a character calls him "a fucking animal," otherwise we're just asked to roll with it.  To be fair, it's pretty funny to just make your lead a chimpanzee for no other reason than "because we can," so what really can I judge about it?

Anyway, Better Man is a biopic about Robbie Williams, where Robbie Williams plays himself as a CGI primate.  I don't know shit about Robbie Williams, I probably heard the "nahnahnahnaaaaaaah" song before (whatever the fuck it's called), but, other than that, I have little context for who this wanker is.  The film feels like it's intended to be a metaphorical relation of the whirlwind of fame through the lense of drugs and depression, told halfway through a fever dream.  In that respect, the movie is a success, even though its successes are minimal and at war with its eccentricity for the movie's heart.  But considering how much a disaster the movie is in danger of being at any given moment, the fact that it does anything with success is pretty impressive.  The film's style does relate an old hat tale of a troubled celebrity drowning sorrows with substance and sex, and without its florishes there would be very little about this movie to comment on.  I guess I should commend the film for finding a slick way to dress it up.

Den of Thieves:  Pantera

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Crime, Action

Director:  Christian Gudeghast

Starring:  Gerard Butler, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Evin Ahmed, Salvatore Esposito, Meadow Williams, Swen Temmel

I've never seen Den of Thieves.  Is it any good?  Because this one wasn't.  Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr. are back as their popular characters of...um...the guys from Den of Thieves.  This time instead of being wherever they were in the first one and doing whatever they were doing, they're now in France doing a heist for diamonds.  Jackson's character is okay with Butler being a cop and joining their caper because reasons.  There are probably some dynamics I'm missing from the first film, but I'm not too interested in seeing what they were because I was pretty bored throughout this movie and am not keen to repeat that experience.  The thing about heist movies is that they take forever to get to an actual event, and in the meantime they try to keep you hooked with charisma.  Den of Thieves 2 substitutes charisma with it's own grizzled, self-serious melodrama and expects the same result.  It just feels like a brick wall of machismo grunting, which is probably what Gerard Butler does best, so at least he knows what his range is.  To be fair, the heist sequence is the highlight of the movie.  It's slick, clever, and has good tension.  The rest of the movie anchors it down, so I'm not sure I can recommend it based on that alone.  Den of Thieves fans might like it, though.

The Last Showgirl

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Gia Coppola

Starring:  Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd, Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka

I'm trying to think about whether or not I've ever actually seen anything starring Pamela Anderson.  Obviously I know who she is, because I hit puberty in the 90s, but I don't think I've ever sat down and watched anything with her in it.  I've seen the occasional episode of Baywatch, but that was mostly because my dad would stop on it every once in a while.  I saw enough of it to know that despite the female forms on display, it wasn't really my cup of tea.  Looking down her filmography list, it looks like my only context for her entire career was a small role in Scary Movie 3 and a few episodes of the Spike TV animated series Stripperella, which I watched hoping for a good laugh, but, like the rest of their animated comedy line-up, it was trash.  I also saw her in King of the Hill and Saturday Night Live, probably.  So, I'm more familiar with Pamela Anderson the "image" and not Pamela Anderson the actress.  If The Last Showgirl's argument sunk in correctly, I probably wasn't the only one.  It always seemed to me like Anderson was someone who wasn't really taken seriously, but people paid attention to because of the size of her bust, and she disappeared because she got older and younger boobs were thrust into the spotlight.  It's a really shitty thing for a person to go through, and The Last Showgirl is here to hammer that message home.  I wish it had done so better.

Anderson plays a woman in her fifties who still performs as a member of a Las Vegas Berlesque act called La Razzle Dazzle, only to struggle to move on when she hears it's closing down.  Also, she has a strained relationship with her daughter because she spent so much time being a showgirl and not enough being a mom, maybe.  Anderson is pretty well cast here, though I'm less likely to give her awards hype for this performance, but I'm going to admit that I'm not in love with her role mostly because I'm not in love with the screenplay.  It's cool that Anderson got a late-stage art film role that turned some heads.  And the "Former sex symbol struggles with generational shift leaving her behind" story seems personal for her, I just wish they had made it less monotonous.  The movie is less a substantive look as its theme and more of a story of a self-centered woman in her fifties having a nervous breakdown.  The character's thoughts and feelings are probably very justifiable, but there is little in the story that explores them in an open way.  She glows about her glamor, admires beauty, but usually when reality comes knocking, she often avoids it.  That last aspect of the story needs to be explored more, because when it pops up, it doesn't go anywhere.  There's a scene halfway through the film where one of her fellow dancers, played by Kiernan Shipka, visits her in the middle of a personal crisis and Anderson's character turns her away because she's too absorbed in her own crisis.  It feels like, as presented, this should be an important point in the story's emotional core, but it's kind of brushed off as the film continues.  Little things like this often present themselves in the story, but the film deflates them as it reverts back to its primary point:  the unfair treatment of women as they age.  I agree that treatment sucks, but I also think a film should be a more rounded package than this.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Babygirl ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Complete Unknown ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Count of Monte Cristo ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Damned ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Homestead ⭐️

Kraven the Hunter ⭐️

The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim ⭐️⭐️

Moana 2 ⭐️⭐️

Mufasa:  The Lion King ⭐️⭐️1/2

Nosferatu ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Saturday Night ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

We Live in Time ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 1 (My Cinema Playground

Multiplex Madness

The Count of Monte Cristo

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Adventure, Thriller

Director:  Matthieu Delaporte, Alexandre de La Patellière

Starring:  Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillon, Anaïs Demoustier, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte

There are dozens of adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo, the most recent of which being a Disney production from twenty years ago from the director of Waterworld starring Guy Pearce, Richard Harris, a very young Henry Cavill, and famed jerkass Jim Caviezel in the title role.  You might ponder if we need another one, but this latest adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's famed revenge thriller comes straight from Dumas's homeland of France itself, which gives it just that much more authenticity.  The story is, of course, that of a man imprisoned for many years, escaping only to discover that his fiancèe has moved on by marrying the man who betrayed him.  He then spends even more time plotting and elaborate revenge scheme to make those who wronged him suffer.

