Multiplex Madness
Avatar: Fire and Ash
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy
Director: James Cameron's
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, David Thewlis, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss
Hey, look! It's Avatar! And chances are you already know if you're into it or not, so anything I say can only reinforce what opinion you already have. My experience with Avatar has always leaned positive, so the Negative Nancies will just scoff and mutter the same things they've been muttering for sixteen years. I've never heard a fully convincing case against the franchise, personally, but you go where your heart tells you. I think the movies are fine. Fire and Ash is another one, and Avatar fans will eat it up while the non-fans will henpeck at it continuously even though it never seems to phase it. Success always brings resentment from those who look in from the outside. We saw the same thing with James Cameron's previous phenomenon, Titanic. Franchises like Star Wars, the MCU, Lord of the Rings, and others also aren't free from it. Hell, I have some foul words to say about The Hunger Games and Pirates of the Caribbean, so who am I to judge?
The latest in James Cameron's CGI blue cat people saga continues where the previous film left off, which sees Jake Sully, Neytiri, and their children living with the aqua Na'vi clans. The resurrected and newly Avatar'd Miles Quaritch still hunts Jake down and seeks to reunite with his son Spider, forming an alliance with a hostile clan of fire Na'vi. The status quo becomes challenged when Spider adapts to Pandora's air, making him valuable to the human colonizers of Earth. Avatar's visual stimulus does what it has always reliably done. If you thought the story was running thin by the end of the first movie, the third won't change your mind. In fact, the movie probably has the least story of the three, as it seemingly mistakes setpiece events for character journey. The movie has very little character-driven ideas, it's just three-and-a-half hours of stuff happening. This makes the movie the one that is the least likely to sweep a viewer into it, as it doesn't really engage heart and emotion as strongly as the previous films, focusing more on spectacle than ever before. I think this is partially the film suffering from being "part two" in a two-part narrative, as The Way of Water did most of the character work so Fire and Ash could house most of the action. Movies like The Matrix Revolutions, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 have similar problems. The movie is a long road for so little of a journey. It's the longest Avatar movies, and as much excitement as is on display, it sure feels it.
All of this being taken into account, Fire and Ash is a reliable next step for those who are fully invested in the Avatar ride. The first Avatar is the best overall experience. The second had the best visuals. What's left for the third movie? The best villain is what I'd hand it. Oona Chaplin is phenomenal as Varang, the sizzling fire Na'vi femme fatale who is basically just Nega-Neytiri. The movie just doesn't have enough of her and it doesn't really conclude her role in the story in a fully meaningful way. Maybe they want to do more with her in a future movie, but they'd also be fools not to. Otherwise, the film's final action scene is mostly a stunner. I say mostly because it has a few melodramatic hiccups and a couple of loose ends that one assumes are going to come back in the next movie. That kind of sums up the Fire and Ash experience: It sells what we expect it to in a worn-out package. Does Avatar still have life in it? Maybe. I'll be willing to say that I haven't disliked any of them so far, so I'd watch another. I'd be more excited about it if it were a little shorter, though.
The Housemaid
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Sidney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins
I read the Freida McFadden novel of The Housemaid a while back, before I even knew that a movie was in production. It was on sale and I had time to kill, and it seemed like "who cares" pulp reading, so I breezed through it. It was trashy, smutty, and dumb but, I'll admit, I had a doofus good time with it. Then I found out they turned it into a Sidney Sweeney movie and thought "Yeah, that sounds about right." If you're going to turn a trashy, smutty, and dumb but crowdpleasing book into a trashy, smutty, and dumb but crowdpleasing movie, Sweeney is probably the perfect star for crappy, but joyous, mediocrity. Fans of the book will probably really enjoy this, as it's pretty much a beat-for-beat adaptation, with minor additions and omissions to make the story more visual. That story being that of a recently hired housemaid for a wealthy family who grows more uncomfortable with the lady of the house, who shows signs of schizophrenia. Faults of the film production mostly come straight from the book, which is a little daft in its presentation and its central twist is always plainly obvious, with the only question being how its resolved. The movie certainly leans into the melodrama, but if anyone is making it work, it's Amanda Seyfried, who is relishing the opportunity to go full ham. For Sweeney, it's more of a showcase for her breasts than herself, as she's constantly in outfits that squeeze her chest and the movie never misses an opportunity to show her caress herself in the nude. But for that built-in female audience that likes to support heightened but soft thrillers with nothing particularly challenging about them (and all have boyfriends who just want to see Sydney Sweeney's boobs), the film is a easy recommend and an entertaining watch.
