Welcome to my blog dedicated to movie riffing! Here we will journey through the many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the files of RiffTrax, the DVDs of Cinematic Titanic, and hopefully many others.
Join me, won't you?
Starring: Gwilym Lee, Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Jonathan French, Steve Wall
A somewhat deceptively complex premise is setup as a woman hears a knock on her door from a strange panicked man telling her a man is in her house and she needs to open the door and let him in. She is later found dead and the man at the door is blamed, and in the aftermath, her blind, psychic twin sister acts to put the puzzle pieces together on what happened that night. Also: creepy wooden man. What's up with that? I will say straight off the bat that it's worth sticking with this movie, because it can come dangerously close to plodding at times and it's entirely possible to get impatient with it, especially as we dive deeper into characters who constantly seem resentful of each other. Oddity is a bit meandering and tonally off-center, almost in a mischievous way. It's probably because it knows what it has up its sleeve. And I'm actually not talking about the plot, which is trite and well-worn (hint: MSTies will recognize certain twists from a little movie called The Screaming Skull). It's not hard to guess where the movie is going, but the movie certainly knows how to construct suspense. Oddity is rich in mood and atmosphere, with a supernatural element that probably plays with the best haunted house spookums I've seen since the original wave of Ju-On films twenty years ago. I wish this movie maintained its inspired suspense throughout, because Oddity has the potential to be a movie for the ages when it wants to be. It drops the ball on characterization, jumping back and forth between macabre style and somber melodramatics, which tempers my enthusiasm. But when the movie is going hard for the horror, it is absolutely on fire.
Twisters
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Disaster, Adventure
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane
C'mon baby, let's do the twist! Belated sequel to the popular 90's disaster movie that was a collaboration between Speed director Jan de Bont and Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton, Twisters sees more people chasing tornadoes for fun. And science stuff, I guess. But mostly fun. But it stops being fun and games when Daisy Edgar-Jones's team dies in an accident, leaving her traumatized. She begrudgingly comes out of retirement years later in collecting tornado data for a real estate company, while Glen Powell jumps in with his YouTube crew and cowboy attitude and rattles the cage. Twisters is very much a case of being exactly what it should be and also not enough. It adheres pretty strictly to the tropes of 90's disaster blockbusters, to the point where it could probably be considered comfort food for late Gen X and early Millenials. If you've seen Twister, Twisters is just another one, for better or worse. I definitely fall in that range, but Twisters doesn't bring enough to the table for me to feel like I can justify a second blockbuster of tornado chasing. I'm not sure there are that many stories you can make out of this concept. In trying create another one, they created something that feels hashed together from an abandoned script to a direct to video sequel from twenty years ago, suffering from undercooked elements that rely on coincidence, introducing sudden "Twister fodder" characters, and plot contrivance. I was vibing with the film early on, but as it continued it just grew tired and repetitious, and I just got bored as it threw what felt like the same tornado scene at me over and over again. I'd probably describe it as being less exciting than it thinks it is, but suitably matinee entertaining for those looking for a popcorn-muncher. Lower expectations probably yields a greater experience, so be warned on that.
Starring: KiKi Lane, Thomas Doherty, Melanie Nicholls-King, Brady Stablein, Jack Stablein, Grace Kaiser
The titular Dandelion is the name of a musician who has never quite launched her career, despite her best efforts. Soon she meets a guitarist who helps inspire her best work, and as their relationship grows romantic, it starts to take a rocky downturn. The film is a relation of struggling artist's internal conflicts, told as a romance that begins passionate and grows strained. There is a lot of effort in making the relationship at the core feel raw and real, right down to the complications that rupture it. That little taste of reality is what Dandelion does best, though on the rare occasion that it tries to reach for something bolder, it starts to weigh itself down with melodramatics. It's stronger as a character piece that's relating it's messages through implication rather than saying them out loud. The movie has no resonating power to it, despite some heavy, at times miscalculated, efforts. However, it's one that's easily digestible and enjoyed.
Silence of the Lambs meets The Shining meets Hereditary, with Nicolas Cage popping in playing what comes across as a homeless pedophile take on Willy Wonka. I don't know what you're picturing after reading that sentence, but it's probably not as off-putting as Longlegs is. The movie is a startlingly uncomfortable watch. In fact, it even ends with the end credits running upside down, to assure that the audience is nice and discombobulated as they exit the theater. The movie is one of those suspense thrillers that is off-kilter and obtuse, which can backfire if they run too hard in an extreme direction (see: Skinamarink), but Longlegs does it in a fascinating way.
