MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 3 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Brutalist

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama

Director: Brady Corbet

Starring: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Isaach de Bancolé, Alessandro Nivola

Emerging as an award season frontrunner, The Brutalist finally opened nationwide this weekend. As far as I was concerned, it could take its time. I need to mentally prepare for a four-hour ballbuster. I still wasn't ready for it, but I cleared an evening to watch this monolith anyway. The verdict is that the hype is real, and the movie is great. Forgive me if my enthusiasm is tempered, because I am exhausted. But something needs to be said for how investing the story is. We live in a world where this movie is four hours long and Wolf Man is a hundred minutes, and somehow the latter is the bigger slog. I don't blame you for not wanting to watch this movie, though. It's one of those movies that is a commitment. Not all of us are ready to go steady yet, baby.

The Brutalist is an immigrant story, seeing Adrien Brody playing a post-WWII Jewish man immigrating from Hungary to the United States, where he spends many years going through highs and lows as an architect. The movie has a smart critique of the "American Dream," showcasing initially idealism, eventual hardship, limited success, while eventually facing the problem that despite the open promise that America provides, it hides a xenophobic underbelly. As much as it is an immigant story, the film also is the tale of an artist, one that displays talent while struggling to have many appreciate his vision. The film is ride-or-die on its production design, which thankfully puts forth an effort on designs that look period specific, while also timeless enough to look amazing through a modern lens. That's the tip of the iceberg of the film's craft, which is top notch, both in front of the camera and behind. The acting is uniformly excellent, commanded by Brody every time the camera meets his face. There are elements to the craftsmanship this film that remind me of The Godfather, from the cinematography to the lighting to the quiet casual approach to its drama.

The sunshine and roses are limited, and it does creak the longer it goes on. The first half is considerably stronger than the second, where the film begins to succumb to several vices that it had been masking. The movie comes damn close to soiling itself in the home stretch, as there's a plot twist toward the end that's mediocre shock value disguised as metaphor that can't scrub away the stink of trashy nonsense no matter how good the movie around it is. It comes close to really downgrading the movie for me, but I understood the intention enough that I elect to ignore it in favor of praising the film's best aspects. By this point in the movie, I was rooting for it to keep my interest, so I started battling my own misgivings. If your movie makes me want to believe it's a powerhouse despite flaws staring at me in the face, I'll take that as a sign that you created something worthwhile.

One of Them Days

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Comedy

Director: Lawrence Lamont

Starring: Keke Palmer, SZA, Katt Williams, Janelle James

We've all had one of them days. That's the premise of this goofy comedy, where Keke Palmer and SZA play roommates who find that their rent money is missing, and have to come up with the cash real fast, as it's the first of the month. Along the way, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, because it's "one of them days." I found myself reminiscing about the old Ice Cube/Chris Tucker vehicle Friday while watching One of Them Days. Admittedly, I haven't seen Friday in decades, so the comparison might not be apt, but I did get that sense that this movie could be a similar seminal favorite of a generation about people having a bad day, are tired of adulting, and just want to stop. It's a pretty funny movie with a rousing duo at its center. Keke Palmer and SZA have electric chemistry on display and reliably bring laughter to the audience. They're playing a different ballgame than the filmmakers, who struggle to keep up with their energy. That's really what drags this movie down for me, because I felt the directing wasn't up to the task of creating a comedy like this. It often seems careless of how to frame its comedy and gagwork to emphasize for the biggest laugh, letting the cast do the legwork, settling for "funny enough" instead of hysterical. But the movie is a good time, and is more sturdy than you might expect going into it.

