Cinema Dispatch: Superman

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Superman and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by James Gunn

James Gunn may be a fantastic filmmaker, but no one has managed to recapture the magic of the Richard Donner films; not even Christopher Reeve who tried to make the fourth film into a passionate a poignant message for the world, though I’d still take Superman IV over Man of Steel any day. Sure, the franchise has been reliably bankable which is why Warner Bros isn’t about to give up on it yet, but for Gunn to go after this white whale is a show of supreme confidence, and possibly the kind of show-off move you’d want to make if you were also entrusted to shepherd an entire movie studio towards relevance again. I trust James Gunn to pull it off, but I’m still crossing my fingers all the same. Can James Gunn make us believe that a man can fly while also putting him in a good movie? Let’s find out!!

Whether you know him as Superman, Clark Kent, or Kal-El (Davud Cirebswet), the Big Blue Boy Scout is three years into his career and is doing what he can to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people invested in the world not being better, so he’s come under fire for stopping a war between the US ally of Boravia and the neighboring country of Jarhanpur. Until now, he was the golden boy who could do no wrong and looked good in Tik-Tok videos captured by the citizens of Metropolis, but with this foray into a politically charged conflict, he’s drawn a few side eyes from ostensible allies such as the Justice Gang composed of Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) and, most distressing of all, his own girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) whose worried he hasn’t thought through the implications of such action and how it could come back to haunt him. She’s not wrong either as Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) has been gunning for him for years now and sees an opportunity to turn the public to his side, so with the help of his corporate drones and a few powered-up henchmen, he starts a smear campaign against Superman and even infiltrates his Fortress of Solitude to uncover more secrets. Are there problematic and terrifying skeletons in Kal-El’s closet that could keep him from being the hero he wants to be? What else does Lex Luthor have up his sleeve beyond the mud raking, and will it bring further chaos to international conflict that Superman tried to stop? Most importantly, who’s gonna feed Krypto if something happens to him!?

“My flesh is impervious to heat, so you’re gonna have to eat me raw. Is that gonna be a problem for you?”     “WOOF!”
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Cinema Dispatch: F1: The Movie

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

F1 the Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Naming the movie after the sport it’s about is either a supreme show of confidence or a massive oversight, which, given how many moving parts there are to this thing, is not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe they only got nine out of ten teams to Race Buds, and so they had to go with the default title. Needless to say that money surrounding this movie is off the charts and with it comes a certain amount of pomp and circumstance that it hopes to draw audiences in with. Does the spectacle and grandeur of Formula One on full display create a cinematic experience unlike any other, or is it a lot of hot air for an otherwise pedestrian blockbuster? Let’s find out!!

Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is the kind of guy who wears clichés on his sleeve, at least when it’s not covered in sponsors. He’s a burnout racer who could have been the best but found a way to screw it all up before dedicating his life to easy pay days and lowered expectations.  It’s not until his old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) throws him a bone and offers him a spot on his fledgling Formula One team to try and keep them out of the red and maybe get Sonny some redemption in the process.  Of course, you can’t be a veteran returning to your roots without a cocky young prodigy to take under your wing which is a role Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) fits to a tee; at least when he’s not calling Sonny old and posing for magazine ads.  The two racers manage to find some success feeding off of their mutual disdain for the other’s racing style, but it’s a tall order to make it to the number one spot within the small number of races left in the season, and Sonny may not be as up to the task as he had once thought.  Will Sonny find a way to get past his demons and save his friend’s team in the process?  What can Joshua learn from the old-timer he’s stuck on a team with, and can Sonny be trusted to work in their mutual best interest when there’s gold on the line? Most importantly, will anyone in the theater care about any of this when the cars start going really fast!?

