Multiplex Madness
The Brink of War
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama
Director: Michael Russell Gunn
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Jared Harris, J.K. Simmons
It had to come to this, didn't it? I'm still reeling from that fuck-awful Ronald Reagan biopic with Dennis Quaid and now I have another Reagan movie breathing down my neck. I'm still dealing with trauma, here. This isn't helping.
This one has a narrowed-down scope, focusing on the meeting between Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev over nuclear disarmament in 1986. The movie feels like it's only ambition is to be a "movie day" film for history classes in middle school, opting for hammy stage drama instead of anything meaty. The movie never breaks free of its overwritten dialogue, hamfisted attempts at human relation schmaltz, and uneven casting. I like Jeff Daniels, but he is very miscast as Reagan. He is sometimes trying too hard to push that Reagan impression into his own screen persona, and at other times he just gives up, walking in a room like regular Jeff Daniels and is all "I'm Ronald Reagan." Jared Harris, on the other hand, is excellent casting as Gorbachev. He takes a script that a lot of actors in this movie are struggling with and he is fully locked-in, ready to sell it. So half the movie has the heart it needs and half of it feels artificial. I'm really struggling to compromise with this movie, which is probably fitting, giving the subject matter.
The one thing that makes me softer on its weaker aspects is that the film goes out of its way to actually have some humanization and empathy for the Russians, treating them as real people instead of just the enemy. Compare this to the Dennis Quaid movie, which portrayed them as blubbering buffoons who were destined to fail because they weren't American. This aspect of The Brink of War gives the movie a backbone, taking its tricky subject of dramatizing a debate table and giving it a form of dignity that the propaganda of that other movie wouldn't allow. After all, nobody wants nuclear war, but also nobody wants to give up their nukes. It was a tricky thing to compromise on and I'll give the movie some credit in understanding that part of the assignment.
Elijah Peel
⭐️
Genre: Drama, Faith
Director: Nathan Ross Murphy, Kevin D. Sepe
Starring: Robert Malcolm Cumming, Evelyn Grace Kite, Kevin Sorbo, April Billingsley, Princess Elmore
The poster for Elijah Peel says it's inspired by a true story but, for the life of me, I can't find any information on what that true story is. As far as I know, Elijah Peel is not a real person. Google's AI says the movie is just a loose translation of co-director Kevin D. Sepe's born again experience, but it will be a cold day in hell when I trust an AI summary at face value. But if that is true, I'd say that is some heavy duty bullshit advertising, up there with claiming Texas Chainsaw Massacre is inspired by a true story because, technically, serial killers exist and they might live in Texas and own a chainsaw.
So, this fake true story is about a hard drinking, hard partying rock star name Elijah Peel who has a heart attack and finds himself in ICU, visited by a young girl with cancer who wants him to know that Jesus loves him. They become friends and this convinces him to become a Christian rock artist. If you think any of this happens gradually, you'd be wrong. The movie does nothing with subtlety. There is melodrama and then there is whatever this movie is doing, where it portrays dramatic beats by hitting sudden mood swings, dropping to its knees and bursting into shrill wails. Even Al Jolson would tell it to calm the fuck down. The drug scenes are so brazenly in-your-face that it almost feels like a stern warning by people who have never done drugs in their lives and it becomes a movie about conquering drug addiction that feels like it was made by someone whose experience with it was limited to watching Reefer Madness and thinking it was a biting commentary. After all of this, our title character spends thirty seconds with the little girl and becomes completely obsessed with her, going through a Patch Adams phase where he just clowns around the hospital with her. Then the movie hits lows where everyone is on the floor and crying because of "the power of music" or something. This somehow forces him into a relapse, where instead of being given drugs, some dude just locks him in a room with a girl who is OD'ing. Even after-school specials would think it's too much.
This isn't even mentioning the various things in this movie that are odd. The movie's portrayal of nurses is strange, because some will wear proper scrubs and others will dress in uniforms that feel like they were rented from porno sets, with short skirts and cleavage bearing, to show "temptation." The movie has a long (humorous?) montage of him rejecting personal nurses because they're all too sexy. Then there is a scene where a nurse threatens to give him strychnine instead of morphine after he won't stop flirting with her, which I'm pretty sure could get her fired even if she was being sexual harassed. Then comes a late revelation that the movie is pro-stem cell research, which is usually the exact opposite of what a faith film would normally do because that also implies that it's pro-abortion by association. But then again, maybe the filmmakers just don't know what stem cells are. They aren't rocket scientists, they just want to make a movie about a magical sick girl who knows everything about life.
