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)
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 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
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 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Shelter ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Voice of Hind Rajab ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Worldbreaker ⭐️
Coming Soon!