“SHAKE AND BAKE, BABY!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Friendship & Another Simple Favor

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Summer is a good time of year to catch up on things you’ve let fall to the wayside. Maybe it’s a good book, or perhaps a fun game. Maybe you haven’t reviewed anything in nearly a month and want to get back on that horse! Well, now that I’m on vacation, I finally have some time to review some of the movies I haven’t had a chance to talk about yet, at least when I’m not doing other vacation stuff like watching TV and ordering takeout. Will this be a relaxing exercise in extolling the virtues of movies you should see for yourself, or will my time off be filled with bitter resentments at the films that wasted my precious free time? Let’s find out!!

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Friendship

Friendship is owned by A24

Directed by Andrew DeYoung

Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) seems to be living the suburban dream, but the arrival of a new neighbor who takes a shine to him causes him to realize that life can be so much more. Unfortunately, Craig is not what you’d call a suave individual or even that much of a cool dude, and when this new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd) starts to distance himself from Craig, it leaves a hole in his life that starts to affect his job, his wife Tami (Kate Mara), and his son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) as he tries to find new ways to recapture that feeling of true friendship in increasingly desperate and dangerous ways.

There were few movies I was looking forward to this year more than Tim Robbinson’s uncomfortable examination of male bonding, and there were many reasons for this, not the least of which being that Tim Robbinson is one of the best comedians working today. He understands Millennial anxiety like few others do, and it’s no surprise then that his first major film to follow the success of I Think You Should Leave wound up being one of the most personally affecting comedies of my generation, and certainly pulls the rug out from under everyone else who claims to know what’s wrong with men these days. It’s an issue that we’re constantly hearing about, but few movies have found as genuine a starting point to twenty-first-century malaise quite like this. There was a moment in the first Joker film where our protagonist imagines himself being seen by his favorite comedian, and it was one of the only moments in that allegedly serious-minded exploration of male loneliness and mental illness where I felt it was speaking to something profound and real. This movie is that scene for an hour and a half, only done by a guy who is genuinely funny, and beyond any other value it may have at lending an empathetic voice to the people who could really use a wake-up call, it is a fun film despite how uncomfortable it can be. Tim Robinson isn’t going for the same maniacal energy he does for his Netflix show, but even as a more subdued presence he still has a magnetic energy about him that compels you to pay attention and laugh out loud whenever the tension inevitably breaks, and he’s supported by a cast who understands the assignment and bounces off him in interesting ways. It’s fascinating to watch how everyone in his life treats him like a different person while all still coming to more or less the same conclusion about the guy, and it speaks not only how we present ourselves in different social contexts, but how much of our genuine selves still comes across even when we try to mask it. It’s not a movie that offers a lot of answers, but it gives an uncompromising examination of what’s wrong, which is frankly more than what a lot of people are offering to young men these days. The movie does lose a bit of steam in the second half as the narrative gets a bit unfocused with a couple of scenes that aren’t irrelevant, but do feel more like asides. The one that comes to mind is a sequence with drugs which makes sense as recreational use of drugs as a substitute for therapy is a thing a lot of guys are trying these days, no doubt encouraged by the likes of Joe Rogan, but it comes off as the type of indulgence you often see when sketch comedians, or those writing with them in mind, struggle to shake off when moving to a narrative feature. It also fails to stick the landing for me, which is a shame given how well the rest of the movie handles its subject matter. It’s not a bad ending borne out of incompetence as the film telegraphs its turn into ludicrousness well in advance, but it still feels disconnected from the tone we’ve established. It’s an escalation whose purpose is to give us a memorable ending, but the movie was plenty memorable up until that point and this feels needlessly excessive in a movie that simply didn’t need a big finale; completed with a character verbalizing the themes of the movie in case everything else had gone over your head. It’s a shame that the movie just couldn’t get over the finish line without losing confidence in its own conviction, but I guess a movie about disappointment having a disappointing ending is somewhat on brand.