This leads to an ending that is very strange and I can't tell if it's trying to be ambiguous or not because it's shooting too many conflicting ideas at the audience. I'm just going to spoil the fuck out of it because I'm the only person who will ever watch this movie, so you've been warned. This being a movie about a cancer patient, the movie obviously is going to get to that point where cancer is going to do what it does. But then it presents the that experimental stem cell treatment and then it flashes forward to our titular musician singing a song because he promised the girl he'd "sing at her funeral," then it cuts to the audience and she's just sitting out there. Maybe the intent is that we're supposed to decide whether she lived or died by ourselves but there are so many aspects to this movie that are underdeveloped that this ending just comes off as the movie just being done with itself. To be frank, it's hard to hate a movie that presents a trite story as stupidly as this one does. I just don't have the energy. But nobody who worked on this film had any ideas of how to pull off something that has been done a thousand times, and that's just mind-numbing.
The End of Oak Street
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery
Oh, that's cute. Someone remade The Day Time Ended.
An entire neighborhood goes on an "Excellent Adventure" as it's hurdled through time, transplanting both it and its residents in the prehistoric past, where they fend off dinosaurs and other dangers. The movie is very Speilberg-coded, centering on a singular family trying to navigate the carnage as everyone dies around them. In that aspect, it actually reminded me of Spielberg's version of War of the Worlds the most, even though it's a more majestic-minded film, wanting to be a cross between E.T. and Jurassic Park. Speaking of the latter, The End of Oak Street is actually quite a bit better than that franchise has been of late, being preferable than...honestly, about all of the sequels, maybe? If anything holds the film back, it's that the scenario it creates is so chaotic that some of the plot set-up in the film is cut shor and never paid off. Focusing on a single P.O.V. then giving glimpses of others surrounding them who are having their own experience that we know near nothing about makes the story feel like Swiss cheese, which is technically whole but full of empty space that offers nothing. And it leads to an ending that is presented as sweet but is honestly very problematic if you think about it, but I can't rant about that unless I laid the entire thing out and explained what was wrong with the entire idea. But the movie mostly works on a solid foundation of weird adventure candy cinema that can be fun one moment and savage the next. It's more worthwhile of the price for your ticket than all of the Jurassic World movies, so that's something.
Nimrods
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: Lee Kirk
Starring: Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman, Ryan Faust, Mckenna Grace, Jenna Fischer
Nimrods is one of those self-promotional movies that popular bands make about fans having misadventures on their way to a concert. Today's group of the day is Green Day. The film follows a teen band that has been pranked into thinking they're opening for Green Day for a big New Year's concert across the country, so they steal a car and go on a road trip to make the non-existent date. From my understanding, the film is partially inspired by Green Day's early experiences before breaking out, with some loose inspiration also from another band called Waterdog that opened for them in the 90's. As to what is true and what is bullshit, I'm not familiar enough with "Green Day lore" to tell you, but the fact that Green Day made the movie semi-autobiographical makes this movie feel slightly more personal than other films of its ilk. There is heart and care put into it, and the film can be really funny at times. It can also digress into oddity, notably in a section that is a horror movie parody halfway through that is more strange than humorous. The film has these small blemishes that feel odd in the moment but don't take away from the experience, like Mckenna Grace's character serving zero purpose other than to have a love interest for five minutes, but she's a pleasure to have in any movie, so it doesn't really matter. It's a series of comical scenarios that are mostly successful at creating smiles, while also ending on an emotional beat that I'm not fully convinced the movie was properly building to, but still kinda hits. The movie works in spite of itself, resulting in an uneven joy.
Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Superhero
Director: Cal Brunker
Starring: Carter Young, Ryan Janjua, Mckenna Grace, Hayden Chamberlain, Henry Bolan, Lucien Duncan-Reid, William Desrosiers, Nylan Parthipan, Terry Crews, Jameela Jamil, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg
This is both the second movie this week with Mckeena Grace, as well as the second movie with dinosaurs. I don't know if that means anything, but this one has talking dogs, so...win?
The Nickelodeon sensation is back on the big screen for the third time, this time seeing the rescue pups discovering a lost island full of dinosaurs. Because kids love Paw Patrol and kids love dinosaurs, but not every kid is old enough to see The End of Oak Street, so we'll take them to see the one where even the carnivorous dinosaurs make friends with puppy dogs. I'm assuming these Paw Patrol movies are made to center around one specific dog from the team with each movie, offering an origin story and a specific character flaw to overcome. The last movie focused on Skye, the flying pink one, and, while I haven't seen it, I'm assuming the first movie featured Chase, who is the blue police dog. For The Dino Movie, the pup of the hour is Marshall, who is the one with the red firehat. Marshall is portrayed as very clumsy and accident prone, having a hard time to work past his mistakes. I'm not sure if those aspects are actually a thing in the TV show, but if they were, I've never noticed while babysitting and playing on my phone. But the message of the movie is failure is what we need to learn how to succeed, which is why we never give up, and that's nice.