Wolf Man

⭐️⭐️

Genre: Horror

Director: Leigh Whannell

Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger

Every generation needs their own Universal Monster legacy, I suppose. The black and white classics seem quaint by today's standards, but while their shocks have diluted over time, they're still fun and admirable films that stand out among their contomporaries. A select group of these films were recreated in full color with boundary pushing violence by Hammer in the 1950's, which are more uneven, yet still endearing. Then we went through a period starting in the 90's where studios pumped a lot of money into lavish period piece movies directed by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Kenneth Branagh, and Stephen Sommers, with varying degrees of success, but if I'm being honest, I have a soft spot for that entire generation because of how pretty all those movies wound up being (these are all production design MVPs, in my book). It was this period that we last saw the Wolf Man, in a movie that was overwhelmed with production woes and reshoots, losing a director during pre-production, only to finally be released in 2010 after many release date delays in a damage-controlled state by Joe Johnston. Like its kin from the previous decade, it was very pretty to look at. Its script left something to be desired, even as it layered aspects of other werewolf movies such as Werewolf of London, Curse of the Werewolf, and An American Werewolf in London, only creating the feeling of being overstuffed with elements that aren't enhancing each other. While Universal did kinda write this movie off, they were reportedly keen to bring back the Wolf Man even a few years after that film by working a new version of the character into their ill-fated "Dark Universe," with former Scorpion King Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson being their top pick for the role. We all know what happened to the Dark Universe, but unfortunately we'll probably never know just how close we got to a Rock-led Wolf Man movie.

Enter Leigh Whannell, the writer of Saw and Insidious, who sold Universal and Blumhouse on his idea for a modern reinvention of The Invisible Man that steered away from its source and instead became an allegory for domestic abuse. The film was one of the very few box office hits in 2020, because it was one of the few that had a healthy release window that year. He seems to have accidentally ushered in a fourth generation of these titans of monsters, as Blumhouse asked him back to do the same thing with the Wolf Man, while extending invitations to Evil Dead Rise director Lee Cronin to make yet another version of The Mummy and Whannell's Saw and Insidious director James Wan to helm a long-gestating remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Whether or not this sort of modern-retooling franchise is something they're intentionally doing, I'm not sure, but it's worth a shot. And if Invisible Man is anything to go by, they'd certainly stand apart from the films that preceed them. This particular take on the Wolf Man took origin in actor Ryan Gosling, who sold the pitch to Blumhouse as a vehicle for himself. He eventually dropped out, and I'm not sure just how much of the resulting movie is his idea and how much of it is Whannell's own work. Whatever the case, there isn't a lot here to take credit for.

This new take is about a family taking a trip in Oregon, only to be attacked by a feral man-beast in the woods, which in turn infects the father with the distinct werewolf curse. Werewolf/Wolf Man lore is played with in a very loose way in this film, as it tosses the idea of only changing during the full moon in favor of one transformation and done, you're a Wolf Man forever. It's all done to power the theme of protective paternal instinct and fear that one is turing into one's own parents, as we watch the transformation through the eyes of a family who is afraid of what the father figure is becoming while also hoping his love for them overpowers the beast that's rising. The original Wolf Man, at its core, is a story about a man turning into something primal and his fear that he might harm his loved ones. The good news is that this new family-centric take keeps that basic idea intact. The bad news is that it's done in a way that's neither exciting visually nor emotionally.

The most difficult thing about watching this movie is the same thing that made the last Wolf Man movie frustrating, where you see all the elements that have potential that the movie struggles to really tap into. The difference between that movie and this one is that the 2010 movie also had an element of over-the-top craziness to it that kept it spicy. This one just stays flavorless from beginning to end. You can tell what Whannell is getting at, but it's always elluding his grasp as he chooses to maintain a less-is-more strategy. He leaves a lot of this movie intentionally vague, wishing to maintain an aura of ambiguity by keeping the thing focused squarely on the people who are unfortunate enough to stumble upon whatever the fuck is going on and just want to flee it. This is a strength, in a way, as Whannell never bogs the film down with exposition. The problem is that he also offers up a movie with a lot of empty space in it. If he doesn't want to fill it with exposition, he needs to offer something else. He's hoping the family dynamic drama will do that, but while that seems promising in its opening, it gets more underwritten as it continues, making the film come off as one-note. I see what Whannell is trying to do. I wish it worked as well as his Invisible Man movie, but it's only halfway there.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Anora ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Babygirl ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Better Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Complete Unknown ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Conclave ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Count of Monte Cristo ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Den of Thieves: Pantera ⭐️⭐️

Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Homestead ⭐️

Kraven the Hunter ⭐️

The Last Showgirl ⭐️⭐️