The story relates an FBI agent who is on the hunt for a serial killer known only as "Longlegs," as the connections and oddities start to add up to something personal. This movie draws suspense from the discomfort the larger world gives a traumatized introverted mindset. The main character spends most of her scenes with other people looking like she wishes she was alone, and when she's alone, it always feels like she's never alone. Continuing from there, it's only dead set on keeping it disquiet vibe, which is helped by one of Nicolas Cage's most unhinged performances in a long line of unhinged performances. Cage is very interesting here, because he's almost too much for the movie to contain. There are points where he's exactly what the movie needs and others where he's just aimlessly insane and the movie isn't quite sure what to do with him. Director Osgood Perkins keeps the cinematography almost broken when he's onscreen, which is when Cage is at his best, because the movie is working with him to create something transcendent. When the movie has no choice to shoot him flat, the cracks in the performance begin to show and it almost kills the movie. But the fact that the performance is this dangerous keeps the movie intriguing, maintaining that it's one of the year's highlights.
Robot Dreams
⭐️⭐️1/2
Oscars Nominated: Best Animated Feature Film
Genre: Drama
Director: Pablo Berger
Starring: A dog and a robot
Well, I'll be damned. This movie actually does exist. I was starting to think the Academy made it up, because I couldn't find a goddamn thing when by the time the awards went out. This movie that totally isn't a fever dream is about a lonely dog who orders a robot companion. After some fun days together, the robot rusts on the beach and is unable to move. Since he's too heavy to carry, the dog is forced to abandon his friend on the beach until he can fix him. Unfortunately, the beach seasonally closes immediately after, and the robot is forced to stay there until the following summer. The titular "robot dreams" are a series of sequences where the robot fantasizes about what it will be like to return to his friend.
I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't like this movie more. I love a good animated movie. I love a good pantomime movie. This should be my favorite movie of all time. Instead, I just found myself getting tired of it at points, which is shameful, because the technical merits of the movie are very good, but it just wasn't emotionally paying off for me the way the hype promised it would. I feel like I understood the movie's point early on and the movie was just doing a little dance for me for another hour after that. Robot Dreams is more subtle and artistic than a movie like fellow Oscar contender Elemental, but Elemental doesn't exhaust its flame as swiftly as a movie like Robot Dreams, which runs out of batteries and tries to switch them around to make it run again (I am punning up a storm here). It just compounds until what seems to be a calculated bittersweet conclusion that is supposed to be a tearjerker of accepting our lives as they change and move forward but it only really works if you hold the firm belief that you can only have one friend in your life at a time, which is a really fucking weird personal outlook if you think about it. It probably works better if you look at the movie as a romantic partner metaphor, but that opens a whole can of worms about this movie being about a dog and his mail-order bride and I'd rather not get into that.
Positive aspects include its expressive simplicity. It's very silent film influenced, expressing itself through visual cue rather than voice. One can probably picture how the film might have played out starring Harold Lloyd if he had thought of it. And the animation is pleasant and vibrant. There's a point where the film becomes lush animation for the sake of lush animation. It's certainly lovely to look at, and animation fans will find it heavenly. The movie's themes of companionship and longing are strong, even if they don't evolve as much as the film seems to think they do. Despite my lackluster reception to the film, it's certainly a film I'd recommend people to check out. The right viewer will probably adore it far more than I did.
Starring: Steve Carrell, Kristen Wigg, Pierre Coffin, Will Farrell, Sofía Vergara, Stephen Colbert, Joey King, Chloe Fineman, Steve Coogan, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Madison Polan, Chris Renaud
It's time for Minion merch to conquer the world while critics and film snobs pull their hair out. Welcome back, Despicable Me! This fourth installment sees reformed villain Gru and his ever growing family go into witness protection after a supervillain Gru has put behind bars breaks out and vows revenge. The villain's name is Maxime, which I initially misheard as "Maxine," and, after the screenings I've had this week, I was really hoping it would be Mia Goth walking up to Gru and saying "Maxine FUCKING Minx," but it's just Will Farrell with a bad French accent. A Despicable Me movie can ride or die based on how entertaining its villain is, so that's kind of a wash. The witness protection premise is cute, which brings about suitably awkward scenarios for these characters to get into. Gru sells solar panels in this one. Rod from Birdemic would be proud. Little Agnes has trouble working with her new alternate name, because she sees it as a lie and lying is bad. That's adorable. Stephen Colbert plays a snobby neighbor with a aspiring villain for a daughter, and that's quirky. These are all neat ideas, though they never add up to a complete story. The movie is not much on plot, opting instead for segmented silliness. A lot of what's going on feels like chaotic short films that branch out from the idea of the family in witness protection. Even the Minions subplot of gaining superpowers feels oddly irrelevant, but provides adequate slapstick entertainment. That slapstick entertainment was enough to keep the kids in my theater giggling throughout, which tells me that even if the Despicable Me franchise might be struggling with a direction, its target audience is still in the bag.
