Multiplex Madness
Anemone
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama
Director: Ronan Day-Lewis
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton
Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen after a brief retirement due to good ol' fashioned nepotism, headlining this movie directed by his son, Ronan, while also helping him with the screenplay. That screenplay sees Sean Bean raising the abandoned son of Daniel Day-Lewis, who has been living as a hermit in the Irish wilderness. As the now teenage boy begins to lash out, Bean travels to Day-Lewis's spot in the woods to convince him to come back and see his son. The movie is a very old fashioned stage drama made of a series of scenes of characters bitching about their trauma in closed settings. Ronan Day-Lewis tries to make it feel bigger with directorial flair and a manipulative score that hammers the viewer psychologically, but that only makes the movie louder and more melodramatic. It's script is an old-fashioned play to give the leads as many dramatic monologues as possible while all the added flourishes just make the film feel drawn out, which makes it also come off as a work of indulgence by two talents that are too lost in their own self-adoration to realize they've overdone it. The thing the film is missing is that it doesn't feel like it was made for a story, it feels like it was made to spit out chewed-up drama and maybe a story, a theme, an insight, or something might happen by happenstance. Despite this, I didn't hate it. The idea it's trying to sell is interesting enough that even though my attention span was taking a beating, I actually maintained interest just fine. If the movie didn't stretch itself out as much as it does, I might even have considered it a good movie. It's well-acted and quite striking most of the time. There are individual things about this movie that are excellent. It's just easy to get tired of it.
Bone Lake
Coyotes
Good Boy
The Smashing Machine
The Jungle Cruise reunion we've all been demanding, sadly in a package that is not Jungle Cruise 2. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays real life UFC fighter Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his girlfriend. He fights in the ring, they fight in the house. He does drugs, eventually kicks them. Comeback to glory? Not really. For a good deal of The Smashing Machine I was struggling with why Mark Kerr demanded a biopic. The only conclusion I could make is that Dwayne Johnson's agent was desperate to find him a dramatic role and this was better than nothing. It's not particularly inspiring nor did he seem to live a very interesting life. The Smashing Machine is more-or-less about a guy who did a thing for a little while and was stressed the fuck out. There's not really much of a story here, though there is an interesting framing device late in the movie where the film chooses to close on a shot of modern day Mark Kerr in a grocery store, living a mundane life. Maybe it's just a story of fleeting fame, about someone who became decently known for a little bit but eventually just became a regular dude. That's nice. The movie still isn't much of anything, even if Johnson and Blunt are pretty good in it. I do find it mildly amusing that Johnson is cast as Kerr in his prime thirty years ago when present day Johnson and Kerr are around the same age. I feel that there is probably some sort of irony in ageless superstar playing an aging has-been. I don't think the movie was smart enough to see that, though.
V/H/S/Halloween
To paraphrase that tagline that Lionsgate used to remind the world that they were milking a franchise, "If it's Halloween, it must be V/H/S." Shudder has now released five V/H/S films annually every October since 2021, bringing the found footage anthology's total to eight films, ten if you include spin-off films, and will be twelve in a few weeks if you include the Black Phone movies, which are unofficially considered "same universe" as Scott Derrickson's V/H/S/85 segment. This year's offering tasks its staff of horror filmmakers to create short films that fall on everyone's favorite night of fright, Halloween. The only established horror name of note in the pool this time is Paco Plaza, who directed the first three [REC] films and was arguably someone who utilized found footage more effectively than any other filmmaker back in the day. However, the most prolific filmmaker on the team is Alex Ross Perry, who is best known for indie dramas and documentaries. I don't know what convinced him to play in V/H/S/land but the more the merrier.
Bone Lake
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Starring: Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita, Marco Pigossi
The double entendre is both intentional and very much appreciated in Bone Lake, evoking the horror fanatic's love of violence and sex all in two words. The film sees a couple heading off to a romantic vacation at a giant rental home at Bone Lake for some down time and sexy time. Things get upended when another couple shows up with the claim that they have booked the house, and the pair share the space, which grows more tense as the other couple's behavior starts to become out-of-line. It took me a while to figure out why Bone Lake felt so familiar to me. Obviously, the first thing that came to mind was Barbarian, as the set-up is very similar but Bone Lake takes the more tried path instead of upending expectations. I also had some echoes of Heart Eyes, but I can't explain why without getting into spoilers for both movies. Eventually, I realized that the movie was reminding me of a nearly forgotten thriller from Pitch Black director David Twohy called A Perfect Getaway, starring Timothy Olyphant and Milla Jovovich, which has some parallels. Now, I'm not accusing Bone Lake of ripping off A Perfect Getaway because A Perfect Getaway barely made a blip on anybody's radar and it's probably unlikely that very many associated with Bone Lake have even heard of it. I'm not even certain that A Perfect Getaway was all that original with the two couples pitted against each other narrative and there is probably another movie that did it earlier and better. All I know is A Perfect Getaway played its reveals much better than Bone Lake.