The Count of Monte Cristo seems to be a call for a return to swashbuckling period adventures.  The last attempt I vividly recall here in the States that wasn't a Johnny Depp led pirate movie being fellow Dumas adaptation The Three Musketeers, directed by kinetic bad movie autuer Paul W.S. Anderson, who is probably the last person who should make one of these movies.  If Anderson's Musketeers movie was an argument that they should die, then Monte Cristo is an argument that they should be reborn, showcasing that we can make them today with more grandeur than ever before.  This film is as large, sweeping, and adventurous as one would hope for in a Dumas adaptation.  It's a beautifully detailed epic made with passion.  The film is so grandiose and stunning that it's scope will dazzle while the performances will captivate, making this daunting three-hour adventure one to relish in.  It's certainly a case where a film's runtime is not an issue, as it allows us to bathe in the film's beauty while the story never stagnates.  The film is constantly in motion, with the only quibble being that it begins to creak toward the middle as the film begins to run out of time for its elaborate setup and begins to rush with time jumps.  I probably wouldn't have been against the movie being even longer if it meant smoothing out these rough edges, but it's an excellent tale told with power in spite of this.  For those who miss the classical period sagas of yesteryear, the film is a must-see that will scratch an itch they've probably had for decades.  I'm actually impressed at my theater for carrying this.  Normally I don't see this much of a banger on the first week of January.

The Damned

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Thordour Palsson

Starring:  Odessa Young, Joe Cole, Siobhan Finneran, Rory McCann, Turlough Convery, Lewis Gribben, Francis Magee, Mícheál Óg Lane

You know, this is the second time in as many weeks that I've gone to a dramatic horror film that had a parade of walkouts and some dude falling asleep, loudly snoring throughout.  The same thing happened when I went to see Nosferatu last week.  But at least the guy who went to slumberland this time had the decency to do it halfway through, while sleepyhead at Nosferatu didn't last five minutes.  Meanwhile, the walkouts were less patient here, lasting a half hour rather than ninty minutes.  I bring this up because this should give you an idea of what type of horror film The Damned is, because while it's very good, it won't be in everyone's wheelhouse.  The Damned is one of those horror movies that is more about mood than scares, which means horror filmmakers will love it for its craftsmanship and horror fanatics will probably hate it because it doesn't go hard enough.  The film's story takes place at a 19th century fishing outpost in the Arctic.  The residents witness a ship sink off the coast, but choose not to assist as to not strain their resources.  Soon they begin being seeing haunting images of vengeful spirits, who they believe have come to punish them.  The film uses its horror metaphorically, showcasing the concept of "haunting" clashing between literally and figuratively, while stringing the audience along to guess as to which one is really at play.  It's a film about the guilt of making a hard choice when a result can lead to suffering.  Those seeking adequate BOO-factor from their ghost stories won't find it here, though the ghost scenes the movie does provide are excellently crafted and well-photographed.  I feel the movie could have raised its tension to allow for some balance with the psychological drama, but I find myself not being able to complain too hard when the movie is this handsome.  But I might have been tempted to rewatch it, otherwise.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Babygirl ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Complete Unknown ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Fire Inside ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Homestead ⭐️

Kraven the Hunter ⭐️

The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim ⭐️⭐️

Moana 2 ⭐️⭐️

Mufasa:  The Lion King ⭐️⭐️1/2

Nosferatu ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Streaming

The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim ⭐️⭐️

A Real Pain ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

2024 Cinema Playground Journal Archive (My Cinema Playground)

Week 1 (Night Swim, Some Other Woman, Weak Layers)

Week 2 (American Fiction, Destroy All Neighbors, Role Play)

Week 3 (The Beekeeper, The Book of Clarence, Cult Killer, Founder's Day, Freud's Last Sesson, I.S.S., Mean Girls, All of Us Strangers)

Week 4 (Godzilla Minus One (Minus Color), Miller's Girl, Suitable Flesh)

Week 5 (Argylle, Fitting In, Scrambled, The Zone of Interest, The Eternal Memory, Rustin, Society of the Snow)

Week 6 (Lisa Frankenstein, Out of Darkness, The Teachers' Lounge, The Monk and the Gun, Skeletons in the Closet, May December)

Week 7 (Bob Marley:  One Love, Land of Bad, Madame Web, The Taste of Things, 20 Days in Mariupol, Oscar Nominated Shorts)

Week 8 (Drive-Away Dolls, Ordinary Angels, Seagrass, The Stolen Valley, Stopmotion)

Week 9 (Dune:  Part Two, The Promised Land)

Week 10 (Accidental Texan, Cabrini, Imaginary, Kung Fu Panda 4, The Peasants, Perfect Days)

Week 11 (The American Society of Magical Negroes, Arthur the King, Knox Goes Away, Love Lies Bleeding, The Prank, Snack Shack, Thorns, Uproar, Driving Madeleine, One Life)

Week 12 (Ghostbusters:  Frozen Empire, Immaculate, Late Night with the Devil, Problemista, Road House)

Week 13 (Asphalt City, Godzilla x Kong:  The New Empire, In the Land of Saints and Sinners, Shayda)

Week 14 (The First Omen, Monkey Man, Wicked Little Letters, Io Capitano)

Week 15 (Arcadian, Civil War, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, La Chimera, The Long Game, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Sting)