Fly Me to the Moon
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: Greg Berlanti
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Jim Rash, Anna Garcia, Donald Elise Watkins, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Christian Zuber, Nick Dillenberg
We've got a pre-release review in the tank! Early screenings of Fly Me to the Moon were at my cinema, and I was game to check it out. This movie tells a fictionalized take of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, where NASA hires PR expert Scarlett Johansson to help make the idea of landing on the moon exciting for a disillusioned American public and distract them from the Vietnam War, while also getting under the skin (read: getting flirtatious with) NASA Director Channing Tatum. The situation grows rocky when government agent Woody Harrelson requests that Johansson help create a fake moon landing as a contingency, in case the mission goes south. The movie is directed with spring in its step by Greg Berlanti, who most might know from Love, Simon and many, many shows on the CW, including Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Riverdale. Berlanti keeps the playful 60's vibes jamming with a groovy jukebox soundtrack and a swaggy presentation of its cast. The movie's flamboyance is a sugar-coated flavor of delicious, largely thanks to Johansson's overwhelming charisma. I have less to say about Tatum, because his role is more disposable, only acting as a straight man to Johansson and also a required love interest. But Johansson's excellent spotlight-hogging ensures that all eyes are on her at all times. It's a quirky movie that keeps itself constantly on the move. Sometimes it feels like it's juggling too much, but its busy hustle helps endear it.
MaXXXine
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Ti West
Starring: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Kevin Bacon, Giancarlo Esposito, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monagham, Bobby Cannivale, Halsey, Lily Collins
MaXXXine is the third installment of a trilogy of spirited genre homages by director Ti West which started in 2022 with X, a grindhouse callback slasher movie that invaded the world of independent pornography, and continued several months later with prequel Pearl, which infused psychological horror into bright-eyed Judy Garland-style classical showmanship. MaXXXine sees series star Mia Goth return as the heroine of X, Maxine Minx, who graduates from porn star to full actress, finally ready to make a name for herself in Hollywood by making her debut in a horror movie. Soon after landing the role, Maxine begins receiving messages that link her to the massacre from the previous film, which may also be linked to real life serial killer the Night Stalker.
West has more of his genre cross polination secret sauce in store for his audience, this time working with vintage sex noir and combining it with a Michael Mann influenced homicide thriller, like watching a crossbreed between Angel and Manhunter. Those who like their movies to coast on vibes will find more than enough in MaXXXine to feast upon. Like previous entries, the movie does also feel like it has more at stake in nailing it vibe than its full experience. In MaXXXine's case, the movie is content on having Mia Goth strut around to a techno beat and lay a pretty straightforward mystery in front of her before tossing a chaotic conclusion at the audience. It's a movie that chills for two acts before having a cocaine fueled meltdown for its climax. Its violence isn't as exciting as X and Goth isn't given any career-defining highlights like in Pearl, but its tonal endearment makes it enticing.
This is the first movie of the series that doesn't end with a teaser/title reveal for a follow-up that is already in development. However, horror fans probably shouldn't fret about it, as West has already gone on record saying that a fourth film is in the cards. I would be game for it. While imperfect, the X trilogy has been a fairly unique experience in the genre, and if West can continue being this playful with it, another would be more than welcome.
Netflix & Chill
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Streaming On: Netflix
Genre: Comedy, Action
Director: Mark Molloy
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot
The original Beverly Hills Cop is probably the greatest cop comedy of all time. I've only seen the sequels once each and don't recall being particular endeared by either of them. The second one seemed more stylized than funny (directed by Tony Scott hot off of Top Gun), while the third one didn't seem all too concerned about being anything. Five minutes into Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, I found myself laughing and enjoying the action. Because of that, it was already the best sequel in the bunch.
Thirty years after the last entry in the series, Detroit cop Axel Foley once again returns to Beverly Hills after his attorney daughter gets involved in a criminal conspiracy that threatens her life. Everything that follows is hardly a surprise, as we get corrupt cops, romantic tension between Axel's partner and his daughter, and a string of nostalgia cameos and needle drops. I wouldn't expect anybody is watching Beverly Hills Cop 4 for originality, though. After the tough break this franchise has had, simple competence will do. Axel F is competent in the same way the later Bad Boys movies are competent, in that it wears its formula with pride and shoots only to be a solid representation of it. Action and laughs are had, and I certainly enjoyed my time with it.