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy
Director: Derek Drymon
Starring: Tom Kenny, Mark Hamill, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbacke, Regina Hall
SpongeBob SquarePants debuted when I was growing out of Nickelodeon, but it definitely seemed like the type of show I would have watched back in the day. I only saw a handful of episodes from the first season, other than odds and ends that I have watched while babysitting. I just missed my ride on this hype train and now I'm sitting down to watch the...we'll, I don't really know how many SpongeBob movies there are and I don't care enough to find out. This is just the first one I've ever watched.
So, SpongeBob. He lives in a pineapple under the sea (SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS). Absorbent and yellow and porous is he (SPONGBOB SQUAREPANTS). SpongeBob wakes up one morning wanting to feel like a big brave boy or something, so he goes off on an adventure to win his manhood. He is taken in by the mythical ghost ship the Flying Dutchman, and the head pirate plans to use SpongeBob's naivete to free him of his ghostly prison. That's the basics. The movie is more jokes than story, so prepare for a barrage of funny business hurled at you, with the ratio of hit/miss being more even than I think the creators realize. Luckily the quota of humor for comedy is so far surpassed that there might just be enough here for constant chuckles. But when the movie dries out, it gets tedious. Granted, I haven't seen the other SpongeBob movies, though I wonder just how many feature length stories the character is capable of. After all, he and his friends are specifically designed for ten minute segments. The conclusion I came to was that the film I was watching was basically a modern day version of the type of films the Three Stooges movies made in the 60's: a plot that is only existent to set up extended schtick, and whether or not the bits wear out their welcome depends on your fondness for the characters on screen. I enjoy those Stooges movies because I enjoy the Stooges. SpongeBob is a little trickier because I have exposure to the characters but not the exposure that most past my generation have. I find SpongeBob amusing, though I think I'm going to need a heartier journey for him to go on for me to fully be on board for ninety minutes. To that end, I'm going to let SpongeBob do his thing. SpongeBob fans are here for it, and that's a good thing.
Netflix & Chill
Demon Squad: Tooth and Claw
⭐️⭐️1/2
Streaming On: NOWHERE! Watched it on blu-ray, baby!
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Fantasy, Comedy
Director: Thomas Smith
Starring: Khristian Fulmer, Erin Lilley, Victoria Antonelli
I achieved a Bucket List Goal this week: I've been credited in an actual movie! Not, like, a studio movie or anything. Or as far as indie productions go, this is probably on the lower tier. But I assume most reading this are MSTies, so it probably means something that I was one of the people who pitched in to help make Demon Squad 2 a reality! My response to the reader is either "You're welcome" or "Sorry, not sorry." Pick one.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that Tooth and Claw wasn't their first choice for a sequel, as their first idea was a campaign for a haunted house movie called Deadwatch. That campaign didn't reach its goal as the project was too expensive, so they came back with a more cost-effective story for Tooth and Claw, which could be made for the money they knew they could get based on the failed fundraiser. The story sees P.I. (read: Paranormal Investegstor) Nick Moon and his sidekick Daisy looking into maulings that have been happening across the city, which they theorize might be the activity of a werewolf. Along the way they deal with dirty politicians who are hiding the paranormal underworld and a faux psychic who tries to expose it. The noir parallels that were infused into the previous film have been numbed, sadly. Tooth and Claw is more like a procedural episode of a P.I. TV series, which itself has its own perks. I liked the vibes of the first movie a little more, because it really had that element of shooting for the moon with almost no money. I also can't get out my head that first impression of the original, when I saw the puppets and masks, only to see Lilah walk into the scene with her little Carmen Sandiego Halloween costume and thinking "This is the most adorable movie I've ever seen." Tooth and Claw still has that low-fi charm to it. The werewolf costume itself is deliciously cheesy, looking both detailed and lifeless (and all sequence of it trotting down a hallway is just asking to be played against the Benny Hill theme). The world itself is still looks like it's filmed at personal homes and what few locations it can hide from passers-by. Peeks into the outside world has limited believability, as characters outside of Nick Moon's circle feel like they exist in a vacuum, which is especially true of the news team on television, which has the vibe of a High School AV club.