4 out of 5
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Cinema Dispatch: 28 Years Later

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

28 Years Later and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Danny Boyle

I don’t know how controversial of an opinion this is, but I’ve never been a fan of the 28 films. That’s not to say they’re bad, but I simply didn’t find them all that memorable; especially the second one, of which the train scene at the beginning is the only piece that’s stuck in my memory. I was shocked to see how many very famous people were in that movie and how little impression they must have left on me, but they were also movies I watched before I started this whole film critic thing, so maybe I just never saw them in the right frame of mind. Perhaps that changes today, as Danny Boyle’s Faustian bargain with this franchise has demanded another entry nearly three decades after the first one. Will this be another well regarded entry for the Zombie genre, or has time made this series more decrepit than the walking dead themselves? Let’s find out!!

Twenty-eight years after the initial outbreak, which would be twenty-seven years, eleven months and two days since Jim woke up and twenty-seven years and four months since Don proved himself to be the crappiest dad ever, the world has adopted a lock-and-leave policy with the entire British Isle and has left survivors to fend for themselves in self-sustaining communities while making sure none of the zombies even think about taking a dip in the English Channel via a constant patrol of warships. One such survivor is Spike (Alfie Williams) who, in accordance with post-apocalypse tradition, is now a man at the age of twelve and is ready to shoot zombies to death with bows and arrows. He takes his first journey from his protected island community to the mainland and manages to survive with the help of his dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but let’s just say that experience was rather mixed for poor Spike, and with rumors of a doctor being the one to start the conspicuous fires he saw out on the hills, he decides that there’s more important things to do than just scraping by with his dopey dad. Wrapping up all the supplies and courage, this twelve-year-old can muster; he sneaks his sick mother (Jodie Comer) onto the mainland in hopes of finding a cure for her illness through this mysterious doctor everyone else seems so afraid of. Will Spike be able to keep himself and his mother alive through the zombie hoards, especially with the terrifying Alpha Zombies roaming the countryside? Who else is holed up on this island, and will they help Spike on his quest to find the doctor, or be an even worse nightmare than the zombies themselves? Seems like this wasn’t the best thought out plan, but then again, what else did this kid have to look forward to anyway? Another forty years of unseasoned beets and scavenged cans of baked beans?

“Seriously, mom! Why did you let me do this?”     “ME!? You’re the one who dragged me out of bed while I was still catatonic!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Sinners

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Sinners and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by Ryan Coogler

I may be coming to this one late, but it’s not like it’s gotten any less relevant since I saw it on opening weekend! The biggest news story in Hollywood, aside from all the depressing news about tariffs, has been the runaway success of Ryan Coogler’s action-horror period piece. It’s managed to keep audiences’ coming back for more week after week even in the face of the Marvel Movie Machine which admittedly snatch the first place spot from this, but staying at number two with strong weekly returns is an impressive feat in its own right. Still, a successful movie is not always the same thing as a good movie, and while Coogler’s record has been strong, he’s stretching a bit outside his comfort zone with a big budgeted movie outside of a recognizable franchise. Did this movie earn its impressive box office on its merits and through strong word of mouth, or did the hype surrounding this swiftly outpace the quality of the film itself? Let’s find out!!

Set in the small town of Clarksdale way back in 1932, we arrive on the scene just as two prodigal sons return; Elijah and Elias (Michael B Jordan) known by their nicknames “Smoke” and “Stack”.  They bring with them tales of the War and the bustling city of Chicago where they may or may not have done some questionable things that brought lots of beer and stacks of cash to the small town where they plan to open a juke joint for their community.  Caught up in their machinations are their cousin and the preacher’s son Sammie (Miles Caton) who, despite the protestations of his father (Saul Williams), is more than happy to play the blues for them on opening night where all their friends, as well as a few troublemakers, will be doing as the title of the movie suggests.  The raucous party is so good, in fact, that it catches the attention of a nearby vampire who sees plenty of fresh meat to sink his teeth into if he can just find a way inside.  Will this creature of the night find a way into the hearts and minds of those who have been marginalized and may be enticed by the powers that await them?  What brought the “Smoke Stack” brothers back to their home town, and are there things in this world that terrify them more than a literal vampire at their doorstep?  Whatever they did, I’m guessing it was worth it given the quality of those suits!

