Cinema Playground Journal 2016: Week 14 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Drama

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Drama

Director:  Kristoffer Borgli

Starring:  Zendaya, Robert Pattinson

Remember that one time Robert Pattinson made a romantic drama that was secretly about 9/11?  I don't know how or why but for some reason he did it again.  In The Drama, Pattinson plays a man who is about to marry girlfriend Zendaya, only to find out her darkest secret the week before the wedding, and the film watches him try to come to terms with it as the pending nuptials loom ever so closer.  What exactly the secret is will be something I won't divulge, but I will confirm that it's pretty jarring and potentially a triggering subject, so one might want to seek out a more thorough summary if one is sensitive to more provocative subject matter.  My problem with the movie doesn't lie in the subject matter itself but rather that the movie doesn't seem to know what it's doing with it.  It's a really heavy idea to introduce into your story, while the movie's only real gain from it is that it makes the week leading up to the climactic wedding very awkward.  The movie has this presentation of wanting to put on the face of a psychological drama, but it's psychology is negligent to the point that it would be better if it were just a basic romcom with a goofier plot device setting everything into motion.  When the movie does explore psychology, it's very swift and tossed aside, choosing to focus more on Pattinson's neuroticism than Zendaya's emotional state, which feels like it should be equally, if not more, important.  I spent the entire runtime waiting for this movie to get to the point, to let me know why it's telling this specific story, because often it feels like it's message is "Conquering your demons is pointless because you'll always be judged for having them in the first place," which doesn't really justify the story it has chosen for itself.  It begins to feel like the movie's idea of being "provocative" is the same as being someone who says offensive things to be funny, when it's just a roundabout way to be an asshole.  It's just pressing buttons for the sake of pressing buttons, not bothering to understand their function.  The most frustrating thing about The Drama is that it has no reason to open its can of worms except to set up an "elevated" take on cringe comedy.  I'm sorry, movie.  You brought this up.  Using it as a prop for laughs just makes you look like you're making an ass out of yourself.

A Great Awakening

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Faith

Director:  Joshua Enck

Starring:  Jonathan  Blair, John Paul Sneed

A Great Awakening is the story of Christian George Whitefield, a preacher who befriended Benjamin Franklin and aided in unifying the colonists before the Revolutionary War.  That sounds like a movie I'd be interested in seeing, just not this particular telling of it, which is bellowing and obnoxious.  The film is at its most palatable when it's just a basic schmaltzy melodrama.  When the movie decides to dive head first into faith focused storytelling, it amps up that vibe to sensory overload, where the movie is so overbearing that it becomes uncomfortable to watch.  It does nothing with subtlety, and it's only concept of drama is having people look off into the distance.  The film mostly consists of Whitefield preaching, loudly and trashy, using the tone of his voice to emphasize the importance of religion while admirers look as if they're about to break down and cry because of it.  I guess you can consider it drama on the basis that they're trying to manipulate emotion, it's just not good drama because the manipulation is limited to a certain type of viewer.  And to be frank, the movie kinda feels like it's talking down to them, so that type of filmgoer should probably be pissed that they're being treated as if they're a toddler.  If the movie's sole ambition is to preach to the choir, then it's the best movie ever made.  If it actually thought it was insightful or dramatically powerful, then this movie is a shitshow.  That's a shame because there is a basic competency to its filmmaking that a lot of faith based media lacks.  It just utilizes it in all the wrong ways.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy

Director:  Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic

Starring:  Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Brie Larson, Donald Glover, Benny Safdie

I don't know if the fact that the last Mario movie was pretty much nothing but visual noise kept me in a passively curious mood for this sequel, but I actually enjoyed The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.  Personally, I liked it more than the first.  While it's just as busy as the first film, it's not as eratic and it actually follows a plot.  It also stops trying to explain the Mario universe to the audience like they're five, having a more "Just roll with it" vibe.  The Mario universe is nonsense, so it's better to just treat every corner as nonstop mayhem.  That doesn't help people who only see it as nonsense, though I think The Super Mario Galaxy Movie kinda works fluidly in that sort of classic Saturday Morning Cartoon or Japanimation vibe where the only request it asks of its viewer is a child's imagination.  It wouldn't be the first time Mario asked that of his audience.  I mean, have you seen the Super Mario Bros. Super Show?

The new movie takes place in the aftermath of previous movie, where Bowser has been defeated and Mario and Luigi are living peacefully among the Mushroom Kingdom, doing odd jobs to keep things running smoothly, which leads them to their new dinosaur buddy Yoshi.  The son of the great King of the Koopas, Bowser Jr., then takes the outerspace princess Rosalina captive, who is the lost sister Princess Peach never knew she had.  Cue adventure into the wacky galaxy, with lots of Easter eggs and cameos (including one that was spoiled the week before release, but is still fun and welcome).  A lot of the movie is fetch quest, the whole "We need to go here, but first we need to go here and do this" experience, which is what the previous movie was.  This movie didn't seem so digressive and dismissive about it, which makes the story feel more linear than last time.  It feels like the characters are moving in a straight line more and things are actually getting accomplished, so that's good.  The film leaned less into cringe humor than last time, which was also welcome, and I got a few chuckles here and there.  It's a fully pleasant experience.  Being pleasant doesn't necessarily equate being good, but I've always argued that being "bad" and being "simple" are also not the same thing.  Conversely, complexity also doesn't necessarily begat quality.  Just look a few entries above at The Drama.  That movie is complex as all hell, but it just never got its own shit together.

Flaws in the movie include its use of Bowser, which is pretty weak from start to finish.  Then there is Yoshi, who will undoubtedly be the film's biggest merchandising character, but he doesn't actually do anything in the entire movie.  Casting Donald Glover as the beloved dino isn't necessarily a flaw itself, but it's certainly is one of the most bizarre stunt castings in film history because there is no legitimate reason a brand name actor should be playing this role.  The film also, like the previous film, doesn't have much of an emotional core.  The biggest letdown of the entire movie is the idea of Peach finding a family she never knew she had and the movie doesn't really lean into that.  Rosalina is more of a McGuffin than someone Peach has any real emotional connection to.  And finally, for a movie based on the game Super Mario Galaxy, it feels less epic and grand scale than you'd expect from an intergalactic adventure.  There are memorable setpieces, the movie is just less "big" than I would have liked.

