Meet cute, no, meat cut.A new slasher movie has arrived. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a movie like Scream, but Heart Eyes mostly fills that void. It’s set on Valentine’s Day as the killer HEK wreaks havoc on Seattle’s couples. I would say 50% of this film was along the lines of a Netflix rom-com and it actually works. Mason Gooding and Olivia Holt have enough chemistry to carry that half genre of the movie even while being hunted.
The HEK killer is a messed up Cupid as he uses a crossbow that will go down in infamy as an all time slasher movie weapon. I loved the look of this character and the sounds that come with every move they make. There are some brutal kills that will have audiences howling with a scared excitement as they wonder who is behind that mask. The movie plays out very much like a Scream because of that wander around the killer. I was not very impressed with the reveal of everything surrounding that aspect, as it felt too similar and unrewarding.
Location scouts killed it as they use what some may call cliche spots for a horror movie, but they’re used in a grand fashion. Blood is spilled throughout and not just from the violence. Heart Eyes is hilariously bloody and filled with needle drops that audiences will enjoy. It’s not going to change any lives, but as far as holiday themed slasher films go, it’s a good time.
Flight Risk pairs two all time great assholes, Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson, together for a movie that takes all the little talent they had left and shoves it into the deepest hole.
I will start by saying Wahlberg IS the best part of this movie. But, they literally handcuffed him to the point where he’s barely seen or heard for an hour of a movie where he’s the only one on the poster. He should have been given more one liners and crazier things to do. He’s fun to briefly watch on screen as a pilot traveling with a government witness and U.S. Marshall across the Alaksan wilderness. None of these characters work together though as three awful personalities do not mix. Luckily we aren’t trapped in a small plane with them for the entire runtime…
Topher Grace is the witness at hand who will not shut the hell up and becomes the most hated character to start the year. I was hoping we kicked the movie off with him and it turned to a duo of Mark and Michelle Dockery. Even Michelle couldn’t save this movie as she felt lost and had forgotten her lines even in the final cut. You can tell the writers ran out of things for everyone to do because we get a majority of conversations over cell phones, which sucks any sense of suspense right out of the plane.
Mel Gibson lazily directs three actors stuck in a plane, who are reaching for anything they can in Hollywood. The plane and aerial shots look surprisingly good, yet they couldn’t make a moose or a cabin look realistic at all. There’s many things to hate about this movie, but you’ll be banging your head into the seat in front of you once you see what the end doesn’t have to offer.
If you go into Presence thinking it’s going to be the same old horror movie, you’d be wrong. It still starts out with a family moving into a new house where the family slowly realizes something sinister might also be there, but there’s so much more to it than that.
Steven Soderbergh turns the genre on its head by making the camera the “ghost”. This method of storytelling adds so much to the intrigue by taking away the audience’s full grasp on what is really happening. Characters will be heard in the middle of sentences, just as a soul floating through a house would experience and that leaves you wanting more. Using the camera as an invisible character makes for unique close ups and long takes that make things more personal.
The most important part of this movie are the characters themselves. Lucy Lui is the biggest name in this film, yet she’s the least utilized inside and out. Callina Liang plays our main focus as Chole, who brings an important display of grief and the many ways someone might deal with it. I can’t go any further without mentioning the real star of this movie, Chris Sullivan. Chris plays the dad and he’s the most likeable person I have seen in a film in a long while. I loved what this movie was saying for each of the characters.
This film is advertised as “The scariest movie you’ll see this year”, that’s far from the truth. It’s got suspense and drama, but never for the reasons you’d expect. Living in the POV of a ghost for 90 minutes makes you realize the scariest thing about this house isn’t the ghost.
Presence is an innovative story that shows movies like Paranormal Activity can be turned into something much deeper. Once you grasp what is really going on is where you notice you haven’t taken a breath in several minutes.
The Brutalist is a film that has so much to unpack.