Week 16 (Abigail, Hard Miles, Sasquatch Sunset, Villains Inc., Housekeeping for Beginners, Rebel Moon:  Part Two - The Scargiver)

Week 17 (Boy Kills World, Challengers, Unsung Hero, We Grown Now)

Week 18 (The Fall Guy, Mars Express, Tarot, Limbo)

Week 19 (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Not Another Church Movie, Poolman)

Week 20 (Back to Black, I Saw the TV Glow, IF, The Strangers:  Chapter 1, Wildcat)

Week 21 (Babes, Furiosa:  A Mad Max Saga, The Garfield Movie, Sight)

Week 22 (The Dead Don't Hurt, Ezra, In a Violent Nature, Summer Camp, Young Woman and the Sea)

Week 23 (Bad Boys:  Ride or Die, The Watchers, Hit Man, Under Paris)

Week 24 (Inside Out 2, Latency, Tuesday, Treasure)

Week 25 (The Bikeriders, The Exorcism, Thelma)

Week 26 (Daddio, Horizon:  An American Saga - Chapter I, Janet Planet, Kinds of Kindness, A Quiet Place:  Day One, A Sacrifice)

Week 27 (Despicable Me 4, Fly Me to the Moon, MaXXXine, Beverly Hills Cop:  Axel F)

Week 28 (Dandelion, Longlegs, Robot Dreams)

Week 29 (Oddity, Twisters)

Week 30 (Deadpool & Wolverine, The Fabulous Four)

Week 31 (Coup!, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Kneecap, Peak Season, Trap)

Week 32 (Borderlands, Cuckoo, It Ends with Us,The Last Front)

Week 33 (Alien:  Romulus, My Penguin Friend, Skincare)

Week 34 (Between the Temples, Blink Twice, The Crow, Strange Darling)

Week 35 (1992, Across the River and into the Trees, AfrAId, City of Dreams, Good One, Reagan, Slingshot, You Gotta Believe)

Week 36 (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Front Room, I'll Be Right There, Red Rooms, The Thicket)

Week 37 (The 4:30 Movie, The Critic, The Killer's Game, Speak No Evil, Transformers One)

Week 38 (A Mistake, Never Let Go, The Shade, The Substance, Super/Man:  The Christopher Reeve Story)

Week 39 (Azrael, Bagman, Lee, Megalopolis, My Old Ass, Notice to Quit, The Wild Robot)

Week 40 (Blink, A Different Man, Joker:  Folie a Deux, Monster Summer, White Bird, Salem's Lot, V/H/S/Beyond)

Week 41 (The Apprentice, Piece by Piece, Saturday Night, Terrifier 3)

Week 42 (Goodrich, Rumours, Smile 2, We Live in Time)

Week 43 (Conclave, The Line, Venom:  The Last Dance, Your Monster, Don't Move, Woman of the Hour)

Week 44 (Absolution, Here, Hitpig, Lost on a Mountain in Maine, Time Cut)

Week 45 (Anora, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, Elevation, Heretic, Meanwhile on Earth, Small Things like These, Weekend in Taipei)

Week 46 (Bird, A Real Pain, Red One)

Week 47 (Bonhoeffer, Gladiator II, Wicked Part I)

Week 48 (Moana 2, Dear Santa)

Week 49 (Werewolves, Y2K)

Week 50 (Kraven the Hunter, The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim, Queer)

Week 51 (Homestead, Mufasa:  The Lion King, Sonic the Hedgehog 3)

Week 52 (Babygirl, Bloody Axe Wound, A Complete Unkown, The Fire Inside, Nosferatu)

Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 52 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Babygirl

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Helina Reijn

Starring:  Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas

Just in case you've seen Eyes Wide Shut and felt Nicole Kidman didn't have enough orgasms in that movie, here is Babygirl to fill that void (her void? Pretend I said something adequately dirty).  Babygirl sees Kidman as a big business lady who secretly lusts for a submissive sexual relationship, which takes form in an affair with a younger man who begins to dominate her life in more ways than just the bedroom.  It's a bunch of steamy stuff, probably more ingrained with the mentality of such a relationship than the much more popular Fifty Shades movies.  Babygirl is a movie about control, both living a life full of it and flirting with the excitement of losing it.  The movie is well-made and well-played with all of this, though I confess I didn't find it very interesting, even if coming up with sex puns to describe it is my jam.  Kidman has been in the Oscar conversation for this role, but I'm not sold on her getting an Oscar for showing the camera her o-face.  Antonio Banderas probably deserves one for taking a role that implies he's bad at sex and completely selling it, though.  That's fucking acting, right there.

Bloody Axe Wound

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Matthew John Lawrence

Starring:  Sari Arambulo, Billy Burke, Molly Brown, Eddie Leavy, Jeffery Dean Morgan

This future Shudder release hits theaters for the holidays, just in case seeing Nosferatu on Christmas Day wasn't enough to satisfy one's bloodlust, and a bloodlust is certainly what we all have after holiday family gathering.  Bloody Axe Wound tells the story of Abbie, the daughter of slasher killer Bladecut, who wants nothing more than to take over the business of killing teenagers and selling their murder sprees on VHS.  When she finally gets her chance, she struggles to follow through as she befriends her would-be victims.  The premise of this movie makes no sense for a variety of reasons, not the least being that even if real life murder for home video entertainment were an actual business strategy (and people wouldn't just move away and avoid the towns with death video stores), there is never anyone present to catch any of the killing sprees on film, which leaves every copy of these bloodbath videos a presentation of some cosmic force.  The movie is largely metaphorical in this aspect, satirizing the popularity of slasher movies by mocking the consumption of depravity for kicks, though it does it with an inanity that's hard to shake.  Behind the Mask:  The Rise of Leslie Vernon this is not.  But while the movie's satire can be senseless, it's tone is infectious.  The film is often very funny, fusing its horror parody with an outsider coming-of-age comedy with more impactful moments than you'd might expect.  This half of the movie presents itself with a story of generational difference, being about a girl who is living in a world of expectation from her family line, wishing to honor that, but eventually discovering that isn't who she is, bringing another metaphor of being brought up in a conservative lifestyle and discovering your liberal center.  At it's core, Bloody Axe Wound is about a person who comes to the realization that they are "a little different" (the movie's LGBTQ love story hammers this home) and coming to terms with what that means for them.  If the film weren't such a wrestling match between what does work and what doesn't, I'd think higher of it.  As it is, it's a good time for horror lovers who want something unserious that's just a hoot and a half.