However, I think of the three Mario movies that have been made thusfar (including the Bob Hoskins/John Leguizamo classic), I'd say Galaxy might be the best one.  The 1993 film is arguably the most fascinating movie of the bunch, but of the goals each movie set for themselves, Galaxy was the one that came closest to accomplishing them.  I'd say that's a level up.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Ready or Not 2:  Here I Come ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reminders of Him ⭐️⭐️

They Will Kill You ⭐️⭐️

Undertone ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dolly ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pillion ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️

Wuthering Heights ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Greenland:  Migration ⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 13 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Alpha

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Julia Ducournau

Starring:  Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey

The new body horror flick from Raw and Titane director Julia Ducournau has proven divisive even within the niche fangroup of the divisive filmmaker.  I haven't seen Raw or Titane and know little about them other than being about cannibalism and/or having sex with cars or something, so I have no preconceived notions of what to expect from Ducournau.  Maybe that works in Alpha's favor, because it's interesting, if unwieldy.  Alpha is about a girl who gets a tattoo from a stranger, and in the aftermath is treated as a carrier of a disease that turns people into marble by everyone around her.  The movie deals with a lot of metaphors, such as teenage rebellion, carrying trauma, and outcast status.  These are all themes that should go well together, but the movie somehow finds a way to make them feel disjointed and unrelated, even when they are intertwined.  It's never uninteresting to see what the movie is doing with these ideas, both narratively and visually, which makes up some ground without actually fully mending the fracture it has created within itself.  Alpha is over two hours long, which is quite a hike to humor its eccentricities.  There are perks along the way but few rewards.  Do I recommend it?  Only if you're curious about it.  Otherwise, it's hard to justify saying that one needs to seek it out.

Forbidden Fruits

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror, Comedy

Director:  Meredith Alloway

Starring:  Lily Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, Gabrielle Union

For those who love The Craft, Charmed, Practical Magic and all that witchcrafty media but demand it to be more like Mean Girls meets The Devil Wears Prada, Forbidden Fruits is looking to fill that void.  A group of mall fashion store sales ladies take in a new hire, who also becomes a part of their coven in their afterhours.  Playing on the title, each one has a fruit-inspired name:  Apple, Cherry, Fig, and Pumpkin.  I honestly didn't know pumpkin was considered a fruit until this movie, but I also never thought about it.  Toss that into the "Tomato is also a fruit, probably" pile of information I'll never use.  Anyway, it adds to the vibes of this movie, and this movie is nothing if not about vibes.  Honestly, it seems solely about vibes.  I would have liked a narrative to go with them, but I also think this movie would consider me a loser and ignore me if it were a conscious sentient entity.  There are base aspects of this movie that I find very eccentric in a charmless way.  For example, I think a lot of the outfits in this movie look stupid, but I also know nothing about fashion, so maybe they're actually fire and I'm just old.  It all feels very intentional in what it is but it also feels like it's not going anywhere most of the time and is just there to make the normies jealous.  I'm not sure I understood this movie, right up to its end credits tag that I think is trying to set up a sequel but is so perplexingly presented that I don't know what it wants me to leave the theater with because it implies that the movie never finished its own story.  This movie is like a shallow popular girl.  Maybe she looks good with that hair but, if you got to know her, she really isn't that interesting.

Holy Days

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Drama

Director:  Nat Boltt

Starring:  Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes, Elijah Tamati, Jacki Weaver

This quirky indie with tonal shifts that will give you whiplash hails from New Zealand, chronicling three nuns on a road trip with the goal of saving their modest little convent.  Holy Days was made with the hypothesis that nuns are funny when they are sassy, but it can't deliver because it doesn't understand that sass is more than raising your eyebrows, putting your hand on your hip, and emphasizing random words that mean nothing.  A lot of the punchlines are just random nonsense, and I guess we're supposed to laugh at it because it came out of the mouth of a nun.  An example comes early on, when the little boy who occompanies them cracks a remark about the age of the ladies.  One of them pipes back "I may be old, but at least I'm not pregnant!"

...what?

That about sums up what my whole experience with the movie was, where it would just throw out random word salad and call it a joke.  The film's sense of humor is that if it presents itself as off-balance enough, someone might consider it off-beat, in a simple family friendly way.  One could easily show a child this movie and they could easily understand it, even if the simplistic logic of the film will puzzle a fully formed adult.  And if one wants to have a minorly religious-themed film to counter more outrageous Nickelodeon fare, the this movie might do the job.  Holy Days' sole ambition is to bring simple joys, which makes calling it out on its bullshit feel mean-spirited because of how harmless it's presentation is.  It's just a charmless movie that lacks competent story craftsmanship, and it grows increasingly irritating that it wants me to smile at it when it's not doing anything.

They Will Kill You

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action, Horror, Comedy

Director:  Kirill Sokolov

Starring:  Zazie Beetz, Myha'la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette

So blatantly a copy of Ready or Not that they stole a joke directly from that movie and used it in the trailer (and it's not the only joke it steals, either), They Will Kill You uses the exact same concept and leans heavier in being an action exploitation homage than a suspense thriller.  Zazie Beetz plays a recent recruit in a posh hotel for the wealthy, only to fight for her life when they intend to use her for ritual sacrifice.  I was willing to overlook the film's lack of originality if it were fun.  I did not have fun watching this movie.  Honestly, I was surprised at how not into this movie I was.  It's actually shockingly dull for a movie this frantic.  It's almost as if there are too many scenes where everything is happening and they default to feeling as if nothing is happening.  The movie wants to win points with style and it certainly feels as if it were made by someone who had every Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez poster all over their college dorm, to the point where watching the movie is like being cornered at a frat party by this nerd and being drunkenly boasted to about how Kill Bill and Sin City changed their lives.  The movie is playful in spirit but lacking any actual reason to play along with it, as its small breather scenes where the movie tries to have a narrative housing a load of melodrama that feels like it was knocked out in ten minutes.  The action sequences feel remarkably unremarkable, despite how graphic they are, and they all feel similar to each other.  The only one that I kind of thought had any flavor was a fight in a darkened room with a flaming ax.  That's the only actual highlight to this movie, which fulfills a role as a whatever time-killer movie but gave me zero reason to appreciate it's cult film ambition.

You're Dating a Narcissist!