“Best part is, they’re both in my size!”     “Mine too!  What a coincidence!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Thunderbolts*

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Thunderbolts* and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Jake Schreier

I’ll say this about the Marvel movies. The Superhero Fatigue that everyone brings up is definitely overblown, but there is something a little soulless about the assembly line nature of their productions, and if Phase 5 can be said to have any significant flaw, it really took the shine off of the artistic side of things, as no one seems to have been benefitting from their involvement in them. Perhaps this is why Sinners, which I will be reviewing very soon, has been such a breath of fresh air for critics and audiences alike who are looking for something beyond the movie itself to root for; a story to tell that isn’t just a giant corporation hiring good artists to make perfectly fine products over and over again. Still, it’s hard to argue that the system hasn’t been working just fine for Marvel, and while I don’t know who Jake Schreier is beyond the solid reputation of Robot & Frank, I’m always interested to see what a filmmaker like this can do on the Mouse House’s dime. Is this another great entry in the MCU’s already impressive catalog, or are they desperately scrapping the bottom of the barrel to keep this machine going? Let’s find out!!

It seems that Disney is not the only one who misses the halcyon days of the original Avengers as everyone in the MCU is desperately trying to make that lightning strike twice; none more so than Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) whose company OXE Group has been putting superhero rejects on their payroll and performing secret experiments too horrific to describe. With congress on her heels, no doubt encouraged by the junior congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina needs to wipe the slate clean by destroying all evidence and any witnesses to her crimes which include Black Widow’s sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), US Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen); all of whom have done wet work for her and are eminently disposable in her eyes. Things don’t go as planned, however, as these castoffs find just enough common ground to try and work together to stop Valentina and whatever sinister plot she has up her sleeves. What secrets is she so desperate to hide, and do they involve a mysterious guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman), whose presence is a mystery even to himself? What convinced these B-list superheroes to work for such an obvious jerk anyway, and could Yelena’s father The Red Guardian (David Harbour) show them the proper path to being true heroes? Is the whole Losers as Superheroes trope a bit played out at this point, or is it just a sign of the times that our generation relate to losers more than anyone else?

“As they say in the old country, the bootstraps are mightier than the sword!”     “Shut up, dad.”
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Cinema Dispatch: A Minecraft Movie

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

A Minecraft Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Jared Hess

I’m getting too old for this. I’m sure I’ve said that before, but it’s only getting truer with time as the generation after me starts to come into its own. I suppose Minecraft was something of my own generation, but it had never clicked with me back when it was new, and I’m certainly not about to dive back into it now; even if it would bring a bit more insight into what the heck is going on in this movie. Besides, I brought my seventeen-year-old cousin to the theater with me, so he was able to explain quite a few of the references. Now Millennials are no strangers to irreverence and inanity as we grew up with Internet 1.0 and Newgrounds, but rarely has that aspect of our pop culture been put on the big screen; especially with such an exorbitant budget and big name stars. Is there enough juice to squeeze out of this franchise to make an entertaining movie for all ages, or will I finally understand what my grandma went through when I dragged her to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie all those years ago? Let’s find out!!

Stuck in a rut and yearning for more in life, a Man called Steve (Jack Black) ventures into the mines to dig out his destiny, and wouldn’t you know it! He finds a cube that takes him to a land of square shaped geometry and similarly boxy creatures! Some of them are friendly like the villagers and his pet wolf (), but others have bad attitudes such as the pigs from the Netherworld who wish to take over the Overworld where Steve now resides. Seeking to protect his new home, he sends the magic cube to his world so it will stay out of rich of the pigs, and it winds up in the possession of Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa) whose entire personality revolves around a video game tournament he won in the eighties. With the help of the new kid in town Henry (Sebastian Hansen), he haplessly uses the power of the cube to go to the Overworld along with Henry’s sister Natalie (Emma Myers) and the local real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks). Now that the cube is back within the reach of the pigs and their leader Malgosha (Rachel House), these four must unite with Steven and find a way back home to keep the Overworld safe once and for all! Will this call to action turn these misfits into heroes, or will this journey simply reveal how much growing up they still have to do? What wonders does this world contain, and are there enough of them to fill a ninety-minute movie? Wouldn’t the audience for a Minecraft movie much rather see the movie recreated in Minecraft?