A Complete Unknown

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  James Mangold

Starring:  Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Folger, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy

Speaking as someone who doesn't follow music, barely knows anything about Bob Dylan, and doesn't really give a shit about him either, I wasn't looking forward to A Complete Unknown.  The trailers looked like an Oscar bait performance showcase that is just an actor changing his voice and getting into bland melodrama interactions like "I just wish they'd let me be."/"Be what?"/"Whatever it is they don't want me to be."  I knew the movie was probably going to be better than the trailer, which was predictably formatted for a base mass appeal, but seeing this movie on my list for this week did give me something of a headache.  I enjoyed it, in case you can't tell.

Timothée Chalamet gives this movie's Oscar-baity performance, vocally-graveling his way through the film as influential musician Bob Dylan, who struggles with maintaining a monogamous relationship with a normal girlfriend while also wishing to break free of his folk music background and form the music he wishes to make.  The movie is an argument for artistic freedom of expression fighting outside perception and expectation.  It often shows that through Dylan working both withing the grain when he's vibing with it and against it when it doesn't suit him, sometimes coming off as a bit of a dick in the process.  It's funny to think that the movie's climax is almost the opposite of Bohemian Rhapsody, which ended on the note of the band Queen bringing the house down with its most legendary performance.  A Complete Unknown sees Dylan doing something similar, but gets heckled and booed, because it's primarily an audience that doesn't want "that new shit."  That doesn't matter to Dylan, because he sang the music he wanted to sing, expressing his individuality.  A Complete Unknown sometimes struggles with its own individuality in telling a tale of individuality, while coming off as a good enough story of Timothée Chalamet doing a Bob Dylan voice.  There are interesting thematic works at play at times, though the film's time jumps sometimes act like a skipping record.  It's a lot of life story for two-and-a-half hours, centering on someone who doesn't really want to let you into his psyche.  It sometimes gets in its own way because of that, but it's still a worthwhile watch in spite of it.

The Fire Inside

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  Rachel Morrison

Starring:  Ryan Destiny, Brian Tyree Henry

The most interesting elements of The Fire Inside are kept out of the trailers, which sell it primarily as a grounded inspirational sports biopic.  That's only half the movie, because the film is more about what happens when a goal is achieved and the achievement doesn't live up to one's expectations.  Telling the true story of Claressa "T-Rex" Shields, as she rises from obscurity to win the Gold medal for Women's Boxing at the 2012 Olympics.  That portion of the narrative is a bit basic, if well-filmed.  Where the film goes from there sets it apart, as it tells a story of disillusionment as we have a woman who worked hard to achieve something inspirational, but finds herself in an environment where it matters very little.  Shields finds herself a victim of capitalism and advertisement politics, because while she is a well-known figure, she lacks the feminine sex appeal while being in an un-ladylike profession.  The film goes on a spiral to show her struggles despite the perception of being a winner, and it does so with enough power to stand out from similar tales.  It's a shame that it does struggle to fully grab attention until it hits that mark, but that's of no fault of stars Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry, nor director Rachel Morrison.  Everyone brings their A-game to a project that clearly wants its message to be heard.

Nosferatu

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Robert Eggers

Starring:  Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Holt, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe

I firmly believe we could use a modern Dracula adaptation that goes hard.  We've had recent gimmick films, like Dracula Untold, Renfield, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Abigail, but not a true, full-blooded Dracula adaptation.  The last time cinema recieved that was when Francis Ford Coppola did one in the 90's, which went pretty hard itself.  Robert Eggers most certainly seemed like the man who could do another one, but he went for a remake of Nosferatu instead, which is a total Robert Eggers thing to do.  For those who don't speak cinephile historian, Nosferatu:  A Symphany of Horror is quite possibly the most widely praised horror film of the 1920's, but it was also blatant plagiarism.  The film is pretty much a carbon copy of Bram Stoker's iconic novel Dracula, and it was treated as such by the Stoker estate, which tried to ban the film and even have every print destroyed.  But life finds a way, and the film survived, even as many other films of its period disappeared entirely.  The world benefited from that, because the film is a stunning work, as it became the definition of German expressionism and an inspiration to countless filmmakers, from Tim Burton to Guillermo del Toro.  Robert Eggers is also one of those filmmakers, and just looking at a film like The Witch would make any horror enthusiest drool at the idea of this man's style fusing with that of original film director F.W. Murnau.  The final film is a mixed blessing, but what we recieve makes those who believed smile with content knowing that they were right to want this.