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Ann Marie Allison

Starring:  Marissa Tomei, Sherry Cola, Ciara Bravo, Marco Pigossi, José Maria Yazpik, Jonah Platt

An absolutely glowing Marissa Tomei plays a psychologist who published a book on narcissism finds out her daughter is getting married.  Tomei meets the groom cautiously, looking for signs of narcissistic behavior with his every move.  It's a budding idea for cute romcom wedding shenanigans, though it's one that is awkwardly presented.  I don't think I've ever seen a movie reject spacious terminology more than this movie, wanting the audience to know that the movie is about narcissism but hates saying the word "narcissist" because it's too long.  It shortens it to the word "narc," which is bizarre because that word already means something else, which seems to really irritate the screenwriters so they clunkily acknowledge it and double down.  It's really weird hearing the word "narc" used like this because the movie just arbitrarily decided the English language sucks and it should make up its own rules.  When getting into the actual meat of the movie, there are more promising notes than you'd probably expect for a through-the-motions romantic farce.  Its really the screenplay that lets it down because it doesn't pack deft plotting or comedic power, as most dialogue defaults to some form of "You're dating a narcissist!"/"No, I'm not!"  The movie can be cute, but that's mostly because Marissa Tomei and Sherry Cola are naturally charismatic.  When it comes to actually laying out the storyline, the movie has no poker face.  When the moment calls for subtlety, it tries to go for a bang and completely misfires.  There is very little to dislike about this movie, it's trying too hard to be goofy fun and not hard enough to make something out of itself.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Ready or Not 2:  Here I Come ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reminders of Him ⭐️⭐️

Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️

Undertone ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

How to Make a Killing ⭐️⭐️

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

BlackBerry ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The History of Sound ⭐️⭐️1/2

Killers of the Flower Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 12 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

I Live Here Now

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Julie Pacino

Starring:  Lucy Fry, Madeline Brewer, Sarah Rich, Lara Clear, Cara Seymour, Matt Rife, Sheryl Lee

A pregnant woman runs away from the stress of both her personal and professional lives, seeking refuge in a bizarre love hotel where weird shit happens.  It doesn't really matter, because it's all an excuse to get the ball rolling on a psychological nightmare narrative.  Symbolic, if hopelessly lost in admiring itself, I Live Here Now doubles down on visualizing feelings without bothering with cohesion.  It's mostly a tour of expressionistic oddities having to do with a torn psyche, though its metaphors aren't always easy to follow as the movie can get a little Alice in Wonderland with its offbeat stylings.  Whether I Live Here Now is worth watching depends on how patient you're going to be with waffling around in the torn apart environment it wallows in.  My feeling on the picture are summed up perfectly in this line of dialogue:  "It's a disgusting hot mess in here."

The Pout-Pout Fish

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Adventure, Comedy

Director:  Richard Cussó, Rio Harrington

Starring:  Nick Offerman, Nina Oyama, Miranda Otto, Jorden Sparks, Amy Sedaris

If Finding Nemo were made by a committee of boring people who think they understand the theory of whimsy without having personal imagination, it would result in The Pout-Pout Fish.  This film is based on a children's storybook series that, from what I can tell, is just about a gloomy fish that just has little tales of opening up to the outside world.  The feature film version of this story has the titular grumpy fish and a seahorse traveling across the sea to get a magic wish from a sparkly fish.  I'm not sure I understand the connection between this story and the morals of breaking free from being introverted, but I also haven't read the books, so for all I know this was some epic storyline at some point.  It feels like the point this movie is trying to make has to do with your actions leading to a better life as opposed to just hoping things get better.  It's a fine moral but it's in a very bland and repetitious package.  The Pout-Pout Fish is not very visually interesting and a few of its character designs feel like they're ripped from more notable movies, including Starfish who look like Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas.  The movie is also not very funny nor very spirited as an adventure, which is a deathblow to children's entertainment.  That being said, having sat through Charlie the Wonderdog and Tafiti:  Across the Desert just in the last few months, I know children can do worse than this.  So, if the choice was solely between these three movies, the obvious choice is The Pout-Pout Fish.  I don't think that should be the measure you should be aiming for, though.

Project Hail Mary

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure, Comedy

Director:  Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Starring:  Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce

The Martian author Andy Weir offers up another tale of a lonely man in outer space, which I'm assuming is his thing.  All I'm saying is if we're doing the epic space opera version of the Mystery Science Theater premise, he's the guy to call.  Project Hail Mary sees Ryan Gosling suit up and blast off into another solar system in an effort to research how to prevent a catastrophic global event that threatens humanity.  Along the way there, his entire crew dies, leaving him humanity's only hope, though he might recieve help from an unexpected source.  The film version of Project Hail Mary really underlines the "interstellar bromance" aspect of the novel, riding with a lovable odd couple.  A lot of the book's science-based problem solving is cut back to brief and dense info dumps as a result, but it's working with its heart before its noggin.  That's a little bit of a disappointment, because the movie suffers some pacing issues as it races through its plot for the sake of character comedy, but it's touching spectacle all the same and is a great time at the movies.  I think the adaptation of The Martian is a better and more-rounded movie, but Project Hail Mary does hit the spot if you want more movies to fill that niche that The Martian did.

Ready or Not 2:  Here I Come

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Thriller, Comedy

Director:  Matt Bettinelli-Opin, Tyler Gillett

Starring:  Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Nestór Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, Masa Lizdek

If you thought your honeymoon sucked, we're getting a look at what Samara Weaving is up to post-nuptuals in Ready or Not 2.  Taking place immediately after her bloodbath of a wedding night, Weaving's survival accidentally triggers a sudden death round where the powerful and wealthy Satanist families have to hunt her until dawn for the chance at the high seat of their council.  This time she isn't the only one running, as her sister Kathryn Newton has been handcuffed to her.  I'm not entirely sure why they needed to handcuff them together, as the only reason Newton is here is for leverage to make sure Weaving plays the game.  Putting her onto the field seems to defeat that purpose.  That's a sample of certain plotting that feels underdeveloped in this movie, even if it is a swift and exhilarating ride.  Ready or Not 2 is bigger and bolder than the original and arguably more fun, even if it's not better.  While the first film had a build of its unexpected surprises and sharp humor, Here I Come uses that film's peaks as the status quo, refusing to go underneath what the previous film did.  The only issue is that when you start at the ceiling, you can't escalate.  The movie is a barrage of chaotic action, graphic violence, and cheeky humor that is just hoping to keep its own momentum going for an hour-and-a-half.  Sometimes it does so ecstatically, such as a blind fight which is probably the most hilarious thing I'll see in any movie this year.  In other points, the movie can feel a little exhausted with how it hasn't stopped moving.  It concludes with a climax which is just different enough from the first film, if not as memorable.  The original Ready or Not ended with, what I'd argue, is probably a contender for what you would call a "perfect" ending.  It's one of the most satisfying conclusions to any movie because it's exactly what needs to happen and what you didn't know you wanted to see.  The ending to this film is less poetic and gleeful but it's an interesting setpiece with great costumes and sets.  Ready or Not 2:  Here I Come is worthy of the original but will always live in its shadow because it just isn't the same perfect little package.