“You’ve got to think three steps ahead. We’ll recreate the movie in Minecraft, ONLY using sheep! THIS is how we reach the Gen Alphas!!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Black Bag & Presence

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors I just never managed to connect with.  I’ve only seen a handful of his movies, and aside from The Informant, I don’t think I cared much for any of them; not even the one Ocean’s movie I saw that didn’t star Sandra Bullock.  I suppose now is as good a time as any to familiarize myself with his work as he’s put out two movies more or less back-to-back, which is a rather impressive feat, but are they two showstopper movies from a prolific creator, or was the quick turnaround time a bad omen that I should have heeded?  Let’s find out!!

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Black Bag

Black Bag is owned by Focus Features

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

In modern day Britain, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is tasked with finding the identity of a traitor in their midst; a job he’s quite good at, but this time comes with a twist.  Among those suspected of stealing a powerful computer virus is his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) who is also a British Intelligence Office and could have just as skillfully absconded with the code as anyone else he suspects.  With not only national security but his marriage on the line, can George uncover the traitor’s identity, and will he know what to do with that knowledge once all the evidence falls into place?

I’m having a hard time pinning down my exact thoughts on this movie, which is rather fitting for a story about deceit and subterfuge. I left this movie with more positive thoughts than negative, and yet very little of it comes to mind as standout moments or genuinely interesting ideas. It’s a boilerplate spy thriller with much of its style and panache replaced by banality and authenticity, which ends up being an interesting take on the genre, but also lacks a lot of the thrills and fantasy that draws people to these type of movies in the first place. The movie is bookended by dinner parties, which end up being its most interesting scenes, so it feels like we’re just meandering our way from one to the other; occasionally livened up by an all too brief cameo from Pierce Brosnan. So what is it that gives this otherwise middle of the road movie an inkling of greatness? Well, as James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Austin Powers have proven in the past, a good spy movie can go quite far with a compelling main character, and this gives us not one but two. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender don’t just turn in great performances, but have a phenomenal amount of chemistry with a script that constantly has you guessing as to their motives while hoping for the best outcome. Fassbender in particular manages to turn an aloof and distant character into a font of emotional despair through the strength of his subdued yet extremely vulnerable performance. Blanchett has always been perfect casting for the perfect woman, even in shlock like Borderlands, but the role is elevated through the interactions she has with Fassbender which only invests us further in the outcome of this mystery. Their relationship is the heart of the movie, and it’s where it seems that all the effort has gone into, and while a better movie would have incorporated everything else more elegantly and thoughtfully into the relationship drama, it’s strong enough here that I can more or less ignore everything else. Frankly, with its strong emphasis on our main stars and a relatively modest production, the whole thing comes off like a miniseries that was pitched, rejected, and trimmed down to feature length. It would explain why everything else feels very matter of fact, as well as it’s extremely brisk pace, which feels like we’re only just kicking things into gear by the time it decides to start wrapping things up. I appreciate it’s more modest ambitions up to a point, as the depth of the two main characters is certainly enough of a hook to carry a movie, but the scope feels needlessly bloated for something that works on such an intimate level. Dragging not one but two Bond cameos into this leads me to believe that it wants to be taken seriously as a spy film, so in that respect the movie does fail to meet the goals it has set for itself. Still, it can take some solace in the fact that it did something so right that it’s very easy to ignore everything else it got so wrong.

