Multiplex Madness
Back on the Strip
⭐1/2
Genre: Comedy
Director: Chris Spencer
Starring: Spence Moore III, Wesley Snipes, Tiffany Haddish, Raigan Harris, J.B. Smoove, Gary Owen, Bill Bellamy, Faizon Love
A struggling magician moves out to Las Vegas with hopes of becoming a successful act, but winds up being taken under the wing of former exotic dancer Wesley Snipes, who hopes to use the well-endowed kid to restart his stripping act. I like this movie's self-confidence, but it's delivery is pure amateur hour. There are chuckles to be had, but the movie's poor framing and joke delivery kills its best material. The movie has seasoned performers willing to elevate it like Wesley Snipes and Tiffany Haddish, but they're in a vehicle going down in flames, and if they ever deliver a good line of dialogue, the movie's clumsy presentation sucks the joy out of it. And to make matters worse, it's conclusion to its "romantic" subplot is a disaster of ADR and bad editing, concluding this movie on the worst possible note. It's an attempt at a sexy comedy that isn't sexy and seems timid about being funny.
Blue Beetle
⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Action, Superhero, Science Fiction
Director: Ángel Manuel Soto
Starring: Xolo Maridueña, Bruna Marquezine, George Lopez, Belissa Escobedo, Susan Sarandon, Adriana Barraza, Damian Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, Raoul Max Trujillo, Becky G
When I first heard they were making. Blue Beetle movie, my gut reaction was "But they already made a Blue Beetle movie, they just replaced Blue Beetle with Venom at some point and turned that character into a Blue Beetle that bites people's heads off." To Blue Beetle's credit, it's a much better version of that movie, only a softer PG-13 with less brain-eating.
Based on the DC comics character, Blue Beetle is the story of Jaime Eyes, who becomes bonded with a robotic alien scarab, but rich people want it, something something something, superhero antics. Blue Beetle's biggest detraction is also, in a sense, its biggest asset, because the movie feels specifically modeled after the type of superhero filmmaking approach you'd see in the 90's in movies like The Guyver or Star Kid. Blue Beetle is probably the best superhero to do this with, because, while this incarnation of the character wasn't introduced until 2006, he always seemed somewhat reactionary to era tropes like that. Still, the movie does struggle to overcome some cheesy triteness, but it wins points in displaying its tropes with its spry spirit and heartfelt tone. Even when the movie was testing how much corn I can endure in one sitting, I never had a bad time with it, because it always knew exactly how to present itself. Half of the appeal is its wonderful ensemble cast, who are such rich performers that the entertainment never dies. It does come at a cost, because the film is so focused on them that the relationship between Reyes and the scarab becomes too underplayed and the villains are way too generic, but who says charisma is free? At least it's a good time.
Landscape with Invisible Hand
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction, Comedy
Director: Cory Finley
Starring: Assante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, Tiffany Haddish
Oh look, another Tiffany Haddish movie. You know, including Haunted Mansion, this makes three of them playing at my theater. And they say superhero movies are what's taking over cinemas.
Or maybe Haddish is a superhero. I don't know what she does by night.
Very out-of-the-box sci-fi concept is set in a future where a benevolent alien colonization of Earth represents the elites, and those outside the alien cities are the poor living in the slums. This movie tells the story of a pair of human teens decide to broadcast their romantic relationship for alien study (which is easy money), which complicates when they have a falling out and try not to break up for their audience. It goes off in several directions from there, so this is just the tip of the iceberg. Landscape with Invisible Hand has difficulties with maintaining that all of its ideas are equally interesting or if it even has all that much story to tell with any given vignette of where its plot currently is, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a fascinating movie. It one that is so weird that I don't think a lot of people will necessarily connect with it, but the movie's spirit of lower class struggle in a world that will treat it like a dumpster has a lot of observation and heart. Ultimately, I think the movie will play best with creatives, because what it's essentially about is how our hardships inspire creative expression, which results in something off-beat and unconventionally beautiful.
Strays
⭐⭐1/2
Genre: Comedy
Director: Josh Greenbaum
Starring: Will Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, Will Forte
The dogs said bad words. There, now that you're up to speed, you've pretty much experienced the primary joke that Strays has to offer. It's an R-rated riff on a Homeward Bound style movie of lost animals trying to find their way home, only the characters are foul-mouthed street toughs, as a recently abandoned dog travels home to take revenge on his owner. There's not a lot to say about it other than it's very "What you see is what you get." If you've seen the trailer and it made you laugh, then the movie is just more of that. I found the movie an enjoyable diversion, though it's a bit too basic to really earn admiration past its gimmick. But it's got cute dogs and a couple laughs, so there's that.
Netflix & Chill
Bad Things
⭐1/2
Streaming On: Shudder
Genre: Horror
Director: Stewart Thorndike
Starring: Gayle Rankin, Hari Nef, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Rad Pereira, Jared Abrahamson, Molly Ringwald
I can just picture someone watching The Shining growing up and thinking "This movie needs to be gayer." That seems to be the underlining idea of Bad Things, to do the haunted hotel thing that drives people crazy thing but with LGBTQ characters. The character-work tries to generate friction between the two queer couples by making each one with romantic history with a partner of the other, but the love entanglements somehow make these characters less interesting because while there seems to be effort in portraying characters with a rich history with each other, it always falls back on such a dull trope that I can't get invested in. Pairing that with the ambiguity of the premise, which is a domino effect of weird happenings that just suddenly occur, and we're left with a movie that doesn't compel.