All of this is what makes Demon Squad so huggable, though. This is a production that has less money that Sam Raimi's Evil Dead or Kevin Smith's Clerks, around the same ballpark as the original Paranormal Activity. Hell, both Demon Squad movies put together cost less that it takes to make an episode of MST3K (both then and now). Yet, it hits the streets and tries to make something out of scraps. I love that so much. Tooth and Claw still has that scrappy underdog aura to it, underlined by a snappy snark that what they're doing is probably stupid but they love doing it. I imagine this film's particular brand of humor was given a bit of zest by veteran MST3K writer Devon Coleman, who aided with the screenplay. Some of the humor hits higher than what we saw in the first movie, including a line that made me chuckle heartily where an obviously J.D. Vance inspired Deputy Mayor refutes the idea of demons and monsters because "It's un-Christian." Other than that, the movie is still a scaled back presentation of gonzo ideas, my favorite new addition being the "Boo-Bombs" which explode and a monster pops out. It's a concept that feels like it's inspired by the Pokéballs from the Pokémon franchise but the movie never addresses any inspiration. They should keep it that way. It's best not to get sued. They just call them "hamster balls with egg timers glued on them," which I'm assuming is a meta line that references how the little props were made.
Returning castmembers include Khristian Fulmer and Erin Lilley as our headliners Nick and Daisy, and also Amir Zandi as the "in on it" detective Bert. Bert's role is beefed up from the last film, now a love interest for Daisy, and gets to give her inspirational speeches and all that jazz. The main newcomer is Victoria Antonelli as fake psychic Chari Divine, and she steals every scene she's in, with her absurdly thick New Jersey accent when she's in full grifter mode or just the playful third wheel to Nick and Daisy. She even christens the dynamic duo with the name "The Demon Squad," canonizing what was a last minute title change to the first movie (produced under "Full Moon Inc." and briefly switched to "Night Hunters") in universe. Divine is fabulous and she needs her own spin-off movie, as the Demon Squad Cinematic Universe comes into focus.
Not to get too petty, but to compare where my Kickstarter money went to versus where the Kickstarter money Chris Stuckman used to make Shelby Oaks went to, I'm more than pleased and can happily say I made the right investment. I'm sure Stuckmann used his money where necessary and made the movie he wanted to make, but if I had pumped money into that, all I would have said while leaving the theater would have been "oof." Demon Squad: Tooth and Claw is a movie that is what it is and is something that I genuinely enjoy, and not a movie that I'm making excuses to myself about to justify forking over money for its creation. I had a good idea of what it was going to look like and I wanted it to exist. Demon Squad 2 is destined to be exactly like Demon Squad 1, hidden away on Tubi and stumbled upon by people who have no clue what it is and probably won't address it on its own level, will watch five minutes and just get angry that they watched that much of it. Those are just the breaks. But it's meant to mean something to the people who made it and the few people who pick up on its frequency and say "I get it." That, to me, feels even more personal. That's the type of movie I'm proud to have my name on.
Also, if Thomas Smith is reading this, I want to know when I can expect royalty checks from this.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Dust Bunny ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Ella McCay ⭐️⭐️
Eternity ⭐️⭐️1/2
Now You See Me: Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2
Predator: Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Silent Night, Deadly Night ⭐️⭐️1/2
Wicked: For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2
Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
King Ivory ⭐️1/2
Now You See Me: Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2
Sisu: Road to Revenge ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Physical
Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coming Soon!
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