3.5 out of 5
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Cinema Dispatch: Mickey 17

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Mickey 17 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Bong Joon-Ho

This has been a tough year for a lot of people, least of all me, as I’ve been severely unmotivated to keep things going around here. This ennui is not helped by the less than stellar slate of movies we’ve gotten so far, some of which I’m gonna try and knock out a few reviews for when I’m feeling up to it, but even amidst the fog of banality, there was a ray of sunshine on the horizon with this latest feature by Bong Joon-Ho starring one of my favorite actors today. With so much going wrong in the world, can this prove to be a bright spot to make things feel a little bit better? Let’s find out!!

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is not living his best life on Earth, and like many of us, decides to travel to try and find himself. Well, that and escape debt collectors with chainsaws, but in any case, he and his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun) queue up to get onboard the Nifilheim which is a ship intended to colonize a distant ice planet run by the overtly sinister Mr. and Mrs. Marshall (Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette) who seem to have given up on making Earth Great Again, and are looking for a do-over in their own little fiefdom in space. Timo gets a spot for being a decent pilot, but since Mickey’s only skill is his desperation to escape, he signs up to be an Expendable; basically a worker bee whose DNA is kept on file and gets printed out whenever the current version of him dies. I suppose dying of solar radiation and maintenance blunders is better than getting a chainsaw to the face, but after four years and sixteen dead copies behind him, he’s found himself in a bit of a rut; especially when the planet turns out to have a bunch of creatures on it that is hindering their colonization efforts.  Still, at least between his immortality and his new girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie), he’s managed to find some stability in his life. That is until he comes back from a particularly nasty day out in the snow and realizes that the crew already declared him dead and printed out the eighteenth Mickey. Not only is this new Mickey kind of a jerk, it’s also against protocol for more than one Expendable to exist at the same time, which could mean his Get Out of Death Free card will be revoked; probably via a bullet to the head or a tumble into the engine’s exhaust pipe. Can Mickey and Mickey work together to keep each other alive and out of sight from the ship’s wrathful captain? What is the Niflheim’s ultimate plan for this new world, and what would it mean for the native species whose home they are invading? I suppose this is the best Mickey could hope for, given who’s in charge. After all, who needs health insurance when you’ve got the ultimate 3D printer?

“The best is that we’ve already killed you so now OSHA standards don’t apply! It’s called Double Jeopardy!”     “Oh yeah, I like that movie. Hey, are my eyeballs supposed to be burning?”
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Cinema Dispatch: The Monkey

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

The Monkey and all the images you see in this review are owned by Neon

Directed by Osgood Perkins

There have been many times that I’ve found myself on the wrong side of history when it comes to movies I’ve reviewed, and while I’m more than happy to like movies that others overlooked, it’s less fun when you’re the one person who just didn’t get a critically acclaimed masterpiece. That’s why I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the trailers for this movie, as Osgood’s last few films didn’t really hit the mark for me and this looked like an easy layup for my goofy sensibilities. Will this horror comedy finally bring me onboard the Osgood Perkins train, or will this be a bigger train wreck than that time he starred in Quigley? Let’s find out!!

As young children, brothers Hal and Bill (Christian Convery) find a mysterious monkey figurine that once belonged to their deadbeat dad. Of course, since this is based on a Stephen King story, the Monkey is no mere toy but a harbinger of doom who brings about gruesome and hilarious death whenever its key is turned and its drums are played. After taking the lives of people they care about, they finally dispose of it in a well and go on about their broken lives for thirty-odd years before it mysteriously reappears, which prompts Bill to call Hall as estranged adults (Theo James) and tell him to get rid of it once and for all. Of course, life hasn’t been all that great for Hal, who’s become a deadbeat dad himself and now needs to spend his last week of custody with his son (Colin O’Brien) finding this toy and dealing with it before it kills everyone in their old hometown. Will Hal mend his relationship with both his son and his brother before the Monkey takes them away from him too? What monstrous force is behind the Monkey’s power, and is there more to be afraid of than just a simple toy? I’ll say this for the little guy; his penchant for unexpected and gory demises certainly gives those Final Destination films a run for their money!

“UGH! All over my glasses!?”
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