Vampires of the Velvet Lounge

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Comedy

Driector:  Adam Sherman

Starring:  Mena Suvari, Dichen Lochlan, Stephen Dorff, Rosa Salazar, Lochlyn Monro, India Eisley, Sarah Dumont, Tyrese Gibson, Tom Berenger

A trio of vampire seductresses catfish naive innocents into their evil lair through dating apps in this campy attempt at aloof entertainment.  Vampires of the Velvet Lounge is weird and dumb, and while it's not exactly endearing, it's oddly intriguing as a piece of eccentric devil-may-care outsider art.  The movie's self-aware tone does help make it an easier pill to swallow than it would have been if it had been played straight.  The film's sense of humor is more from its lack of taking anything in its content seriously rather than any comedic ambition, as the funniest thing in the movie is the fact that it seriously tried to pass off Stephen Dorff as being 39.  The movie often runs in circles in trying to come up with things for its characters to do, detouring in senseless ways that are either supposed to dramatic or surprising but never organic.  The trio of vampire hotties do sexy things until one of them has an existential crisis for no reason, coinciding with a pointless subplot with Tyrese Gibson playing the role of a lifetime:  a depressed, middle-aged divorced man.  I kinda vibed with vampire hunters Dichen Lochlan and Rosa Salazar as they were doing a goofy noir parody, but they really weren't given a whole lot to do.  But if the movie had actually centered on them and given them an actual plot to follow, this movie might have been an entertaining time-waster.  Instead they're pretty mopey, Salazar is trying learn how to twerk in a handstand because sexy or something, and they have group chats with Tom Berenger, who looks like he could have filmed most of his scenes on Cameo.  This movie is not really anything, but it wants to be a vibe.  It's maybe 25% successful at that, so I'll give it the slightest bit of credit for it.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Bride! ⭐️⭐️1/2

Crime 101 ⭐️⭐️1/2

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Iron Lung ⭐️⭐️

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Reminders of Him ⭐️⭐️

Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️

Undertone ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Anaconda ⭐️⭐️

Good Boy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

Is This Thing On? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We Bury the Dead ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Return to Silent Hill ⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 11 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Reminders of Him

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Director:  Vanessa Caswill

Starring:  Maika Monroe, Tariq Withers, Rudy Pankow, Lainey Wilson, Lauren Graham, Bradley Whitford

Colleen Hoover is the new Stephen King, said no one ever.  But she's getting major film adaptations at an accelerated rate, so she might as well be.  It Ends with Us might be remembered best for the intense drama of its production and subsequent legal proceedings as everyone sued the fuck out of each other but what gets lost in all of that is that before any of the dirty laundry was public, that movie raked in a shitload of money.  There's clearly a hunger in the romantic niche that has struck gold and we might as well keep churning them out.  Reminders of Him is equally as flawed as previous Hoover flicks but it also hits the notes that it needs to.  That probably primes it up as being a success, even if it isn't as powerful as it has the pretense of being.

Reminders of Him tells the story of a woman who has recently been released from prison, found guilty of manslaughter after an automobile accident kills her fiancée.  She tries to rebuild her life in their old hometown, longing to see the daughter she was separated from and forming romantic feelings for her deceased boyfriend's best friend.  Melancholy melodrama is the name of the game in this one, because it's about being sad and how everyone around you makes you sad, especially the people who make you happy.  This movie doesn't really allow its characters to have a personality outside of being droopy because of how life is unfair, as its only levity comes from a young girl with Down Syndrome who doesn't actually fit the tone of the film around her.  The ultimate issue with this movie is that most of its scenarios are manufactured for maximum sadness, not producing a sensible transgression between its characters because it wants its main character to wallow in self-pity.  There is little that's naturalistic about it and it doesn't exactly have a plot because it lacks actual progression in story beats, people just change their minds about things and sometimes events seem to escalate for almost no reason.  Romantic drama is a tricky genre because the tension of conflict usually hinges in internal emotion that needs to be conveyed through nuance and performance.  Every moment of this film wants to be weepy, which means there is little room for nuance as performers are constantly aiming for the same overworked note they've already achived.  Reminders of Him is very monotonous because it's the same tune on repeat until the movie decides it's time for the happy ending.  It will either make you cry or make you bored, depending one what you want from a movie like this.

The Secret Agent

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oscars Nominated:  Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role - Wagner Moura, Best International Feature Film, Best Casting

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Klebor Mendonça Filho

Starring:  Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tánia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cándido, Udo Kier

With just minutes on the clock, I finally check off the last Best Picture nominee off my list as I waited a preposterously long time for it to play at my theater because a fifteen dollar digital rental is fucking bullshit.  Sadly, I won't get to Arco for this very reason, so this will likely be my last big Oscar catch-up.

This movie takes place in 1970's Brazil (if you watched last year's I'm Still Here, you know what's going down because this is the same setting), where a man is targeted for assassination, and we follow him lying low and living among the people.  It's less "secret agent-y" than one might hope for a film with this title, as he doesn't have gizmos, invade secret lairs, nor carries a license to kill, so don't have high preconceptions about what this movie is.  It's more of a drama with slight paranoia thriller elements, as it has more to do with the type of life one lives under tyranny with a target on one's back and what that does to you and your loved ones.  I guess I'm not surprised this movie is being celebrated this year, given that it's a pretty on-the-nose parallel to the current American government and how its treating its own citizens, and the movie has a really wild digression into a propaganda satire that I thought was really funny.  I kinda wished the movie leaned more into itself because it's too restrained for my taste.  I was invested by certain ideas of the film but its tendency to just mosey about itself so casually caused its thriller elements to never fully take hold of me.  If the more personal elements had more pull, I'd probably say this was a yearly highlight.  In the end, I just found it a well-made curiosity.

Slanted

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Horror

Director:  Amy Wang

Starring:  Shirley Chen, Mckenna Grace, Fang Du, Meytreyi Ramakrishnan, Amelie Zilber

It's literal whitewashing as The Substance gets an ethnic spin.  An Asian high school student Shirley Chen grows up with an envy of the popular blonde Caucasian girls who gather all the attention.  In her efforts to become prom queen, she elects to partake in a surgery that turns her into bombshell white girl Mckenna Grace and finds that her popularity spikes.  Like that certain other body horror social satire that swept award season, Slanted has a lot to do with body image and the social stature of women based on said image.  Instead of attacking agism, Slanted goes takes a more specific criticism, rooting in the effect of culture celebration of a specific type of body image in skin color and the negative psychological effects on those who live outside of it.  Unlike The Substance, which featured a main character who sought to regain what she had lost, Slanted centers on a character who could never have it because of the way she was born.  The metaphor is a little off-balance because they're specifically targeting influncer culture.  I'm no expert on the social media scene but it seems like an area where most ethnicities thrive based on pretty looks and personality, and while top influencers might be of a certain type, ethnic influencers could still gather a large following.  But it's primarily a story of idealism and influencers are a modern take on idols.  The movie is very smart and very topical, though it loses some steam in simply being a Mean Girls spin on a very recent popular film that it's going to be difficult to avoid comparison to.  Those looking for a disturbing body horror film might find disappointment here, as the body horror element is light and confined mostly to the climax.  The movie is more of a high-concept fantastical drama of an Asian girl who longs to be something she's not and somehow getting her wish, and the abandonment of the traits that define her.  It's horror in the loosest version of the word, but it's an exceptional metaphor.