Dakota Johnson gets into Sean Penn's taxi for a long drive home, and the two use that time to discuss daddy issues and toxic relationships. It's a very straightforward duet drama, often coming off as written for the stage with hefty dialogue that always sounds delicately written. The movie is mostly a stream of consciousness load psychoanalysis babble. It can be a strength because Johnson and Penn commit, but it can also grow stale in that it can drive in circles with its tendency to overanalyze the obvious. Johnson keeps pace with making flirty eyes at the camera, and when she's not, she's making contemplative scowls at her phone, while Penn maintains gruff vulgarity. And I hope you like the word "panties," because this movie certainly loves it and is willing to call attention to it.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I
⭐️1/2
Genre: Western
Director: Kevin Costner
Starring: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Giovanni Ribisi, Jena Malone, Sam Worthington, Michael Rooker, Danny Huston, Abbey Lee
That feeling you get when you hear a Horizon movie franchise is coming out and you can't wait to see a redhead mow down robot dinosaurs with her bow and arrow and instead you get a Kevin Costner vanity project.
Costner apparently had the idea for this movie in the back of his head for a while. How thorough the idea has been is unclear to me, though it feels like he just looked at fantasy epics that filmed multi-movie sagas like Lord of the Rings and the juggling of various stories that inch their way forward in Game of Thrones and said "Imma do that but western." The western genre probably could produce a big sweeping, long, branching narrative epic, though it needs to come out the gate strong if it wants to do this. Horizon: An American Saga does not.
The series mostly centers on a western settlement in the 1860's called Horizon, and Chapter I sets into motion a few dozen narratives stemming around it. They have little to do with each other, and few of them gather any steam to feel like they're going anywhere in this first installment. This is problematic, because if your bait and hook for a four-part narrative is "Look at all these characters, we'll tell a story with them later" then you've lost the plot on grabbing your audience. Granted, Costner tries to wake up the audience early on by having the settlement come under seige by territorial Native Americans, which leads to a lengthy battle sequence that is just thrown at the viewer with little context. We don't know what the point is of any of this carnage is for about an hour, it's just a bunch of people being savaged in a lengthy setpiece, while Costner tries to convey the strong-willed victimhood of white men. We have to root for them because we have no idea what's going on and they're the ones wearing cowboy hats. After that, the movie mellows out, and just introduces characters for a straight two hours, few of which show any promise in being compelling protagonists promising character growth. The movie gets a bit of color in its most endearing character, a patron-hunting prostitute who actually injects some levity into the self-seriousness of her surroundings. The most entertaining scene in the movie is her hovering around Kevin Costner's character and giving him a five-minute sales pitch for her vagina. She's legitimately amusing and the movie doesn't use her enough, instead launching what I'm assuming is the main storyline (because it's the storyline with Costner as the lead), where she and Costner go on the run with a baby that a group of outlaws want. She is kind of just dragged around after that. Outside of Costner and his colorful hooker, the movie is loaded with character actors, a lot of which I enjoy. They don't do anything of substance, but I liked seeing friendly faces that I knew. I got to hear Michael Rooker try and do an Irish accent. I've never heard him do that before. It's really weird.
But what it boils down to is that Horizon is three hours long and barely any movie actually happens. I think Costner is so hellbent on wanting people to think of Horizon as being a twelve-hour movie that he's not paying attention to whether or not the individual films play as individual experiences. That was something Lord of the Rings was smart enough to do. Dune, as well. Hell, Rebel Moon and that awful Strangers movie from last month could do it. What's Horizon's excuse? I can't recommend Horizon because Chapter I is just an extended prologue that conveys very little and one could probably watch the next movie just fine without having seen it. It's the cinematic equivalent of "This could have been an email."
Janet Planet
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama
Director: Annie Baker
Starring: Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, Sophie Okonedo
The film debut of playwright Annie Baker, Janet Planet follows a mother and daughter spending the summer together at home, as the audience observes several relationships and houseguests that come into their lives. It's hard to adequately relate a story because the movie almost keeps it to itself. Janet Planet is subdued to a point where it almost seems to be internalizing its story into subtext instead, while saying what probably should be subtext out loud. It has very niche appeal because of that, though it commits to its creative choices with full determination. The movie can almost be frustrating in its journey, because its progression can feel obtuse as the characters just sit and contemplate what their lives are, sometimes saying it out loud and sometimes internalizing it. Baker does a good job at conveying certain elements with as few words as possible, and when it ends, we do feel like we've reached a destination. Whether or not it's a viewer's particular cup of tea is a trickier question.