Here's the thing, though: Bad Things' approach to the horror genre is so unique that you can see greatness pumping through its veins. The way the movie inducts horror into itself is distinctly its own, with mundane cuts and pans that just show it as something unimpressive, leaving the viewer to just raise an eyebrow at the unexpected while thinking "Oh! Holy shit!" I don't think I've ever seen a horror film do this before, and there's something quite unsettling about it. There's something borderline psychotic about it, as if it's choosing to witness horror through the lense of a neutral observer. And it helps with the way the characters respond to it, because they aren't sure what to make of what they're seeing until they deem what's transpiring a threat, so it works with portraying characters who don't know they're in a horror movie. The movie also has confident craftsmanship under its belt, because the cinematography is distinct and interesting, utilizing a lot of symmetrical shots that can get frantic in the heat of the moment, but choose to show an eerie stillness in the quiet night. The film's humming scorework also helps it maintain its off-putting tone throughout the film. There have been quite a few swings at abstract horror works that didn't work this year, from Skinamarink to The Outwaters, but Bad Things feels like it's the only one that has a vision that it could have actually pulled together. The film's abstractness even adds to a sense of archaic madness, leaving one to believe that despite what the film is showing, everything is just in the mind. The film loses this thread, though. If it found a way to tie it off, I would have been over the moon. Instead it's just chaos and borderline nonsense.
A part of me wants to scream from the hilltops that this is the most brilliant horror movie I've ever seen. The fact that it absolutely does not work makes that completely devastating.
The Communion Girl
⭐⭐⭐
Streaming On: Shudder
Genre: Horror
Director: Victor Garcia
Starring: Carla Campra, Aina Quiñones, Marc Soler, Carlos Oviedo
This Spanish ghost movie doesn't reinvent the wheel on films about things that go bump in the night, but horror fanatics who are content with a tight, traditional package of well-staged jolts will find it a solid popcorn watch. This flick shows a group of partying teens who stumble upon the ghost of a communion girl, who leaves behind her doll for them to find. They soon find themselves haunted by the girl's rotted corpse, who causes them to pass out and wake up in a flooded underground where she tries to drown them. It's a very standard "debaucherous teens get stalked by something bad, and unlock the mystery of the past along the way" movie, but it's a good one. Atmosphere and dread are plentiful, and the cast is colorful enough to keep viewers invested in their outcome. Scare tactics include traditional haunting set-ups as setpieces, but it does get pretty bold with the depiction of its title spook. It never hides her, though a lot of what we see is in flash, but up close and clearly on camera. It feels like a compromise between the restrained and showing off the monster, which makes the film refreshing in that it seeks out that happy-medium rather than going too frustratingly far in one direction. The climax is a variation on Ring, though more ambiguous and perplexing. That might be enough for many to leave this flick scratching their head. While I won't spoil it, the one thing I will point out is that while the end reveal feels out of left field in how non-contextualized it is, it does let you ponder the actions of the ghost girl in a different light, which may encourage a rewatch. And the ambiguity gives the aura of a campfire ghost story (or an R.L. Stein novel), so it doesn't exactly hinder the spooky movie experience.
Heart of Stone
⭐⭐
Streaming On: Netflix
Genre: Action, Spy
Director: Tom Harper
Starring: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okenedo, Matthias Schweghöfer, Jing Lusi, Paul Ready
Heart of Stone is lavishly made with hopes of being hot franchise material, but its also several layers too thick on the espionage secrets, leaving one sick of its convolution withing ten minutes. Gal Gadot is an MI6 agent, which is actually a cover for being a super-spy for another spy organization called the Charter, who exist beyond governments to make sure the important missions go right. I'm going to be honest, this is a premise that has the pretense of being clever, but is actually a bad rabbit hole to wander down. Covert spy heroes in movies like this are already supposed to be the best of the best, and taking that premise and layering another group that are better than the best, it just makes the initial spy group feel superfluous and borderline incompetent. Basically the message they're sending is that the only person that's important is Gal Gadot, and everybody else is expendable cannon fodder who contribute nothing. James Bond always has the preference on being a solo act, and while Ethan Hunt is a super-spy of his own in an already super-spy organization, the members of his team serve a function. And as Heart of Stone goes on, it sheds everything and just lets Gadot do the super-spy thing without much care for what its premise was to begin with, which leads me to wonder why bother jumping through the double and triple agent hoops if they don't matter. Gal Gadot is very good as the lead, and if nothing else Heart of Stone proves that she could lead a spy franchise like this, she just needs a better premise to fuel her. This one is just both over-thought on its gimmick and somehow generic at the same time, because it's a gimmick and nothing else. It sucks, because I want to like this movie, but it's core just annoys me.
Maybe hand the keys to Mission: Impossible over to Gal Gadot when Tom Cruise finally gets tired of jumping off cliffs. That might scratch the itch this movie seems to have. Or maybe that's just a daydream of mine.
Talk to Me ⭐⭐⭐⭐
New To Digital
The Blackening ⭐⭐⭐
Elemental ⭐⭐⭐
New To Physical
Asteroid City ⭐⭐1/2
The Machine ⭐⭐
Coming Soon!
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