Undertone

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Ian Tuason

Starring:  Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco

A pair of paranormal podcasters look into a mysterious email that is sent to them featuring spooky audio recordings, where one begins to find them hitting a little too close to home.  Undertone is an excellent example of what can be accomplished with budget limitation, creating an entire horror experience utilizing a single location and a main actress who is holding attention directly on her.  The movie's primary fright delight is sound design, where its lead sacrifices one of her senses to the environment around her to listen to a separate environment that might be mirroring it.  It's also interestingly shot, with a heavy focus on the negative space that she happens to be inhabiting.  The plotting sometimes struggles to hit momentum, as it feels like the movie is trying to be Paranormal Activity through audio and sometimes stops and starts to relate personal drama that slows down the pace.  The movie's interest value spikes when they're delving deeper into the mystery of the audio recordings, though admittedly their podcast sounds like it kinda sucks because they play up basic Mulder and Scully archetypes that are meant to talk around in circles and not make any progress.  The podcast itself almost reflects the movie surrounding it, effectively made without being fully meaty.  But if your ambition is to show what you can do with a minimal cast and less than a million dollars, Undertone is a hell of a statement.

Oscar Winners

All the Empty Rooms ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

F1 ⭐️⭐️

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Girl Who Cried Pearls ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

KPop Demon Hunters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (N/A)

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Singers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Two People Exchanging Saliva ⭐️⭐️1/2

Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Bride! ⭐️⭐️1/2

Crime 101 ⭐️⭐️1/2

Dolly ⭐️⭐️⭐️

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Iron Lung ⭐️⭐️

Protector ⭐️

Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️

Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Wuthering Heights ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Cold Storage ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dracula ⭐️

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die ⭐️⭐️1/2

Solo Mio ⭐️⭐️

The Testament of Ann Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This Is Not a Test ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 10 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Bride!

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Adventure, Romance

Director:  Maggie Gyllenhaal

Starring:  Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz, Jake Gyllenhaal

One of my most anticipated movies of the year is, like last year, a Frankenstein movie.  This one not an adaptation of the novel, but rather an original story inspired by The Bride of Frankenstein.  Jessie Buckley stars as a dead woman who has been brought back to life as the companion of Frankenstein's Monster (Christian Bale).  As she struggles to reassemble her personal identity, the pair go on a Bonnie & Clyde style rampage across 1930's America.  Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has a lot of allegories for tortured womanhood that she wants to cram in one story, including spiraling questioning of self-identity, toxic relationships, and feminist rage.  She seems to have an idea of how they go together in her head but, in the film, they battle each other for dominance.  Gyllenhaal gets very expressionistic with the film, often trailing with poetic monologuing that invades the film in messy outbursts that trip up the narrative flow.

The movie has clear cut problems.  Whether it's worth seeing is going to depend on which ones get under your skin and whether the things it knocks out of the park make up for the flaws.  The idiosyncrasies of the film's presentation don't always work in the film's favor, but if a film is going to coast solely on vibes, may it have Jessie Buckley at the center to fully understand the assignment and positively devour the entire movie.  Buckley plays the title role while also taking a dual role in the form of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, who narrates the film in little black and white inserts where she waxes poetically about what is going on and also...possesses (?) the Bride at times(?).  It's a clear homage to 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, where Elsa Lanchester played both the Bride and Shelley in a prologue.  Gyllenhaal's take of Shelley is a cackling romanticized vision of Goth queen who does beatnik stage poetry, which I don't think is what Shelley was, but it's very much a pedestal that she is put on, so it works for the film Gyllenhaal made.  Christian Bale is less memorable as Buckley's monstrous partner because he's just a stiff who is obsessed with her, though he throws himself into several of the offbeat moments that he's given, including a random musical number that feels straight from The Mask.

The film has a lot to offer if you can ride how erratic it can be, often sacrificing cohesion for in-the-moment outbursts of creativity.  This feels less like a story and more like an interpretive dance.  To best enjoy the movie, one needs to flow with its current, which can surf some rocky waves.  The movie is amazing at its best moments and baffling at its worst, but it's always something to behold.

Dolly

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Rod Blackhurst

Starring:  Fabianne Therese, Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee, Max the Impaler

This grindhouse slasher homage sees a woman who is taken captive by a crazy woman who traps her in her house and treats her like she's her baby.  Dolly is made with stunning accuracy to the era that brought us movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, made by someone who may have a particularly unhealthy obsession with 1973's The Baby.  The main appeal of movies like this in the horror community always seemed to be that they made you feel dirty, like you were viewing something you shouldn't be seeing.  It's something Dolly achieves effortlessly because it's unafraid to make its viewers uncomfortable.  We have a string of awkward shock scenes, from the captive having her diaper changed to being breast fed.  Some of these ideas were more effectively brought to us in Barbarian a few years ago, though Dolly wants to do them with a particular framing in mind.  If there is is one thing it trips on with its style, it's that its recreation of this type of filmmaking is almost perfect with the exception of the actors, who are much more polished than we would traditionally see in what this movie is homaging.    The acting is too naturalistic to replicate a movie like this, but if one's primary complaint is that the acting is too good, then maybe the movie is doing just enough right.

For Worse

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Amy Landecker

Starring:  Amy Landecker, Nico Hiraga, Kiersey Clemmons, Bradley Whitford, Missi Pyle

Amy Landecker writes, directs, and stars in this little indie comedy where she plays a divorced woman who starts a semi-relatuonship with a man in his 20's at an acting class, only to fight with her own self-inadequacy when they attend a wedding together and she's around women half her age.  Landecker seems to have a lot on her mind in making this movie, being a story of an aging Gen X woman suddenly single in a world that is no longer focused on her generation and who is not quite sure how to handle that.  Landecker is the best thing about this movie because she's thoughtful, contemplative, and amusing throughout.  The movie she made with these ideas is probably too sitcom-coded for its own good, making it feel inconsequential in the wrong places.  Just about every character in the movie other than her feels like a shallow caricature, even the ones who have the largest roles.  This is especially true in her scenes with twentysomething Nico Hiraga, who doesn't have much of a role other than to be young and attractive.  Landecker's lack of chemistry with her youthful co-star is really the thing that lets the movie down.  Its not just romantic chemistry, they don't really have comedic chemistry, either.  It also extends to the immediate supporting cast, who all are trying to bring their own vibe of humor to different places but all seem to be working on their own separate frequencies, creating a scattered attempt at a comedy.  The movie can be amusing at times, while also a little flummoxing when it chases a bit that isn't hitting the mark.  But I did appreciate the effort in what the movie was trying to do.