Kinds of Kindness
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Anthology, Comedy
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Hunter Schafer
Thusfar, every time Yorgos Lanthimos pairs up with Emma Stone his movie becomes an Oscar darling. Why stop now? When you find your lucky charm, it's hard to let go. Their third project together is Lanthimos's stab at a bizarre anthology, telling three eccentric tales that are all performed by the same group of actors, headlined by Stone and Jesse Plemons. Kinds of Kindness is so abstract that conveying what it is about is difficult, to the point where the trailer is nothing but a montage list of actors and letting everyone know what director it is. That's just as well, because chances are that if you know who Lanthimos is then you know what to expect, and you probably already know whether the movie is worth watching or not. Very little of my opinion on this movie matters because of that. What I will say is that Lanthimos is most certainly a master at amusing himself, and I respect that. Kinds of Kindness presents three tales that I'm sure amuse Lanthimos quite thoroughly, though he's so invested in them that he can't tell when he's meandering or failing to convey a point. Those who want three straight hours of weird and silly will get just that. There's not much else to it, though.
A Quiet Place: Day One
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Thriller, Horror
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou
Let's make some noise...while you still can. This prequel to the thriller favorite A Quiet Place chronicles the early days of the hearing-sensitive creatures (despite the title of "Day One," it actually takes place over the course of a few days), as they descend on New York and just wreck house. If you're hoping for explanations of the creatures or a thorough examination of how they took over the world, you'll leave disappointed, because the real story of the film is Lupita Nyong'o traveling through the apocalypse to get pizza. If you think I'm joking or exaggerating, I assure you that this is the genuine story of the film. One might hope it might push itself for something more interesting, but the film is frustratingly unambitious, squandering any story and thematic potential a prequel could bring, rushing though these elements to just make "another one." Normality is kept to the first ten minutes. Learning curve of "Quiet Place rules" is skipped over while Nyong'o is unconscious for a spell, waking up in a franchise status quo where everyone already knows to shut the fuck up. There are more than a few possibilities for a Quiet Place prequel, and Day One chases none of them. Which begs the question of why is this the "how it all began" story if you're not going to tell that story?
I'm inclined to believe the primary purpose of the film was to shoot for 9/11 allegory, which is fair enough. Director Michael Sarnoski feels more invested in the movie when he's pushing crisis imagery on his audience. When it comes to getting personal, he shows disinterest. Nyong'o's story of just wanting a good slice of pie at the end of the world isn't engaging, even if Nyong'o is good in the role. It just serves as an excuse to get her to wander in the opposite direction of everyone else and stumble into noisy situations. She also does this while carrying an emotional support cat the entire time, which is a bizarre creative choice that never pays off. In fact, the cat's inclusion makes the film come off even worse, because the cat goes through a lot in this movie and doesn't react to anything. This cat is around crashing vehicles, rampaging monsters, and is even dunked into water at several points in the film, and it always looks like it's ready for a catnap. This is the chillest fucking cat I've ever seen, when most would be freaking the fuck out. Though, I guess I'm amazed at the crew found something to be in this movie that is more apathetic to what's going on than I am.
A Sacrifice
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Thriller
Director: Jordan Scott
Starring: Eric Bana, Sadie Sink, Sylvia Hoeks
Eric Bana plays a psychiatrist who's daughter is being groomed by a dangerous cult in this crime thriller with a terrible title. To be fair, A Sacrifice isn't terrible for those looking for the cinema equivalent of airplane novels. It has an okay premise, looks decent, and is short as fuck. I do wonder if any of this effort could have been put to better use creating something more compelling. It's casually paced yet not very thorough and feels like it's goal is to kill the audience's time rather than hook them and put them on the edge of their seat. A Sacrifice is like watching the production team of CSI try and recreate Silence of the Lambs from memory after seeing it once thirty years ago while on edibles and falling asleep halfway through.
Starring: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus
Loosely based upon the nonfiction book of the same name, this fictionalized take sees a motorcycle club started by Tom Hardy deteriorate over the years into degenerate violence. Most of the movie is narrated by Jodie Comer, doing her best Laverne DeFazio impression, telling of her relationship to her bikeriding husband Austin Butler. The Bikeriders is an interesting piece of character evolution, though it's a story told via a group of rambling characters who tend to trail off, so their is a requisite in bearing with it when it flies off with incomplete thoughts. The cast is uniformly fantastic, acting like they're only here to hang out rather than to make a movie (Norman Reedus feels like he's just here because he wants to be). It's a good movie that's a bit of a basic slowrider. But any motorcycle film without sidehacking loses any cool points it tries to achieve. I'm sorry, that's just how it is.