This is, of course, the Dracula tale through the Nosferatu lens.  Nicholas Holt is a real estate agent who is selling a nearby residence to secret vampire Bill Skarsgård, who becomes infatuated with Holt's wife, Lily-Rose Depp.  Skarsgård is the most interesting casting here, as horror fans would know him best for his role as Pennywise in the It films.  A lesser filmmaker would have had Skarsgård's Count Orlok just be Pennywise, but bald with pointy ears.  Eggers never takes the easy way out though, choosing to give Orlok a bit of a design overhaul, reimagining him to look less like a rat-man and more like what an era-appropriate nobleman turned undead corpse might look like.  One might wish for something a bit more recognizable in Orlok's design, but Eggers compromises with little details that make his silhouette look like traditional Orlok, including the pointy fingernails and chewed up ears that make them look pointy.  The use of Orlok is bolder than the design, as he spends most of the first half, in shadow and out-of-focus, making his presence more imposing than his figure.  And when Orlok is let loose, Eggers is as relentless as you'd expect, with no boundaries to what the horror will affect and what the film is willing to show.

The issue that Nosferatu bumps into is an issue Eggers has always struggled with, and it's that his eagerness for theatricality sometimes causes the tension to stumble.  In some ways, watching Nosferatu is like watching a touring play production of Dracula from the 1930's.  Everyone speaks large with towering mounds of dialogue and the film is heavily staged.  It looks damn good doing it, but some will be turned off by the film's flair for the dramatic.  Eggers also tries to beef up the film by adding to the attraction between Orlok and Lily-Rose Depp's character in a romance that deviates from the traditional Dracula/Mina romance in an attempt to be its own thing.  It's needless and senseless, leaving a slight shitty aftertaste to it.  It's all an attempt to make this version of Nosferatu a film with a lot of grandeur, but not all stories need such a heavy, overthought approach.  The original Nosferatu works wonders within its simplicity via its pantomime and stunning cinematography.  More show and less tell is probably the lesson from this.  However, I will say that cinema is just that richer a place that Eggers got to make his version of this movie, with his distinctive elegant photography of the sickening and the brutal.  I'm very happy I got to see this movie, because the best aspects are exactly what I wanted it to be.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Homestead ⭐️

Kraven the Hunter ⭐️

The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim ⭐️⭐️

Moana 2 ⭐️⭐️

Mufasa:  The Lion King ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Conclave ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Werewolves ⭐️⭐️1/2

Y2K ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 51 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Homestead

⭐️

Genre:  Thriller, Faith

Director:  Ben Smallbone

Starring:  Neil McDonough, Dawn Olivieri, Susan Misner, Jesse Hutch, Bailey Chase

Angel Studios barely knows how to make faith dramas.  The fact that they also seem to think they know how to make apocalyptic thrillers is honestly really funny.  The last time I saw something comparable from them was last year's multiverse sci-fi The Shift, also starring Neil McDonough.  That did not encourage me to think they should try genre-pushing again.  Homestead is apparently based on a book series called Black Autumn, so maybe Angel is hoping for their own dystopian franchise.  I sincerely hope the books are better than this.

Homestead takes place in the aftermath of some sort of attack on America that...did...things...?  Exactly what happened is kept extremely vague.  The only thing that we directly see is that a boat off the coast explodes and some sort of toxin is released into the air.  After that, the sky turns orange and the power grid goes out.  Apparently, the power thing was something separate, I don't know, but we are delivered exposition clumsily through a family who doesn't know what's going on, but somehow knows exactly what to do in this specific situation as they run to the car screaming "Just don't breathe the air!" (Hint: Your not calming your kids down in a crisis if your survival tip is "Just don't breathe.").  They then load up into a car and hit a button on the dash, as the car's computer says "Bioweapon Defense Mode Activated."  Is this standard issue?  Can all cars do this nowadays?  Am I screwed because I own a used car from twenty years ago?  Seriously, we're not even five minutes into this movie and I've already completely given up on it.  But long-story-short, they travel to Neil McDonough's ranch house, which acts as a safe haven for select families.  But he has to pick and choose who he lets in, while others sit outside the fence and look like lost puppies looking for a home.  It's like watching a stripped down episode of The Walking Dead that's refocusing to appeal to an audience that wants movies to be much fluffier, with more praying and less flesh-eating.

It's not that hard to decipher what the movie wants to do.  It seems like the people making this film want to make a story of community, environmental care, and independence from technology.  Whether or not they understand how much they garbled those messages in static is unknown to me.  It's commentary on crisis desperation is hollow and surface-level, never exploring what it's trying to portray, as all extras come off as mindless wandering NPCs rather than human beings.  The one point the movie threatens to become interesting is when the group is pressured to become more militant to protect what they have and a teenage boy shoots an innocent man, causing him to be overwhelmed with guilt.  The boy's love interest helps share his pain by telling the guilt of having a heart transplant, saying "He died so I can live."  Yeah...um...this isn't the same thing.  Heart transplants aren't taken from randos who are forced onto a table and have their vital organs taken (unless her parents went through the black market for that heart, and if they did, I have questions), they're given by people who died in something totally unreleated and willingly signed off on being an organ donor.  That's about the level of awareness this movie has.  The entire movie is written in this gobsmackingly stupid drone, right down to a climax firefight that happens because some government guy wants guns or taxes or some shit and sicks a police S.W.A.T. team on the ranch, who likely have better things to do during an apocalypse than this.  The movie then swings for the fences with it's faith ending, where the movie clearly thinks it has passed on some sort of powerful message of life.  The only message it succeeds in getting across is how to grift money out of an easy mark of an audience.

Mufasa:  The Lion King

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Adventure, Musical

Director:  Barry Jenkins

Starring:  Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Seth Rogan, Billy Eichner, Tiffany's Boone, Donald Glover, Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, Anika Noni Rose, Blue Ivy Carter, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

The Circle of Life continues, as should be!  It's not a surprise that we have another Lion King movie.  It always seemed inevitable.  In fact, it's actually surprising that there have only been three theatrical Lion King movies made in the last thirty years, as the rest have been direct to video (or television).  It was a bit of a questionable legacy to what is probably one of the greatest animated films of all time (some might even consider it the greatest), but maybe less is more.  I hardly remember the live action remake, anyway.  I know I've seen it, but when I think of the events of this story, I always think of the original movie.  Seeing it with photorealism was an interesting novelty, but the original was irreplaceable.