Hoppers

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Adventure, Science Fiction

Director:  Daniel Chong

Starring:  Piper Curda, Bobby Moyniham, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Meryl Streep

Pixar's latest sees a teenage environmentalist trying to stop freeway construction from destroying a local glave, so she does the only thing she can do...she infiltrates a science lab and plants her consciousness into a robot beaver body to communicate with the local wildlife.  It's just logic!  It feels like the setup is too complicated for a "human becomes animal something something nature is important" movie.  After all, doing a naturalist message with robots feels a little deflating.  By comparison, Brother Bear wasn't a great movie but it did its premise with spirituality, which got to the point much more efficiently.  Hoppers is pretty fun, though.  That accounts for something.  The movie can be a little overzealous with its enthusiasm for itself at times, sometime to a distracting to degree.  The trailers plastered the self-aware "This is just like Avatar!"/"THIS IS NOTHING LIKE AVATAR!" joke in a way that made me hesitant about this movie, because it's a bad joke that's thrown in to deflect base comparison.  I had doubts that the movie wouldn't be beyond this level of writing but, I will admit, it proved me wrong.  The comedy is rapid fire and it hits at an above average ratio, a lot of it is more varied that the advertisements let on.  Some of it is casually dark, which invokes a unique vibe within the movie.  It's a movie that kept surprising me with what it was willing to do to keep its audience engaged, and I admire that the movie put in the work because when it begins to pay off, the wait is worth it.  Its tendency to overthink its narrative hurdles still leaves me wanting but this movie turned out a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

Protector

⭐️

Genre:  Action

Director:  Adrian Grünberg

Starring:  Milla Jovovich, Matthew Modine, D.B. Sweeney, Don Harvey, Arica Himmel, Michael Stahl-David

Milla Jovovich IS Liam Neeson IN Taken 4:  Momma's Home!  Jovovich stars as a soldier with a particular set of skills who finds her daughter taken by a sex trafficking ring, who then goes through hell and high water to get her back.  Not gonna beat around the bush, we've all seen this movie before.  The question is whether it's worth watching again with Milla Jovovich in the lead?  The answer is no.  I enjoy a dumb Jovovich movie, and this movie still tested my limits.  It's not just that its retreading well-worn ground, it's that it does so without actual vigor.  The movie is a dull drum of Jovovich walking through halls, looking pissed, without worthwhile action scenes to cut her loose in.  The movie also doesn't settle for being a Taken clone, feeling the urge to clone other action movies along the way, most notably First Blood as a former superior officer warns all the local law of how dangerous she is and seeks to bring her in.  With all these "influences," the film becomes a narrative mess that can't maintain any sort of momentum.  However, it does have a conclusive narrative turn at the end that does explain some of its unusual plotting quirks.  I'll give the movie a little bit of credit for being ballsy in the home stretch.  If only it weren't one of the worst action films I've ever seen while getting there, maybe I'd have cared.

Oscar Nominations

The Alabama Solution (N/A)

All the Empty Rooms (N/A)

Arco (N/A)

Armed Only with a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (N/A)

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blue Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butcher's Stain ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butterfly ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Children No More:  "We and Are Gone" (N/A)

Come See Me in the Good Light ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cutting Through Rocks (N/A)

The Devil Is Busy (N/A)

Diane Warren:  Relentless (N/A)

Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2

F1 ⭐️⭐️

Forevergreen ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A Friend of Dorothy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Girl Who Cried Pearls ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It Was Just an Accident ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Jane Austen's Period Drama ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2

Kokuho (N/A)

KPop Demon Hunters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Lost Bus ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (N/A)

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Perfect Neighbor ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Perfectly a Strangeness (N/A)

Retirement Plan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Secret Agent (N/A)

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Singers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Sirāt (N/A)

The Smashing Machine ⭐️⭐️1/2

Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Three Sisters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Train Dreams ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Two People Exchanging Saliva ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Ugly Stepsister ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Voice of Hind Rajab ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Crime 101 ⭐️⭐️1/2

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die ⭐️⭐️1/2

How to Make a Killing ⭐️⭐️

Iron Lung ⭐️⭐️

Pillion ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️

Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Solo Mio ⭐️⭐️

Wuthering Heights ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Cold Storage ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mercy ⭐️1/2

The Moment ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Strangers:  Chapter 3 ⭐️1/2

Whistle ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Ella McCay ⭐️⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Lurker ⭐️⭐️

The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 9 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Dreams

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Michel Franco

Starring:  Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Rupert Friend

Jessica Chastain is having an affair with illegal immigrant ballet dancer Isaac Hernández who she maintains a controlling relationship over.  It's hard to put this movie in a box because I can't quite tell what the intent is.  It's not a movie about ballet.  It's not an erotic thriller.  It's not a story about immigration.  I think it's a steamy sex drama about a toxic power dynamics but it's more interested in the sex than giving the relationship any actual depth.  The movie only has a pulse when it's about frentic fucking, with Chastain and Hernández stripped naked and pawing at each other, faces dug deep into each other's naughty bits.  The film treats everything else is just something to get through until they get naked again.  The lack of real dramatic power hinders the film, especially since Chastain brings her game to her socialite seductress while Hernández feels like a clueless participant.  Hernández is a talented dancer but he's not a very confident actor.  He offers the screen a well-toned body dry-humping Chastain and not much else.  Too much of the movie rides on the shoulders of an admittedly handsome player who just isn't ineresting.  It's a movie that seems written entirely around its ending, which takes some dark and taboo twists and turns that not everybody will be okay with.  When it's just a movie about Chastain graphically describing a blowjob, the movie is serviceable.

Pillion

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Harry Lighton

Starring:  Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård

If you ever watched Harry Potter when you were younger and thought to yourself "These movies would be better if everyone was adult LGBTQ, the wizard school was a sex dungeon, and Dudley showed his bare ass in every scene," do I have a movie for you.  Harry Melling plays a shy gay man who meets intimidating hunk Alexander Skarsgård, who takes Melling in as his live-in BDSM sex pet.  Like Dreams, Pillion is about sexual power dynamics, though Pillion is more disecting of them.  Pillion is very into the relationship of the dominating and the submissive, particularly the latter.  Melling is portrayed as a introvert, desperately seeking a romantic connection and, when he finally finds one, it's in a man who's only interested in a relationship where domineering control of the weaker partner is the point.  Melling is both uneasy about it while also pretty into it, which likely has to do with his coddled lifestyle before this point.  There is some agitation, as Melling isn't entirely uncomfortable with the dynamic but grows concerned with the coldness of relationship, longing for something emotional to go with the physical.  It's not quite a love story, but it's an interesting story that examines sex's relationship to love and whether one can be fulfilling without the other.

