Dust Bunny and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate & Roadside Attractions
Directed by Bryan Fuller
It really isn’t that hard to sell me on a movie; in fact, I’m pretty easy to impress when you get right down to it. An interesting premise, a cast of good actors, and some sort of creative hook is all it takes to catch my attention, and few films this year grabbed me by the collar like this one. Heck, I didn’t even see a trailer for it, just one screenshot and a brief plot description, and yet that was all it took to get my butt into the theater for Bryan Fuller’s directorial debut! Does the movie live up to the sales pitch that so thoroughly drew me in, or are the coolest ideas all for naught if the filmmaker doesn’t know how to make the most of them? Let’s find out!!
As children, we all have to go through difficult life experiences as just another part of growing up. Getting bullied at school, learning to ride a bike without the training wheels, or in the case of Aurora (Sophie Sloan), dealing with the fact that your family was eaten by a monster under your bed. Okay, maybe it’s not the most relatable scenario to work through, but fortunately for Sophie, she just so happens to live across the hall from a hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) who’s very good at his job and might just have what it takes to stop this creature once and for all. It’s an uphill pitch for the hitman, to be sure, but when his own demons, albeit the less literal kind, start to bleed over into Aurora’s situation, he has no choice but to keep her safe from whatever monster is coming from under the floorboards or is knocking on her front door. Can Aurora be free from this monster once and for all with the help of her hitman buddy? What should a hitman do when confronted with such a fantastical story, and can someone with so much blood on his hands hope to protect a girl from those that wish her harm? I mean, given what he’s had to do his entire life, who’s to say which one of them has truly lost touch with reality?
Megalopolis and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Is it just me, or have the bad movies gotten more interesting in 2024? Sure, they’re still bad movies, but I’ve had a lot to talk about when it comes to stuff like Borderlands and The Crow, and while I was looking forward to enjoying this as a good movie when it was first announced, the last few months of bad press and worse behavior from its grumpy creator has lowered my expectations considerably. Is this a cinematic triumph from one of its greatest auteurs, or is this simply a case of an old man yelling at clouds for two hours? Let’s find out!!
In the city of New Rome, there is a struggle for the fate of society as Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) envisions a Utopia within his lifetime brought about through the building of a great city he will dub Megalopolis. Despite his brilliant foresight into the future of humanity, he is opposed by the mayor of New Rome, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), as well as certain members of his own family who are jealous of the genius and acclaim that seems to come so naturally to Cesar. One such enemy, at least at first, is the daughter of the mayor Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) who wants to humiliate him for how he has humiliated her father, and yet even she cannot help but see the perfect world that Cesar hopes to bring about as she spends more time with him. Alas, outside forces are not the sole source of Cesar’s struggle as his genius compels him to act out in self-destructive ways as the truly exceptional among us often do, and it threatens to diminish the wisdom trapped within his skull. With so many forces trying to stop the perfect future, can Cesar convince the common folk to back his cause and pressure the government to put all their eggs in his basket? What is the true source of his self-destructive tendencies, and will Julia have what it takes to keep his mind clear and his butt out of jail? Is it just me, or is the writer, the director, and possibly even the producer of this movie, trying to say something with this unsung and tortured genius trying to make the world a better a place according to his image of it?
“And why are the cell phones so darn confusing these days!? Can’t I just order a pizza without downloading an app and signing up for their rewards program!?”Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Megalopolis”→
The Crow and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Rupert Sanders
It’s been almost twenty years since the last Crow movie, and about thirty years since the only one anybody cared about. The production history on this is as tortured and unkillable as Eric Draven himself, and yet the box office proved to be the one thing that could put it down for good, as this reboot tanked as hard as Borderlands did just a few weeks ago. Still, something like the Crow would also be niche outside its one moment of pop culture relevance, so very few people going to see it doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t hit for the right kind of audience. Was the decade of false-starts and production woes worth suffering through to finally get us here, or should this have stayed dead, buried, and plowed over with concrete? Let’s find out!!
Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgård) isn’t great at a lot of things, but he is a solid boyfriend to Shelly (FKA Twigs) who’s escaped from a bad situation and is looking for a fresh start. Sadly for the both of them, her past catches up to her and the two are murdered by the hired goons of Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). With such a horrible fate befalling them, a mysterious strange in the place in between life and death (Sami Bouajila) offers Eric the chance to come back to life and get his revenge against the monsters that did this to him as well as save Shelly’s soul because Vincent has some sort of demon thing going on that sends people straight to Hell. With nothing else to live for, or die for I guess, Eric takes the offer and becomes an angel of vengeance and begins his quest for the soul of his dearly departed girlfriend. Does this new lease on undead life restore balance to a world that has been corrupted by dark forces? Why did Vincent go after Shelly in the first place, and will Eric like the answers he finds along the way? Will he fight with all the strength and speed of the mighty crow!?
With the window between theatrical and streaming collapsing as movies are coming hitting the home market mere weeks after their run in theaters, it’s getting a little too easy for me to just forget about something and return to it when it’s most convenient for me. Before, there was a window where missing it in theaters meant you couldn’t see it in any form for months, but now I can just hold out for a bit and see it when it’s still kinda relevant with the added bonus of being able to fold laundry when I do so. I’ll definitely try to get better about this, especially with so many big releases that need attention soon, but for now, let’s have some fun looking at three recent movies that were on your TV before you knew it!