Acting as both a sequel and a prequel to the previous film, Mufasa:  The Lion King centers on Rafiki sitting down with Simba and Nala's daughter Kiara, telling her the story of her grandfather, Mufasa, and how he went from a lost lion cub to king of the Pride Lands.  Timon and Pumba are there too, often used as humorous intermission because most children probably aren't interested in a Lion King story that doesn't involve their beloved shtick.  As to whether or not this movie is a more worthwhile investment than the previous remake, this movie contains a few of the same issues I remember having with it, such as more concentration on making the characters look lifelike than lively and dull musical numbers that visiually just offer a bunch of animals frolicking.  As someone who is more intimately familiar with the original film than the remake, I find myself more intrigued about getting a story based on Mufasa as a youngster than a sequel to the last movie.  That story has its ups and downs, but it had more thoughtfulness in it than I was expecting.  There is a serious attempt at making Mufasa's story distinct from Simba's, ensuring that the story isn't just "The Lion King Again" (which is a one-up this movie has on the sequel to Gladiator, anyway).  There is also a lot of heart given to Mufasa's relationship with Taka, who would grow up to become the villainous Scar.  Truth-be-told, I enjoyed the depth they gave Taka in this movie.  Using a recent film for comparison, Taka's journey could have been as hollow as Megatron's in Transformers One, where he starts off as one character and just suddenly switches his entire personality halfway through because the plot demands it.  The Taka that ends this movie is very believable as the same character who starts it, and he's very believable as the same character as Scar in the first Lion King.  It's solid writing.

But there are things that hold it back.  For starters, Mufasa's story isn't as strong as the story told for Simba in the previous film.  There is a slight deflation to this, because Mufasa has always been such a powerful and bold presence, so wise of his knowledge of life.  Mufasa needs a story that feels bigger than Simba's because the character always presented himself as if he was.  A lost lion cub on a journey with an adopted brother doesn't quite feel like that is a story worthy of such a character.  The idea of him forming the Pride Lands might be, but there is a slightness to how this transpires, while it also undermines the "Circle of Life" aspect of the Lion King, which always implied that Mufasa and Simba were never the first kings and they were far from the last.  And finally is Lin-Manuel Miranda's music, which lives in the shadow of Elton John.  Miranda is a talent, and Moana 2 was all the weaker for not having him onboard, but there just isn't the same power to the music in this movie.  It's probably the weakest musical offering I've seen from him, even though the songs are still enjoyable in the moment.  And that's the underlining problem with this movie as a whole:  it's a good effort that is living behind the behemoth of something greater.  But it's hard to overshadow The Lion King, no matter how good your movie is.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Superhero, Adventure, Action

Director:  Jeff Fowler

Starring:  Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba, Coleen O'Shaugnessey, Krystan Ritter, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter

Sonic fans will be pleased to know that the third film is the best in the series.  What exactly this means for people like me who thought the first two movies sucked balls is more complicated.  I'm still irritated at this franchise for that first film, which has one of the most disgusting morals I've ever seen in a children's film, where the story told us we should put aside self-aspiration because it might make someone you barely know (who also watches you while you sleep) feel sad.  I feel gross just thinking about that movie, as well as the enabled toxicity that resulted from changing the main character's design to appease fans.  I mean, it was a horrid original design, but it underlined the film's thematic message of appeasing incels in a very yucky way.  The only saving grace was a hilarious performance by Jim Carrey.  The second one was just junky and dumb.  Still had Jim Carrey, though.  The third one has two Jim Carreys!  Yay!

This new adventure has Sonic colliding with a dark hedgehog named Shadow, who is just as fast as Sonic, but goth!  Shadow seeks revenge for the death of a human companion from years prior, and teams up with Jim Carrey's Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather (also played by Carrey) to watch the world burn.  Personally, I enjoyed the original Sonic games, but I drifted from the franchise as Sonic's personality became more defined.  I just don't like Sonic as a character.  I find his attitude grating.  Sonic has always been insufferable, and any movie he stars in will struggle against mediocrity until they figure out a way around that.  But even if it can't, the strength of this third film lies in cutting Jim Carrey loose and letting him hog the spotlight.  Carrey is a blast in this movie, and it's by far his best work in this franchise, and probably the funniest he has been since his heyday in the 90's.  It's a shame the movie can't solely be about him, as we flash back to the obnoxious critters running around.  But, to be fair, a few of the gags are solid, and the movie is adequately funny.  It's shallow, but it's entertaining.  I could have done for more development on Shadow, who seemed to have a sweet relationship with a little girl.  We find out a bit about her, but not enough for motivations in this film to fully make sense.  We also find out very little about where Shadow came from or if he's from the same world as Sonic.  Maybe the video games answer this, but I wouldn't know, because I haven't played Sonic since the days of Genesis.  I don't think any of this will matter to the intended audience, who likely just want to see Sonic run fast, be smarmy, and entertain them swiftly.  At that goal, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 succeeds.  Even for a grump like me who had no expectations for it, I have to admit, this one was fun enough.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kraven the Hunter ⭐️

The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim ⭐️⭐️

Moana 2 ⭐️⭐️

Red One ⭐️⭐️

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Anora ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Absolution ⭐️⭐️

Conclave ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Joker:  Folie à Deux ⭐️1/2

Piece by Piece ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Terrifier 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Transformers One ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 50 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Kraven the Hunter

⭐️

Genre:  Action, Superhero

Director:  J.C. Chandor

Starring:  Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Russell Crowe, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott

Honest-to-god, I love Kraven the Hunter.  The character, not the movie.  He's one of Spider-Man's greatest villains, and he's one that deserved to go toe-to-toe with Spidey in a movie.  There is something tragic about how Sony is subjecting Kraven to their sub-par, heartless solo film treatment.  Venom is at least a trashy character who semi-relishes such a spotlight, and nobody cares about Morbius or Madame Web.  Kraven deserved to be a proper Spider-Man antagonist in an actual movie.  They made this instead, potentially turning him into box office poison.  So far, that's the greatest sin that Sony has made against superhero cinema.  And they're the ones who made the Ghost Rider movie.