The one small thing that was nagging me about this movie is that the Paw Patrol are a rescue squad. It's kind of the one thing that they do. So when the premise of your movie is that they find a lost dinosaur land, the film needs to convolute ways of getting them to do that one thing and not just stand around an island while playing with dinosaurs. Ultimately, the dinosaurs are just an aesthetic choice, providing a backdrop where they maybe will sell a few toys in addition to the shiny new Paw Patrol vehicles and outfits (they wear pants now!) and the all-new team member Rex, who rides a T-Rex ala Dino-Riders, and Marshall's new dino friend Rubarb. It feels like the movie can be blatantly toyetic in that regard, but Paw Patrol has always been a high merch seller, and the last movie had them as superheroes, so I can't blame the movie for being what it is.
The real test case for these movies is the audience they were made for. The six-year-old I took to see it thought it was the best movie ever. He got a lunchbox full of popcorn, a little cup with Marshall on it, and a Paw Patrol poster and pin-on button. He's living his best life. Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie gave him a good day. Thank you, Paw Patrol. You saved the day again.
The Rivals of Amziah King
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Thriller
Director: Andrew Patterson
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Angelina LookingGlass, Scott Shepherd, Rob Morgan, Tony Revolori, Kurt Russell
Matthew McConaughey plays a beekeeper who reconnects with a foster child he used to care for, played by Angelina LookingGlass. After his bees are stolen, McConaughey dies of a heart attack, leaving LookingGlass as an heir to a bee colony that has no bees. LookingGlass then seeks out those who might have taken his bees and tries to get them back by any means necessary. To be frank, I'm kinda disappointed in myself for not liking this movie. The movie started out as a vibe, and I was enjoying it. Then the vibe shifts. Then it shifts again. And again. The type of movie this was kept changing. By the end, I was very disengaged. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe it's the movie. I'm not quite sure. This movie almost feels like it was two movies that were spliced together in an editing room and presented to its audience as if they mixed peanut butter and chocolate together and made something delicious, but the taste is so bitter that I can't appreciate it. The movie starts out as a happy little movie about family. Then it becomes sad. Then it becomes angry. It seems to me, to the best of my media literacy, that the movie is trying to be a folk tale that is mixed with the presentation of a mafia movie. The movie becomes a story of "they who control the bees controls the honey," which is an interesting prospect. I don't think it forgives the many tonal shifts of the film, as we venture down some dark paths that are glossed over too quickly in favor of shifting the tone for the next scene. At no point during this movie did I feel like I understood what the movie was. I was okay with that for a little while. Movies that try for unique experiences should be encouraged. By the end, the experience I was having felt like enduring instead of experiencing. That's of no fault of the creatives or the actors, because this movie feels like exactly the movie they wanted to make. The honey just didn't taste very sweet.
The Wrong Girls
⭐️1/2
Genre: Comedy
Director: Dylan Meyer
Starring: Kristen Stewart (line?), Alia Shawkat, LaKeith Stanfield, Tony Hale, Zack Fox, Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, Kate McKinnon, Geena Davis
This oddball comedy is a professional collaboration between Kristen Stewart and her wife, Dylan Meyer, who wrote and directed the movie. The movie follows Stewart, who is confused with a woman who looks exactly like her at a nightclub, and is passed off a suitcase full of an unknown substance while she is too drunk to realize what's happening. She then drinks it with her roommate/bestie Alia Shawkat, and the two become telepathically linked. They then venture off to sell it for rent money, oblivious to the fact that they might now be the most powerful people on the planet. If that sounds dumb, that's because it is dumb. I'm pretty sure the movie's only goal is to be dumb. The Wrong Girls plays like it was made by someone who really loved The Big Lebowski and Dude, Where's My Car? and decided to mash them together for the ultimate dummy stoner comedy. Maybe they're a tad aggressive on it, as its aesthetic is overbearing and sometimes hard to pay attention to because of how much they're throwing on the screen. And, as stated above, the movie is really stupid. That's not a bad thing if it's funny enough. There are laughs to be had, but as the movie indulges itself in getting weirder and weirder, it seems like it has gotten high on itself and is stuck in a loop of giggling at a joke that it never says out loud.
But I'm pretty sure that's part of its vibe, willing to be its awkward self because it's better than being like everyone else. I respect that. Despite the fact that the movie didn't really vibe with me, it does have this tone to it like it's one of those dumb movies they'd play on the 2000's era USA network over and over again until it accumulated a proper cult following from teenagers who would just lie on the couch with a bag of Doritos handy. Maybe the same fate will be bestowed on The Wrong Girls, because it's nothing if it's not a midnight movie targeted at a very specific demographic. After all, any movie that casually drops a Sliders reference can't be all bad.
Train to Busan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
The Invite ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jackass: Best and Last ⭐️⭐️1/2
Minions & Monsters ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Young Washington ⭐️⭐️
New To Physical
Barbarian ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dolly ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Furious⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Hokum ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Tuner ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coming Soon!
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