Set mainly in what feels like a counterfeit Pennsylvania, an extraordinary architect Laszlo Toh (Adrian Brody) makes his way from war ridden Europe to start a better life. It starts off feeling huge, because I’m sure this was a gigantic change for people like Laszlo in this situation. He eventually meets Harrison Lee (Guy Pearce), who finds out who he really was back home and wants a quid pro quo.
Brody and Pearce are going head to head like it’s a heavyweight boxing match, and they’re not even necessarily adversaries. Brody has such a powerful presence on screen that will make you feel humbled yet conflicted. Guy Pearce is plucked straight out of the era portrayed in this film and his larger than life.
When I say this film is big, I mean it. Shot in a beautiful way that makes every character feel like they’re the most important person in the world. The architecture of the shots makes for a satisfying watch. History books could take a page out of Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s script with how genuine it is.. Elements of the American dream, human nature, and failure give you a lot to breathe in.
The first act of this movie is absolute perfection. The second half becomes somewhat troubling.
Toth’s wife (Felicity Jones) gets introduced and she adds and detracts so much at the same time. Bringing her into the fold throws this movie down a path that feels more like a sidequest that luckily comes back around for a perfect final scene. If you respect yourself though, you will skip the epilogue.
The Brutalist is 95% intellectually stimulating and should be seen on the biggest screen you can travel to.
Are Werewolves the same as the Wolf Man seen in this movie? I genuinely don’t know, and this movie doesn’t really help get me any closer to the answer.
Leigh Whannell’s take on the wolf man is similar to The Fly. It’s a slow burn that focuses on relationships and puts us right in the middle of a troubling time for our characters.
It’s a very tight movie in the way that we really don’t get to learn more than maybe three characters’ names, and we spend a lot of time inside of a house. I was hoping for a deeper exploration into the character dynamics outside of just giving the daughter mottos and catch phrases.
Visually, Wolf Man is a 50/50 film. There are shots of the mountains in Oregon that are breathtaking, and Leigh professionally moves the camera around in a way that will have you guessing where things are coming from at all times. BUT, someone should have paid the light bill. I’m willing to admit it was partially a theater issue, but at the same time, it was very difficult to see what was happening in general.
The practical effects on the wolf man are incredibly done, even if I do find the cryptid pretty ugly. Christopher Abbott does a fantastic job with his physical acting and giving the crowd something to bloody cheer for. I also found using the perspective of the wolf man and his struggles particularly fantastic. The best part of this movie has to be the sound design though. It’s brilliant in many ways from elevating the screams to misdirecting you around the small things.
Wolf Man is frustrating at times, yet has some great practical effects and direction. You’ll get bored with the characters and won’t really even know who to feel bad for.
I am completely unfamiliar with Pedro Almodovar’s non-English work, but using the Yorgos Lanthimos method of translating directly from page to screen wasn’t the best idea here.
I don’t know how to put it into words other than that I felt like I watched an audiobook. All of the line delivery was so forced- like it was straight out of the auditions for the movie. Sentences are spoken as allegories to the point where it makes it frustrating to listen to the stories being told. Characters are over descriptive in their conversations and even in sitting with them for almost two hours it somehow felt like this was always their first time meeting.
I know Tilda and Julianne usually have great acting chops and are some of the best in their field so I was excited to see them play off of one another. Here they are at their most absurd with Swinton overdoing it on multiple fronts. Many times throughout I was wondering if they even remembered they were in the same movie. These actors put the drama in dramatic.
The plot moves in a confusing way where it can’t decide if it wants to hone in on the past more than the present when maybe the past didn’t really even matter. It loses focus towards the end and becomes something else entirely that doesn’t quite work. I was astonished by a casting choice which completely took me out of whatever seriousness that was left.
Even though the lighting felt amateur at times, the colors and what they stood for are what I would call good. Pedro is very strategic in his framing of shots and knows how to move the camera in a way that helps you feel the space that you are in. Although we have two great talents on screen, I feel this story was better off never leaving the ink on a page.
Robbie Williams is quite possibly one of the biggest musicians to ever come out of the UK, but maybe not since no one over here has ever even heard of him.