Bone Lake wants to be a mind trip of psychological tension but it doesn't quite achieve it. The mind games feel diluted because they're obvious from minute one. The aggressors are very clear in this movie and the film holds no pretense of hiding it, so it becomes frustrating waiting for the protagonists to catch up with the clues that are right out in the open and a solution that should be right in front of them. The one thing about Bone Lake is that it successfully balances both a cynicism and an optimism for romantic relationships, as our main couple are in a rut that feels like is driving them apart but as the story progresses they do lay out that they have a foundation for a healthy and trusting relationship. But those doubts and mundanity are present and that is preyed upon, almost in a Jigsaw way to prove that their love is not "true love" by an antagonist with a chip on their shoulder. It's a question of which aspect wins out that drives the main plot of the story and that is an exceptional idea. It's just kind of flacid where it promises to be orgasmic. For a movie that advertises itself as a sex-fueled thrill ride, both the sex and the thrills are surprisingly negligible. It's fun enough, if uninspired. But I guess not everybody gets lucky at Bone Lake.
Coyotes
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Director: Colin Miniham
Starring: Justin Long, Kate Bosworth, Mila Harris, Katherine McNamera, Brittany Allen, Kier O'Donnell, Norbet Leo Butz
Nature battles white privilege in this black comedy where a pack of coyotes descends on Hollywood Hills and begins to eat the spoiled inhabitants alive. Off-beat horror movie mainstay Justin Long hunkers down with wife Kate Bosworth, daughter Mila Harris, and prostitute Brittany Allen to fend off the blood-thirsty beasts. Of the things you can probably say about this movie, you can't claim that it's not handing out exactly what its selling. The movie is primarily gore and giggles in a low budget package. The premise largely squeezes amusement out of the idea of pampered rich people stumbling through a night of survival, though the laughs can be inconsistent. The comedy of the movie is a mixture between rambunctious silliness, macabre black humor, and cringe awkwardness. It almost feels as if the movie was put on by an amateur improv group. Some of it is really funny but most of it feels like filling time however possible. The titular coyotes themselves look fine for the most part, but they often feel too static to be a threat, which is due to the low budget limitation of barely being onscreen with any of the cast. The movie tries to frame them as intensely as possible but they feel like they were duct taped in from a reel of stock effects footage. Horror hounds who enjoy a little humor with their frights will find it of interest, though both the scares and the laughs feel a little half-hearted.
Good Boy
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror
Director: Ben Leon berger
Starring: PUPPY! HE'S SUCH A GOOD BOY!
Another inspired take on the haunted house genre hits the cinema, as Presence told the movie from the ghost's perspective and now we has Good Boy, which tells a ghost story from a dog's perspective. The film was shot in small chunks over four hundred days, working with the director's own dog, Indy, hoping they'd get a workable reaction from him. Patience is a virtue, and Good Boy is a success. The film follows Indy as he plays the dog of a man with a chronic illness who moves out to his grandfather's "haunted house" for some peace and quiet. Days pass by as shadowy entities begin appearing, which only Indy seems to notice. Good Boy is a passable haunting tale with some decent shocker sequences, though it's the clever framing of Indy that cranks it up to a higher level than it would have achieved otherwise. The film reminds me quite a bit of last year's In a Violent Nature, which took a cliched story and framed it away from where the focus would normally be. Like In a Violent Nature, some of the exposition also suffers in Good Boy but it more successfully maintains its gimmick. The focus being on Indy does cause the performances of its human characters to suffer, as the film is obviously ADR'd most of the time (most of the filmmaking was an effort to get the dog to do what he was supposed to do with human performance added later) and the dubbed line-reads are quite mood-draining. Good Boy hits enough highs in the face of the faults that stem from its limitations to make it one of the more interesting movies of the year.