The Exorcism
⭐️
Genre: Horror
Director: Joshua John Miller
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, David Hyde Pierce
What if spooky stuff happened on the set of The Exorcist? I don't know the answer to that, but I imagine it would have been a lot more interesting than this. The Excorcism is a meta horror in the tradition of New Nightmare or Shadow of the Vampire where the supernatural element of the movie seems to also be haunting the set. In this case, it's an exorcism movie starring Russell Crowe where Russell Crowe starts to act possessed. The movie mixes its meta with an allegory for repressed trauma, alcoholism, and emotional abuse, which feels like a step too far because it's never quite clear whether the the meta or the allegory takes priority when they begin to clash with each other. They both wind up feeling half-assed in the end, with the meta aspect never really taking shape and the film's thematic value never feeling fleshed out enough to become sufficient. The movie feels incomplete, having a rough idea of what it wants to be about but feels at a loss of how to actually turn it into a story. Instead, it just vomits up something boring and atrocious on the screen. I sat there for so long waiting for the movie to actually try to be something, but it never worked up the energy.
Thelma
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy, Adventure
Director: Josh Margolin
Starring: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell
In what I can only assume is a tribute to all our beloved grandmas everywhere, Thelma sees a 90-year-old woman get scammed over the phone. Rather than accept she's out ten grand, she instead hits the road to hunt down the people who stole her money. It's a rather flavorful little road movie featuring June Squibb in the title role and the late Richard Roundtree as her sidekick, getting into mischief while a family is left behind worried sick about their frail family member. And frail she might be, but she's also determined. The primary source of humor falls with the stubbornness of those set in their ways while also navigating through a world that is more advanced than their normal perception anymore. Traditional and recognizable elderly jokes do ensue, including technology incomprehension, rambling tendencies, and reduced mobility, but while the movie leans into these qualities, it also never fails to make Thelma sharp and self-dependent, making her a heroine worth rooting for as opposed to a walking joke. It's a delightfully silly hoot of a movie that never succumbs to mocking its subject matter.
Starring: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Liza Lipera, Tony Hale, Ayo Edebiri, Kensington Tallman
The original Inside Out is my favorite Pixar movie, one of my favorite animated movies, and a contender for best movie of the last ten years. That's where I stand going into Inside Out 2: with impossible expectations. But Pixar has turned unlikely sequel potential into pure ugly-cry fuel before. Just look at every Toy Story movie. Except maybe Lightyear.
We venture back into Riley's head, as we see her emotions manifest as living beings once more. Now hitting puberty, several new emotions join the group in Riley's mind, led by Anxiety, who could lead Riley down a worse path. Inside Out 2 does a good job continuing the themes of emotional balance of the previous film, and the concentrated depictions of anxiety are strong and the center of the film's emotional weight. I find myself more subdued on it over the first film because it just never hits nearly as hard. It has good moments of emotional vulnerability and a strong core, but it lacks the heaviness and imagination of the first film. A lot of its settings and landscapes are things we've already seen, and while there are a couple of new offerings, there isn't anything that equals the pure creative playfulness that we got previously. But it's almost unfair to ask a movie to play at such a high standard, even if it is a direct follow-up. Inside Out 2 is a movie that works, and fans of the first film will likely respond to it and possibly hold it to high regard. Inside Out 2 isn't nearly as effortlessly beautiful and poetic as the first film, but as a high-concept comedy, it's still a splendid entertainer that is both funny and heartfelt.
Latency
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror
Director: James Croke
Starring: Shasha Luss, Alexis Ren
This tech-based supernatural horror sees a professional gamer named Hana using an experimental neural device to win a video game competition, only to begin seeing ghostly apparitions in her apartment. Hana suffers from agoraphobia, but also has workout montages to make sure the viewer knows that despite her anxieties, she is still hot. She is emo, young-adult drama pretty and somehow has more video games in her early-thirties than Angry Video Game Nerd in his entire career (she still has a functioning Game Boy that she plays daily, which, by itself, is impressive). Sasha Luss gives an almost good performance, but her main problem is that she slips in and out of her natural Russian accent that she's trying desperately to downplay. Premise-wise, the movie is a surreal allegory for feeling trapped in one's own personal space by one's phobias, while the tech and gamer twist adds a bonus theme of technology addiction. They do a lot with the confines of its one set, and it's almost inspiring. There are some solid spook scenes where we see ghosts fade in and out of mundane backgrounds, though it tends to get undercut by the fact that most of its big scares is just screaming at the audience. But the movie acknowledges this, see, because Hana's screenname is "Banshee" and she's being haunted by an actual banshee. The moments of inspiration feel gutted by the film's slip into delusion, as the third act is reality-bending chaos that works overtime to feed its allegory rather than come together in a sensible way. There is a swing here of making something high-concept with a thin budget, but it's not paying off. While the movie isn't all that good, I like its plucky spirit.