Okay, let's get this out of the way.  Kraven the Hunter is the story of Sergei Kravinoff, a Russian huntsman who is so in touch with nature that he is also half-beast, using his hunting skills to become an assassin.  When a crime boss kidnaps his little brother, Sergei puts all of his skills into a search and rescue.  There is a lot of sterilizing being done to make Kraven more of a protagonist, trying to make him softer.  Kraven is in tune with nature, but, in the comics, he is a game hunter who both hunts both beast and man for sport.  In this film, he is a man who lives out in the wild and sees himself as one with the animals.  It's a misguided side-step to make Kraven more cuddly when it just makes him toothless.  But there is still an underlining idea of Kraven here that the movie tries to latch itself onto, but it always slips away from it.  There are glimpses of promise within its setpieces, where it shows off the feral action film that it wants to be.  They are fleeting as it retreats into a dull narrative of brooding nonsense.  It's really funny that Sony has been advertising so enthusiastic about the gory R-rating for this movie when all it amounts to is cartoony CGI blood splatters.  The movie wants the pretense of being edgy without actually doing anything hardcore.  The animalistic action has no bite.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson at least looks great as the title character, and he sells some of character's more animalistic attribute.  But it becomes clear the movie is making sacrifices to his character to make things easier for Taylor-Johnson to play him.  There comes a point in the narrative where Kraven, a Russian character who never really left his country, suddenly decides to speak in an American accent as soon as he grows into Taylor-Johnson's age.  The same goes for Fred Hechinger as his brother Demetri.  The only person who commits to the Russian heritage is Russell Crowe, while everyone else rejects it in order to make the dialogue more palatable for American ears.  It's a fucking joke.  It's a movie that wants an animal man and is using the Kraven license as an excuse.  The best thing I can say for its commitment to the Spider-Man comics it's based on is that the big bad of the movie is Rhino, and it actually accepts the inherent stupidity of the character and goes full camp with it.  It's not a great showdown, but I'll give the movie credit for ending with a fight between two characters with completely different skill-sets.

It doesn't stop the movie from being completely atrocious, though.  And not even in a way that's fun to make fun of, like Morbius or Madame Web.  It took them decades to do it, but Hollywood finally made a Marvel adaptation that's worse than the 90's Captain America movie.  I'm not in the mood to celebrate, because they dragged a character I had respect for through the mud in order to do it.

The Lord of the Rings:  The War of the Rohirrim

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Fantasy, Adventure

Director:  Kenji Kamiyama

Starring:  Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto

It's amazing how much Lord of the Rings is mimicking Star Wars, branching out from a well-loved trilogy into a prequel trilogy nobody liked, and following that up with an animated movie that nobody asked for.  As for when the cash-in spin-off movies come around, apparently those are in the works, so don't worry about this franchise not being properly milked.  That's not even bringing up overwhelming streaming content that is exhausting to try and keep up with.  There is a lot of talk as to whether or not War of the Rohirrim is a blatent attempt to deathgrip onto lapsing film rights to this franchise while live-action spin-offs are developed, and I'm not really interested in judging that.  If it is, far more cynical attempts at this have happened, and that's just this weekend (why else would a Kraven the Hunter movie be made if Sony weren't scraping the Spider-Man license free of meat?).  At least The War of the Rohirrim seems to be handed off to a group of filmmakers who seem interested in making an honest-to-god Lord of the Rings movie.

Two-hundred years before the other Middle-Earth tales, The War of the Rohirrim tells the story of a lovers' spat that accidentally started a war.  A warrior princess named Héla refuses an engagement to childhood friend Wulf, which causes their two king father's to quarrel, where Héla's father accidentally kills Wulf's.  Wulf vows revenge, gathering an army to tear down Héla's kingdom.  I appreciate that this is a very different story than the other Middle-Earth movies, which defaulted on "Let's grab a ring and take a three-movie walk to smoke this bitch."  There's a lot going on, though, and it feels like it has more story than the entirety of any previous trilogy crammed into two hours.  But even as this movie feels rushed, it also feels meandering, as the events that are portrayed never feel like they steamroll in momentum properly.  This might be, in part, due to the animation, which is a little patchy in motion, even if it looks good in stills.  There is a sort of Don Bluth quality to it that is hard to deny, but while it's trying hard to be dynamic, it can't help but come off as stiff and lifeless.  I think they did what they could to breathe life into these characters who feel like they're asterisks in a Tolkien dictionary, but they never seize an audience's gaze through script or visual.

But overall, one thing that nags at me about this movie is that feels like a generic fantasy sword battle tale that happens to have a Lord of the Rings setting.  There are no Hobbits, there are no Elves, there are no Dwarves, and there is a single Wizard in a gratuitous cameo that kinda sucks.  While Middle-Earth isn't exclusively home to stories of them, it feels less like Middle-Earth without them.  The War of the Rohirrim feels distant from the movies it wants to honor, not in a bad way, but rather in a dull way.  But it's not all bad news.  I liked it better than the second Hobbit movie, which is still the most bored I have been watching any of these movies, and it's less cringe with its fan service than the third one.  I'm going to accept that as a minor win and move on.