At some point, someone decided to make a biopic about him. And instead of making it a normal biopic, they turned him into a monkey. My question is why? Why a monkey? Why not just the normal guy? In the movie Robbie says that’s how he sees himself. That’s it. That’s all the explanation we get. It’s enraging.
I say it wasn’t a normal biopic, but it kind of is. It has all the typical musical biopic “tropes” once you get past him being a monkey, which I couldn’t. He has his familial issues, a drug problem (that they won’t let you forget about), and the music industry that just won’t see what he sees in himself.
There’s a wide variety of musical and dance numbers that just don’t quite stick. The biggest being the only original song for this movie that I know of and that had the best choreography of the whole movie. We got bouts of adolescent monkey man talk-singing to himself and a few what felt like live concert footage. Not sticking to a certain variety really felt like a mistake. The British have shit awful taste in music if this is what we’re getting out of them. I found the lyrics to be overly cringey, awful, and at times Robbie’s voice sounded like Gollum.
There are too many characters that get forgotten about because they come and go in an instant. Situations are shown in a way that makes you feel dumb for not knowing what’s happening, but we never even had a chance to find out what was happening in the first place. At times they overshare aspects of his life while also expecting you to know all the pieces that fill in the gaps. They make the same points over and over again just adding to the frustration of not moving on.
Visually the monkey animations looked fine for the most part. They weren’t anywhere near what The Planet of the Apes movies are doing now, but it gets the job done. The lighting crew does put a little too much into making the lighting so different that it ends up looking bad, especially during the yacht scene. I will say this movie has one of my favorite shots of the year, but it legitimately lasts less than three seconds. If they were trying to make this movie look like it was filmed for a VH1 documentary, they succeeded.
As far as the character of Robbie Williams portrayed in this film, he’s an unlikeable moron. He complains about his life but does nothing to fix it for many years. He does so many things that make him hateable, and none of it is redeemed. I would say that the biggest aspect of his life that made him this way was his dad, and he is the biggest crux of this story. I have no idea what is entirely real and what is fabricated, but most of it feels like it was done for dramatic and emotional effect. Most of what he does and how he behaves makes him very difficult to have sympathy for.
I couldn’t get over him being a monkey, didn’t like the music in general, and his life wasn’t all that exciting compared to any other musician. It felt like they were going for the record of most F words used in a movie but without making it funny or an endearing character trait.
Just like beans for breakfast, Robbie Williams will never work in America.
Heist movies should have interesting and complex characters, scene stealing locations, and entertaining heist related moments sprinkled throughout. This instead has too many characters doing almost nothing heist related while switching locations dozens of times for no apparent reason. If you were also impressed with nothing of importance happening for the middle two hours in the original, you’re in luck again.
If you saw the first film in this franchise, you’d know that Big Nick (Gerard Butler) was going through relationship problems while also trying to track down the bad guys. This added complexity to his character and intrigue throughout the movie, but in the sequel they completely removed him and that aspect out of L.A. It makes him boring with nothing to lose and honestly feels like they just couldn’t get his wife’s actor back. At least Gerard has some comedy chops on display here, but it still barely works with who he has to play off of.
Nick tracks down Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) overseas where he is now eyeing the diamond exchange. Ice Cube Jr. is doing a HORRIBLE French accent, but only some of the time. Nick and Donnie teaming up in this movie makes no sense in the way that they explain it. They also have no chemistry, and I think Jackson is the reason for that. The title’s subtitle is also shoehorned in with one word and then completely forgotten about, making it a pointless subtitle.
A lot of the plot is pushed further along throughout the movie just so they could have the characters waste time doing dumb things together to try and prove that Donnie now trusts Nick. This trust makes no sense when he is clearly there for him and the money he stole out of L.A. A majority of the dialogue is some of the most forced, made up things I have ever heard just to make the players on the teams sound smart.