Tuesday
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Director: Daina O. Pusić
Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, Arinzé Kene
It might look like one of those super weird experimental movies that A24 likes to distribute (if nothing else, advertisements often reminded me of the movie Lamb), but Tuesday is a far more straightforward movie than one might assume. The film sees a girl who is about to succumb to her terminal illness, only to make friends with Death himself as he is about to take her. She asks to see her mother, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one last time, who complicates the situation by refusing to let Death take her. The movie is a contemporary version of one of those fables where a person has a conversation with death, just with a giant parrot representing the supernatural being. The movie's primarily a look at looming mortality and grief, though it tends to be too on-the-nose to be a genuine allegory. Writer/director Daina O. Pusić steps up to the plate with big ideas conveying personal stakes. These ideas can overwhelm her, sometimes causing the movie to ramble and ponder when only a few words would suffice. Tuesday isn't a movie that breaks new ground on the "Yup, we're all gonna die some day" corner of arthouse cinema, but it's a well-made and passionate entry into it.
Treasure
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Director: Julia von Heinz
Starring: Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, Zbigniew Zamachowski
Based on the 1999 novel Too Many Men, Treasure sees Lena Dunham attempting to take a trip to Poland to see locales of her family's history, only to be accompanied by her father, Stephen Fry, at his insistence. Dunham and Fry hit the road as a uniquely awkward pairing, and a lot the film's humor comes Fry's abrasive nature steering Dunham's deadpan calmness through an environment that she's unfamiliar with. The drama, on the other hand, plays into Fry's repressed trauma, as Dunham desires to understand her history while they're visiting sites that unpack a heavy load of memories that Fry would rather forget, many of which are Holocaust related. The movie is quite touching and heavy at the best of times, and endearingly funny as well. It also tends to meander and sometimes lacks a forward sense of momentum to really keep the audience invested. Dunham and Fry are excellent, regardless, and the material can give them the strength to overcome that. One just wishes it was more consistent and providing that for them.
Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jacob Scipio, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Joe Pantoliano
Every action fan has a favorite buddy cop movie or series. I have fondness for 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, and Rush Hour, myself. And yes, I quite enjoy the Bad Boys movies. The first two are more audacious flicks that push their own extremity to limits that certain audiences might be turned off by (especially the second one), but that's kind of what makes them a kick of over-the-top nonsense. The new wave of Bad Boys movies are more mellow and subdued, which seems to have made them more palatable to critics and general audiences, propelling the third film to series-best reviews, while also becoming the biggest hit of 2020 (which happened by default, but it does carry the title).
The fourth film follows where the last one left off, which sees Will Smith and Martin Lawrence untangle a frame-up of the recently deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano returns in a cameo), only to get swept up in the conspiracy and go on the run. The movie plays out about as you'd expect, with predictable twists and obvious bad guys eventually unveiling themselves. There's also an underdeveloped subplot of Captain Howard's U.S. Marshall daughter out for revenge against Will Smith's son, but it amounts to so little screentime and has so little to do with anything that it might as well not be here. This, like a lot of Ride or Die's story elements, is fairly half-baked, and if the movie dwells on it too long, it starts to become tired. But when it focuses on the action, it gets wired. The movie is full of the reckless disregard for human life that defines the series. We're largely here for the Smith and Lawrence banter and all the guns blazing. Audience members following the series will get more of that, more of them with their AMMO sidekicks from the previous one, and everyone's favorite character, Reggie, finally getting his time to shine in one glorious setpiece. That's all I ever wanted.
The Watchers
⭐️
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan
Oh dear. We have a Night Shyamalan dynasty now. M. Night Shyamalan's daughter, Ishana, makes her directroial debut, and we can only hope her career has more ups than her father's. If The Watchers is any indication, it's going to be mostly the same. Large concepts that never go beyond concepts, padded up with heavy, monotonous melodrama from bored-looking actors, wasting what probably could have been a good movie at some point if there was a collaboration to help meat it up. But auteurism, I guess.
The Watchers has Dakota Fanning getting lost in the woods and coming across a group that lock themselves in a little window box overnight where mysterious creatures just like to look at them overnight. It sounds creepy. It probably could have been if there was anywhere compelling to go with it. The Watchers just fizzles with its lack of any sort of story to go with this idea. It's an undercooked, go-nowhere bleak fairytale full of characters who exist to give stilted exposition while wearing an uncomfortable expression that says "My underpants are on backwards." Shyamalan adds a lot of atmosphere and visual style to lend the film, but there is nothing to pull us into the movie and embrace the high-concept scenario of being cornered in the woods. There is no emotional heft to it, and the characterization is so dead-eyed that the audience will write-off getting invested in it early on. Like her father, Shyamalan isn't entirely void of directorial talent. Also like her father, she needs to learn one lesson that will improve their movies significantly: there is a major difference between milking a concept and telling a story. Big Daddy Shyamalan has gone a quarter of a century without confronting that, but I hope she is more receptive to it.