The Smashing Machine
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama, Sports
Director: Benny Sadfie
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk
The Jungle Cruise reunion we've all been demanding, sadly in a package that is not Jungle Cruise 2. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays real life UFC fighter Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his girlfriend. He fights in the ring, they fight in the house. He does drugs, eventually kicks them. Comeback to glory? Not really. For a good deal of The Smashing Machine I was struggling with why Mark Kerr demanded a biopic. The only conclusion I could make is that Dwayne Johnson's agent was desperate to find him a dramatic role and this was better than nothing. It's not particularly inspiring nor did he seem to live a very interesting life. The Smashing Machine is more-or-less about a guy who did a thing for a little while and was stressed the fuck out. There's not really much of a story here, though there is an interesting framing device late in the movie where the film chooses to close on a shot of modern day Mark Kerr in a grocery store, living a mundane life. Maybe it's just a story of fleeting fame, about someone who became decently known for a little bit but eventually just became a regular dude. That's nice. The movie still isn't much of anything, even if Johnson and Blunt are pretty good in it. I do find it mildly amusing that Johnson is cast as Kerr in his prime thirty years ago when present day Johnson and Kerr are around the same age. I feel that there is probably some sort of irony in ageless superstar playing an aging has-been. I don't think the movie was smart enough to see that, though.
Netflix & Chill
V/H/S/Halloween
⭐️⭐️
Streaming On: Shudder
Genre: Horror, Anthology
Director: Bryan M. Ferguson, Casper Kelly, Micheline Pitt-Norman, R.H. Norman, Alex Ross Perry, Paco Plaza, Anna Zlokovic
Starring: David Haydn, Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery, Teo Planell, María Romanilos, Ismael Martínez, Lawson Greyson, Riley Nottingham, Jenna Hogan, Jake Ellsworth, Stephen Gurewitz, Carl William Garrison, Jeff Harms, Noah Diamond, Sarah Nicklin, Rick Baker
To paraphrase that tagline that Lionsgate used to remind the world that they were milking a franchise, "If it's Halloween, it must be V/H/S." Shudder has now released five V/H/S films annually every October since 2021, bringing the found footage anthology's total to eight films, ten if you include spin-off films, and will be twelve in a few weeks if you include the Black Phone movies, which are unofficially considered "same universe" as Scott Derrickson's V/H/S/85 segment. This year's offering tasks its staff of horror filmmakers to create short films that fall on everyone's favorite night of fright, Halloween. The only established horror name of note in the pool this time is Paco Plaza, who directed the first three [REC] films and was arguably someone who utilized found footage more effectively than any other filmmaker back in the day. However, the most prolific filmmaker on the team is Alex Ross Perry, who is best known for indie dramas and documentaries. I don't know what convinced him to play in V/H/S/land but the more the merrier.
A lot of the segments this year are more off-beat than horrifying. The only ones that seem to aim to disturb are the offerings of Plaza and Perry, the former telling a Spanish tale of a police investigation of a teenage Halloween party gone horribly wrong and the latter about a mysterious child murderer who may be on the prowl on Halloween night. Perry's sketch might be the best made of the bunch, though I'd consider the most entertaining to be a goofy tale about "too old for this" trick-'r-treaters who don't adhere to "One Per Person" sign and get locked in a factory that threatens to chop them all up into candy. Admittedly, this segment is probably too similar to the opener, which sees another group of teenage candy-snatchers that get trapped into a spooky house with a scary mother and her creepy children. This one has some kickass imagery in it, though I'll admit that the premise drifts into a strange lore territory that doesn't hit for me. It does, however, house the most curious line of the film, where they wander into the dilapidated house and one of the girls growls "This is a health hazard! You're going to get another fungal infection!" The remaining segment is the closer, which is more carnage than story, as people put on a haunted house only to get stuck in a horror labyrinth that kills everyone in gruesome ways. Even the children get on-screen, gory fatalities in this one. The wraparound are about a cola company testing out a new beverage, which kills people in horrific ways.
V/H/S has never been the most consistent horror franchise, which is probably natural as it's just a series of small productions that have been stitched together and they're always going to vary in quality, pacing, and even tone. But that's always the exciting thing about anthologies as they're always something new every twenty minutes. V/H/S/Halloween is probably the weakest of Shudder's exclusive run with the series, though it is still a step above the original trilogy weak link, V/H/S: Viral, so take comfort in knowing that this group of okay offerings probably won't kill the series. It's unfortunate that the idealized holiday didn't bring about more inspiration, which makes this one feel a bit more of a letdown, though entertainment value does surface.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Avatar: The Way of Water ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Casper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dead of Winter ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Long Walk ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Lost Bus ⭐️⭐️⭐️
One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Senior ⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
Caught Stealing ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Primitive War ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Threesome ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Toxic Avenger ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Twinless ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
New To Physical
The Life of Chuck ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coming Soon!