Scream 7

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror, Mystery

Director:  Kevin Williamson

Starring:  Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Isabel May, Matthew Lillard, Roger L. Jackson, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Joel McHale, Anna Camp, Mckenna Grace, Celeste O'Connor, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Asa Germann, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Tim Simons

Oh boy.  It's another one of those "elephant in the room" movies, where something about it probably needs to be addressed when bringing it up.  The production of Scream 7 has been so rife with so much toxicity that one wouldn't be blamed for backing away from the movie and just saying "No."  The obvious instance is the firing of Melissa Barrera, who was let go for a sharing "controversial" political opinion that is, in all honesty, boiled down to "Maybe war crimes are bad."  The entire situation was tactlessly handled by the studioheads, with their public shaming of her being one of the grossest things I've ever seen producers do in full view of the public.  With the fallout of that particular incident, it would be easy to wash one's hands of this movie entirely.  Less public was the interchanging directors for the film, with Radio Silence confirming in the book Your Favorite Scary Movie that they were pretty much left behind by the studio because they wanted to make the movie Abigail before they made Scream 7 while the studio wanted to fast-track another movie, which is somewhat ironic because Scream 7 stalled and delayed immediately after the Barrera incident and they would have had plenty of time to finish that and come back.  Instead, Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon was brought on board to meet the deadline, only to leave the movie because of the studio decision to fire Barrera really gutted the story he wanted to tell.  Eventually, the film rebuilt itself at the hands of two people the franchise had previously wronged in the past:  Neve Campbell, who was lowballed in her salary negotiation for her unrealized role in Scream VI, and Kevin Williamson, the original writer of the Scream franchise who sold his rights to the series off after the hellish experience of making Scream 4.  By bringing Campbell and Williamson back, the producers made the bold declaration that they were making amends for the wrongs of the past and exploit these people to cover their asses for the wrongs they were currently doing. 

I swear, between this and the Weinsteins, the Scream franchise really needs to stop being owned by awful people.

I did have an internal discussion with myself over whether I was going to see this movie.  The conclusion I came to is that the creative forces who came in to ultimately make the movie are innocent.  I was interested in what their creative output would be, even if the road to it was a complete bloodtrail.  Was Scream 7 worth all of this?

Sigh.

Okay, let's unpack this.  Scream 7 returns the focus to our favorite final girl Sidney Prescott, who is raising her own teenage daughter, Tatum (named after Rose McGowen's ill-fated character in the original film).  But, you guessed it, a new Ghostface is in town, killing teens at Tatum's high school.  Sydney is extra troubled by this new killer, who claims to be Stu Macher, one of the thought-to-be-deceased killers from the original film.  Sydney races to save her daughter and find out if the killer actually is Stu or if this is an elaborate ruse using A.I.

It's a pretty okay premise, though I'm not sure if I gel with it.  Scream works best when it's a commentary on what the horror genre is currently doing.  Scream 7's meta seems start with A.I., but that's not really horror commentary but future doom-and-gloom culture commentary.  It's not nothing because you can see where they find a Scream movie within it, but it's also not fully developed to work within the stylings of this franchise.  The movie would have been a gutsier turn if it had sidelined the A.I. concept, at least for half the movie, and worked with the mystery of maybe it is Stu until there is reason to belive that it's not him.  But the movie pretty much injects the deep fake concept pretty quickly, which makes Matthew Lillard's return to this franchise feel much more hollow than Skeet Ulrich's return in the previous two films.

But as a horror ride, Scream 7 is pretty okay.  Mostly.  This is only Kevin Williamson's second film as a director, after 1999's heavily butchered Teaching Mrs. Tingle.  He has some good instincts for suspense, though I admit to missing Radio Silence's more brutal contemporary take on this franchise, whereas Williamson feels like a step back to the 90's.  The movie is watchable in the same way Scream 4 is watchable, it's cozy without much reinvention.  That's not exactly a problem, because Scream movies have survived through-the-motions presentations before by absolutely nailing the third act.  Scream 7 could have too but hinders itself with the most trash killer reveal of the entire series.  The finale of this movie completely shits its pants.  I'll admit that I had the killer(s) pegged early on (which is actually true of 5 and 6 also, but I was less underwhelmed by those), mostly because I had the thought of "This is an interesting actor/actress for this nothing role, I bet they're the killer" and I also caught an obvious lie in their dialogue.  The only thing I didn't have was a motive.  When the mask comes off and the monologue begins, it's just the stupidest shit I've ever heard.  And I've already sat through "We met on Reddit and hate Rian Johnson" in these movies.  That is the deathblow to any enthusiasm I might have for this movie.  The best things about any Scream movie are the prologue and the climax.  The prologue in this one is fine.  It's not as good as the sixth movie's.  Or the fifth's.  Or any of the other ones.  It's probably the worst prologue but it's a solid setpiece.  The climax, on the other hand, is atrocious.  Those two facts make this the worst Scream movie.

If you're one who loves this franchise but is really struggling with the idea of supporting this particular one, I think you can safely stay home.  Scream 7 has some inspiration but it's never used where it counts.  The entire franchise might have been better off just trying to reboot itself again instead of rushing out something half-baked.  But here we are and the damage is done.  Maybe Scream 8 will be less controversial and actually good.  Or maybe that's asking too much.

Undercard

⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  Tamika Miller

Starring:  Wanda Sykes, Bentley Green, Roselyn Sánchez, Berto Colón, Estella Kahiha, Xavier Mills, William Stanford Davis

This melodramatic misfire stars Wanda Sykes as a fight trainer struggling with sobriety who desires to reconnect with her son, who is also an up-and-coming boxer.  Sykes is going for a career best performance.  If the production applied itself as hard as her then maybe this movie wouldn't be this fucking boring.  Dullness dooms this movie about recovering from substance abuse and trying to reclaim your life, telling a familiar tale in a weak fashion.  The writing is bland and basic throughout, sometimes rushing through plot points while sticking with the mundane, thinking it's exploring humanity but actually just feeding a soap opera.  The movie does have some zest when it comes to the climactic boxing scene, but it's also just the climax of Rocky or Creed in a dumber package.  I threw in the towel on this one long before it was over.

Netflix & Chill

Frankenstein's Bride

⭐️

Streaming On:  VOD

Genre:  Horror, Action

Director:  Erica Duke

Starring:  Emma de Maria, Tayla Cecere, Nick Launchberry, Connor Kennedy, Lucas Andrews, Lisa Fanto, Rob Wells, Joshua Davies-Thane

Our friends over at the Asylum, the studio that brought us the MST3K classic Atlantic Rim, just dropped their latest mockbuster, this time riding off the coattails of Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! next week.  Guess who paid money to watch this?