I really wanted to see them butting heads more to add some of that complexity back into this story’s arcs. Instead we get dozens of short scenes with generic, European “bad guys” with no personality. There is tons of pointless and elongated scenes where no-name characters are saying things twice because they had to make them all speak different languages.
This is the longest feeling movie I have seen in awhile. I don’t think the directer (Christian Gudegast) took the time to make sure edits happened because there are too many instances of characters doing and saying nothing on screen. It feels like they just kept rolling in between takes and left the cameras on the actors while they were taking a deep breath or two.
We get a wee bit of espionage with some sneaking around buildings, but it’s so poorly shot and scored that even if I was interested in what was happening, there was no tension to pull from it. The big “heist” this entire movie is building up to was the most pathetic excuse for one I have ever seen. You barely know who you’re looking at and why these people are where they are. The only reason I can see why they set this climax where they did was to brag about getting permission to film there.
This “heist” movie is a major disgrace to the genre. It’s so boring and quiet that I was better off just listening to the couple next to me’s commentary.
The true story of boxer Claressa Shields and her journey from Flint, Michigan to the London Olympics. The first half of the movie focuses on her working her way out of a bad home on her way to become the first female boxing gold medalist. I know this is her full story over this part of her life, but a lot of this part feels rushed and long at the same time. The second half of the movie pivots to her life after the Olympics and how almost nothing has changed. For her character, I felt this was a much more engaging part of her story that added depth and the inspirational factor the movie was looking for.
Ryan Destiny as Shields is half good. As the teenage girl who’s trying to provide for her family, she works really well and gives a solid performance. As the boxer, she’s just okay. She’s playing a 17 year old and doesn’t have any imposing factors to her on screen presence. The boxing scenes with her are shot in ways that feel like someone’s watched a lot of boxing movies but didn’t quite perfect it. Brian Tyree Henry as her Trainer is very likeable on screen as always and feels like he’s hired for movies like this just to give great monologues to the main character.
True stories sometimes struggle with not being shown in a way that makes for an impactful and powerful movie. I wish this one would have (or wouldn’t) have changed parts of it to make that happen. This is a pretty family friendly movie that doesn’t stoop to the levels of a LifeTime movie but it’s also no Creed.
From a technical side of things, Nosferatu should be considered among the best of the year in film. Robert Eggers directs this movie in a way that feels like the most refreshing take on directing in years. The camera never sits or moves in the same way twice which was just brilliant and made for a lovely watching experience- that aspect never gets stagnant. The lighting, costume, and set departments deserve all the praise though. Some scenes were only lit with candlelight which added to the fear. The streets and houses we see the characters move through feel like they were preserved from 1800’s Germany. Also, the costume design is picture perfect. It’s not over the top but it does the job to a T. Every single actor is serving and fitting into each scene in the best way possible.
Eggers gets actors like Lily-Rose Depp to elevate her physical acting to a level you only get while watching a film from him. Nicholas Hoult plays the most scared actor I’ve ever seen as he attempts to make it through the night while the vampire himself signs a deed (which is just a hilarious thought to see put to screen in this way). The rest of the cast surrounds these two with a sense of purpose, especially Aaron-Taylor Johnson, redeeming himself after Kraven. As much as I adore Willem Dafoe, I will say he overstays his welcome a little bit here.
The story itself is basically beat for beat of the 1922 version. I’m sure there were a few things changed, but for the most part it’s just as “boring” as that original story. The dialogue and performances are what save this from being a slog with no surprises.
Now for the man himself, Nosferatu. He’s tall and forbidding when he wasn’t talking too much, because it made him feel more like an old man than a vampire. Choosing to give him a mustache was an odd choice, and it was disappointing that the title character was my least favorite part of the movie. Shadows and Bill Skarsgard’s aura do bring a nice presence to the screen thought.
This movie brings a new take on this vampire fairy tale, where I wish Eggers wouldn’t have had his female characters bedridden for a lot of the screen time. This movie does have my favorite final shot of the year, and it deserves to be watched for a second time where hopefully I’ll love it instead of like it.
Dallas Fisher 