Queer

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Luca Guadanino

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Leslie Manville

In case you can't tell from the title, Queer is a story of "the gays."  Specifically, Daniel Craig is a gay man living in 1950.  It might seem like shock value in casting someone who has played James Bond, one of top brands of heterosexuality, in a gay role, but this isn't the first time a Bond actor has played a gay man.  If you insist that it is, that is "Roger Moore in Boat Trip" erasure and I will not stand for it.  But anyway, Craig begins a relationship with a cryptic man who Craig longs a stronger connection with.  And if you think you know where it's going from there, you're in for a ride, let me tell you.  The movie is not really a romance, feeling at times like a study in the struggles of homosexual bonding between partners.  That being said, some of the themes are more universal than that, as the film comes off as simple as being an allegory for trying to get closer to someone who seems mentally baracaded.  The movie goes a little off its rocker in exploring that, especially its crazy third act, but the movie is interesting when it's not being insane.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Interstellar ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Moana 2 ⭐️⭐️

Red One ⭐️⭐️

Werewolves ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Y2K ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heretic ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Venom:  The Last Dance ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 49 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Werewolves

⭐️⭐️1/2

🏆Must-See Bad Movie Award🏆

Genre:  Action, Horror

Director:  Steven C. Miller

Starring:  Frank Grillo, Katrina Law, Ilfenesh Hadera, James Michael Cummings, Lou Diamond Phillips, James Kyson

No, it's not the James Cameron sequel to Tony Zarrindast's MST classic Werewolf.  Instead, Frank Grillo is in a lycanthrope apocalypse!  The idea of the film is that every human has werewolf genes in their DNA, and every now and again there is an event called a "Supermoon" that unlocks it, turning everyone into a werewolf for a night.  Most humans lock themselves at home to avoid exposure to the moonlight, while other use the event to work on a suppression vaccine to cure it.  And also others just turn into werewolves and start murdering people.  Basically, it's The Purge, but with werewolves.

To get straight to the point, the movie is not particularly great.  It's an undercooked production with a big idea, trying to sell itself on that idea alone.  A big idea can only get you so far, but it's not nothing.  Given what it has to work with, ranging from a low budget to a melodramatic script, I respect the ambition the movie has.  No matter what you can fault the movie for, it doesn't skimp on the schlocky entertainment.  The movie is grim and gritty, while being goofy and silly all at once.  The werewolves will tear people to pieces while looking like Rahzar from Ninja Turtles II.  The movie appeals to a very particular kind of entertainment value, filling a niche that larger budget films do not.  Though, as amusing as the film is, one does wonder what this particular production might have accomplished with more money and a more complete script.  If the movie had gone direct to streaming, it probably would be seen at as an overlooked cult film.  In theaters, it comes off as dismissable.  But if you're willing to vibe with it, you'll slap your knee and have a good chuckle at the reckless disregard for human life.

TUSK!

Y2K

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Kyle Mooney

Starring:  Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennison, Lachlan Watson, Mason Gooding, Fred Durst, Alicia Silverstone

The actual Y2K scare is a weird asterisk in pop culture, one that Gen Z would likely look at Gen X and Millennials with less respect if someone tried to explain it to them.  It was this whole idea that computer systems of the time were programmed with yearly dates that were whittled down to two digits instead of four, so when the year "99" switched over to "00," all hell would break loose in the digital world because systems would think everything reset.  There was even a TV movie thriller exploiting it, that's how in the subconscious it was.  It's one of those "You had to be there" things.  This new Y2K movie is made for people who were there, see the title, and were like "lol, I remember that bullshit."

Y2K reinvents history by centering on a group of teenage party-goers on New Years Eve 1999, only to be caught off-guard by the realization that not only is the Y2K virus real, but it has caused all electronic devices to come to life and try to wipe out the human race.  It's kind of a hindsight joke about the apocalyptic fear people had, but my understanding was that Y2K was mostly about potential power outages and data resets erasing bank accounts and the like, not the creation of Skynet.  This movie rejigs what it was so it can make fun of how it made people feel, stylizing it in a way that is best described as a simulator of what it's like to get high and watch a double feature of Mallrats and Chopping Mall made by people whose TVs would only switch away from MTV if That 70's Show was on.  If that's your idea of a good time, by all means, Y2K is a movie made for you.  But if you think it looks dumb, then it's exactly what you think it is.  It's really fucking stupid, but it's stupid in an endearingly sincere way.  The movie has nothing but love for its retro era and lovingly makes it burn with its kitschy camp flavor.  Aspects of the film are underdeveloped in favor of a vibe, as we watch machines supposedly brought to life in a hive mind through the internet, even though most of the internet required cable connection back then, which makes these free-roaming creatures more advanced than what can be reasonably expected.  That's the same type of digital understanding you'd see in crappy 90's media of this type, like a Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad, so it kinda works in a roundabout way.  The movie doesn't want you to think that hard about it, it just wants you to chill to its vibe and its playlist, while making you bask in the glow of its parade of 90's legends in supporting roles, like Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, Clueless star Alicia Silverstone, and cinematography by The Matrix's Bill Pope.  If you get it, you get it.  If you love it, you love it.  Y2K has little thought or care for people who don't get it or love it, and, if nothing else, I respect that.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heretic ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Interstellar ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Moana 2 ⭐️⭐️

Red One ⭐️⭐️

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Christmas Eve in Miller's Point ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good One ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Weekend in Taipei ⭐️⭐️

Your Monster ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Alien:  Rolumus ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Dead Don't Hurt ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Never Let Go ⭐️⭐️1/2

White Bird ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Wild Robot ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!