The last time I saw an auteur movie about hitmen on Netflix it was that lame duck of a David Fincher movie. Surely Richard Linklater won't make anything near as bullshit as that, can he? At any rate, Hit Man (they added that space in the title so you don't think it's a sequel to the video game movie franchise and it absolutely doesn't work) sees Glen Powell playing a fake hitman who catfishes potential buyers into incriminating themselves for the police to arrest. One mark is actually a super hot lady, so naturally she's the one he talks out of it instead of leading on. He then begins a sexual relationship with her, who still believes him to be a hitman, which leads to intense complications.
Hit Man boasts being "inspired" by a true story, in that there was actually a guy who played a fake hitman for cops that led to dozens of convictions. A lot of it is embellished, though I hope the attempted murder rate was. I'm concerned with how many people want to hire a hitman in this city within the few months that this movie took place. I'd probably think about moving. The opening half-hour is this extended montage of Powell just catching a bunch of potential clients. It's probably the part of the movie that needs the most trimming, because it's pretty much the same joke told over and over, just with different tones. It really slows the movie out the gate, adds practically nothing, and exhausts the movie's charm early on. After that point, the movie gets more interesting, because the relationship built on lies between Powell and Adria Arjona is interesting. It takes too long to get to the spice of the movie, but the spice does uptick the interest level. I feel like the movie often often bakes with a simple recipe and then overcooks it, as periods of it feel like compounded problems that are waved away with simple outs. The film would often come up with a thriller twist, but solve it with a anticlimactic comedic punchline, as there was more than one scene where I was like "That's a cool twist, I can't wait to see where this goes" and it just dies. It also just throws a lot of complexities into the characterization that don't really go anywhere, like Powell being both this fake hitman and a college professor, which I believe is taken straight from the reality that this was based on, but this movie is already just a fantasy scenario based on the mere idea of this guy, and the more of reality you try and add to it, the more it clutters it up. It leads to a climax that doesn't really feel like a climax. There are still a few lingering questions I had, but the movie just decides it's done.
Those are all my nitpicks, which makes for some hefty reading and probably giving a false impression of the film, which is mostly solid. Hit Man is primarily a saucy romcom with sexy leads where one of them is lying to the other and it's just a ticking time bomb of when the truth hits, and I was swept up in it, for the most part. Powell is great in it and I enjoyed seeing Adria Arjona, because I worship the entire cast of Morbius (except Jared Leto, fuck Jared Leto). Hit Man is a more enjoyable evening watch than most romcoms you'd find on Netflix, though I found it more bloated and clumsy than I would have liked. It struggles to find its own rhythm, and that's a shame, because I was ready to dance with it.
Under Paris
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Streaming On: Netflix
Genre: Thriller
Director: Xavier Gens
Starring: Bérénice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant
It doesn't matter what Netflix store-bought auteur movie came out this weekend. It doesn't change the fact that they also put on a brand new SHARK MOVIE the same werk, so forgive me if I'm much more excited for that. It's been a while since we've had a genuinely good one. Some might say The Shallows, but I'd argue that The Shallows was just a glossy, hyperactive retread of The Reef and isn't even as good. And even if you're fond of the Meg movies, it's probably because you're in love with how stupid they are. The exciting thing about Under Paris is that it is a genuine attempt at a shark thriller that goes for that raw Jaws excitement.
The film sees a breed of Mako shark adapted to freshwater, infesting the flooded catacombs of Paris and preying on those who happen to stumble upon them. Forgiving the preposterous credibility of a freshwater Mako shark, because I'm not trying to project my intellect over a monster movie, Under Paris works hard to maintain tension throughout, genuinely going for excitement over scares. It tends to lose its grip as it goes on and shoots for more extravagance, becoming almost a cartoon, clashing with the grit that it's trying to project. In one scene it can give us the harrowing image of a woman trampled to death in a panic to get out of the water and also give us a goofy ariel shot of the shark jumping out of the water and swallowing someone else whole. The seesaw in its tone does succeed in giving the movie a bit of character, though sometimes its drama doesn't always land. The movie has two human antagonists, one is a copy of the Jaws mayor, who wants to keep the water open because money, and the other is an environmentalist, who goes to sometimes absurd lengths to make sure the deadly shark isn't killed by the evil human beings. They're not great characters, though I did enjoy the protagonist played by Bérénice Bejo (Oscar enthusiests might recall her as Peppy from The Artist). It all leads to a climax that is total carnage, some of which is just amplified by things that are coincidentally happening at the same time and lead to an open-ended conclusion. It's not a well-plotted movie, but I got a kick out of watching it. It does something a lot of shark movies don't and just tries to do a serious shark thriller without a hint of irony or its tongue in its cheek, making something that's not Jaws, just different. It's about time.
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