I don't always watch their movies but I'm always interested (read:  lightly amused) to hear what's going on at this little studio.  Even still, I don't think I have a definite set of rules as to what I will sit down and watch from them.  I think I'm willing to give them a look if I find the title ticklish (like a Sharknado) or if they're ripping off a movie where an ultra-low budget version sounds really funny to me (like an Atlantic Rim).  I also will probably sit down and watch them if their idea is just really weird (like that time they did a Sherlock Holmes movie with a dinosaur).  Then there are cases like Frankenstein's Bride, where it's tangential to some sort of intellectual property that I have a great fondness for.  The idea of Asylum doing a Frankenstein movie sounded interesting enough to me, but the idea of Asylum doing a Bride of Frankenstein movie...well, that's an instant purchase.  Asylum doing their wonky movies based on public domain gothic literature feels like it's something that they could have chased long ago, but the sad fact is that they leech off of the marketing campaigns of movies much bigger than them and they probably wouldn't assume they could sell them.

If only Asylum did their own version of Wuthering Heights to pair with the Margot Robbie movie.  Just think of how insane that would be.

Asylum's take on the Frankenstein tale starts off at the wedding of the Monster and the Bride, with Victor Frankenstein himself consecrating the marriage personally (not just a mad scientist, he's also a priest, apparently).  The nuptials are stormed by a gang of ruffians, who claim they are the angry cousins of Henry Clerval, which is the first point in the movie where I laughed out loud.  If you haven't read the Frankenstein novel, Henry Clerval is Victor's best friend, who was ignorant of the experiments and was murdered by the monster because Victor decided against creation of the Bride.  The idea that Victor is so in favor of Monster/Bride love and Henry is still murdered for some reason, providing a doorway into a group of antagonist characters was really funny to me.  It turns out that the Henry of this movie was more of a sinister accomplice and sought to use Victor's work to make himself immortal and awaken an army of corpses to do his bidding.

I'm going to consider this official Mary Shelley canon from now on.

So anyway, the Clerval gang kills the monster, burns the Bride alive, and kidnaps Victor so he will tell them his secrets and resurrect Henry.  Meanwhile, the Bride is rescued by the family of the blind man the Monster befriended (we know he's blind because the movie wraps his face with a blindfold, otherwise we wouldn't be able to tell).  She then goes on a rampage to take out all of the Clervals and rescue Frankenstein so he'll bring her husband back to life.

So...

...this is certainly...

...a take...

It's not the dumbest thing I've seen a movie do with the Frankenstein storyline (I Frankenstein is probably still reigning champion), though there are certainly some, shall we say, "creative spins" on the Frankenstein mythos.  There seems to be vague familiarity with the source material, by which I mean it feels like people maybe skimmed it and tried to bluff their way through a grade school book report once.  The movie isn't so much a sequel to the Frankenstein tale that we know but rather a sequel to a Frankenstein tale they made up in their heads.  To be fair, the movie does explain its new lore.  Eventually.  The movie takes for granted that everyone knows certain things about Frankenstein, and it's probably right.  Ideas about Frankenstein are iconic:  the Monster, the Bride, the blind man, ect.  However, it's also a mistake because if you don't know this story, you won't know what the hell is going on, and if you do, you still be confused because it is borrowing a handful of elements from the book that it reinterprets for its own needs but it keeps the specifics of its reinterpretation to itself for about an hour.  Victor is less tortured and more optimistic but we don't know this because he has been kidnapped.  The Monster is a person reanimated with memories of his past life but we don't realize this because he is disposed of early in the movie.  Henry is a maniacal evil supervillain.  Pardon us for not knowing this because he's already dead.  The movie eventually lets the audience in on all of this but only after it has run around with its nonsense for a good long while.

I kinda dig that this movie is about the Bride being a rampaging beast who wants revenge on the people who left her for dead.  It feels like Asylum doing their take on Kill Bill or I Spit on Your Grave.  They could have leaned into that more but a good chunk of the movie features the Bride sitting in place, being angry, and eventually the bad guys come to her one by one.  The Bride herself looks like Liza Minnelli with scar make-up glued to her face (sometimes it looks like it came loose and dangles off of her and nobody noticed).  It's pretty funny to watch her stomp around a forest in her tattered mini-dress screaming "CLERVALS!"  There's even a moment where she gets supercharged by electricity and grows to Hulk size to smash an undead army.

That last point draws some contention, though.  I haven't watched Asylum movies in a while, so I haven't been tracking their progress.  Their CGI never looked like anything seen in this movie, though.  This leads me to believe a lot of the effects work in this is AI generated.  This doesn't exactly surprise me.  Asylum seems like the exact type of studio to be an early adopter of AI.  But I get it.  They make cheap movies that nobody takes seriously.  They're pretty much in an "Everything to gain and nothing to lose" mindset because the people who hate Asylum films can't hate them more and the people who actually do enjoy their movies (God bless their souls) probably don't care.  To scold them for this seems pointless.  Still, if you're anti-AI in filmmaking, this movie utilizes a lot of it, especially in the climax with a bunch of zombies fighting a giant woman.  I find myself more charmed by the production when it's just barely under the quality of a syndicated television program in the 90's, utilizing sets that look anacronistic to the time period it's set in, assuming it even has an idea that it's a period piece.

This movie is garbage.  I had a pretty fun time watching it, though.  I watched it because I wanted to see an Asylum Frankenstein movie and to say it wasn't that would be a lie.  I can't make suggestions of what would make it better because Asylum is gonna Asylum.  Love them or hate them, we have to find a way to coexist with them.  They aren't going anywhere.

Oscar Nominations

The Alabama Solution (N/A)

All the Empty Rooms (N/A)

Arco (N/A)

Armed Only with a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (N/A)

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blue Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butcher's Stain ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butterfly ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Children No More:  "We and Are Gone" (N/A)

Come See Me in the Good Light ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cutting Through Rocks (N/A)

The Devil Is Busy (N/A)

Diane Warren:  Relentless (N/A)

Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2

F1 ⭐️⭐️

Forevergreen ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A Friend of Dorothy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Girl Who Cried Pearls ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It Was Just an Accident ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Jane Austen's Period Drama ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2

Kokuho (N/A)

KPop Demon Hunters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Lost Bus ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (N/A)

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Perfect Neighbor ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Perfectly a Strangeness (N/A)

Retirement Plan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Secret Agent (N/A)

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Singers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Sirāt (N/A)

The Smashing Machine ⭐️⭐️1/2

Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Three Sisters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Train Dreams ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Two People Exchanging Saliva ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Ugly Stepsister ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Voice of Hind Rajab ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Crime 101 ⭐️⭐️1/2

GOAT ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die ⭐️⭐️1/2

How to Make a Killing ⭐️⭐️

Iron Lung ⭐️⭐️

Psycho Killer ⭐️

Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Solo Mio ⭐️⭐️

Wuthering Heights ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Clika ⭐️

Dead Man's Wire ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Father Mother Sister Brother ⭐️⭐️⭐️

H Is for Hawk ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Return to Silent Hill ⭐️

Shelter ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Voice of Hind Rajab ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Worldbreaker ⭐️

Coming Soon!