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John Wick: Chapter 4
John Wick: Chapter 4 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Chad Stahelski
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is finally striking back against The High Table to take back his freedom, but with every life he takes, he incurs a greater debt that his friends and associates are forced to pay back. With his friend Shimazu (Hiroyuk Sanada) targeted and his other friend Caine (Donnie Yen) called in to take him out, John is forced to spill even more blood and find ways to work the system to his favor as yet another member of The High Table (Bill Skarsgård) has him in his sights. Will John ever get the peace he desires, or will his quest for vengeance be his ultimate undoing?
Now I actually did catch this one when it was still in theaters, but it wasn’t easy for me to come up with the right words for it back then. Perhaps the reason why is that the John Wick franchise has been a bit of a bugbear for me as I appreciate what it’s doing and how well it executes its vision but simply cannot get past the narrative which got worse with subsequent sequels. That issue, thankfully, has been mitigated here as the script does a lot to work around its more obnoxious conceits, though we still haven’t quite made it back to the first film as far as being a great movie instead of just an action-packed one; hence why I’m just now getting around to it. The lack of agency for our main character has been addressed as he has a clear goal he’s striving for instead of getting dragged around by contrivances, but with that freedom comes the expectation to have an actual character again and sadly he’s just not as interesting as he was in the first one; something that others have noticed as well as his word count in this final entry was a joke when it first came out. Thankfully the film’s solution is to introduce a lot of fun and interesting characters to pick up the slack, though it didn’t escape my notice that a lot of their plot threads are left dangling as Lionsgate is clearly interested in milking this franchise for years to come. Donnie Yen turns in a terrific performance and is frankly the star of this movie as far as I’m concerned as he has all the pathos that John should while kicking all sorts of butt in the many action scenes that he participates in. He’s easily the best character the franchise has come up with and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lionsgate is already begging him to be the lead in the next few of these movies. My personal favorite addition, however, is Scott Adkins who shows up doing a phenomenal riff on LeCheffe from Casino Royale. The guy is one of our best underrated-action-stars and he proves to be a natural comedian in a role that could have simply been a joke but is genuinely engaging, and his fight with John ends up being my favorite action scene in the movie. All of this is well and good, but a problem the films still haven’t addressed yet is the length as they’ve been creeping up past two hours since the second one and this one just goes on and on. No matter how good the action scenes are in this, and they are very good, it’s hard to sustain enthusiasm for as long as this movie expects you to. I know I’m a bit of a sourpuss when it comes to this series and I admit that a lot of my antipathy is specific to my taste in storytelling, but for what it’s worth this manages to be a high note for the sequels even if it still can’t quite recapture the magic of that first film.
Plane and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Jean-François Richet
Gerard Butler and I have something of an understanding; albeit one that’s completely one-sided. As long as he doesn’t make anything as truly detestable as London Has Fallen again, I’ll continue to hold him up as one of our best B-Movie action stars. Shouldn’t be too hard as being better than London Has Fallen is a very low bar to clear, and I’ve enjoyed quite a few of his post-2016 outings. Will his latest outing, which looks to be as simple and straightforward as its title, prove to be another solid entry in his shining career, or will he finally sap away whatever goodwill I had left for him? Let’s find out!!
Our pilot for this adventure is Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) who has the dark background, short temper, and cheeky wisecracks of a typical Hollywood action star, but he’s not in the mood for heroics and just wants to get home to his daughter after this one last flight. Of course, it wouldn’t be a movie if something bad didn’t happen, and after being brow beaten by corporate to fly through a storm to save some fuel, the plane crashes on an isolated island far from their intended flight plan; leaving it up to our esteemed captain to keep order and find a way to bring everyone back home. Complicating matters is the presence of a convict Louis (Mike Colter) who was added to the flight at the last minute, not to mention a bunch of whiney passengers who want to live stream their plight, but those concerns are small potatoes compared to the army of angry militias that are barreling towards them with the intent to murder them, ransom them, or both. Will Brodie be able to keep the peace in such a tense situation while working on a way to contact the outside world? Can Louis be trusted as an ally in keeping these people safe, and what will he do when the situation puts him closer and closer to being a free man? Did they at least save the in-flight peanuts, or are those still gonna cost extra?
“You want my help, you gonna have to give me a blanket, three bottles of sparkling water, and every bag of Corn Pops you have left.” “Anything else?” “Do you still give away those Junior Wings? I always wanted some of those.”Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Plane”→
We’re back with a few more movie reviews, and I’ve got to say that I’m starting to enjoy this format! I still get to watch the movies I want to, but now I can watch them on my own schedule and I keep things nice and succinct. The only problem is that I’m not getting these out in a timely manner, but relevance is overrated, am I right!? Anyway, let’s take a look at three movies that I’m sure you saw a while ago but are still interested to hear what some guy on the internet has to say about them! Let’s get started!!
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Bullet Train
Bullet Train is owned by Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by David Leitch
A hapless assassin given the codename Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is on a very simple mission to retrieve a briefcase on a train heading to Kyoto. Naturally, these kinds of things never are that easy and he laments his bad luck while dodging other assassins on the train, and is haphazardly embroiled in a plot that is bigger than he could possibly imagine and seems to be heading in one very bloody direction.
I’m not a guy who will turn his nose up at over-the-top action spectacles or something that is intentionally cheesy and a movie like this should have been my jam by default, but even the best ingredients will go to waste if given to an untalented chef, and I just found this whole thing to be insufferable. It’s convoluted without being clever, smarmy without the charm to make up for it, and artificial to the point that nothing seems to actually matter. The only part of the movie that resonated with me was the relationship between Lemon and Tangerine as Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson had great chemistry and added some genuine heart to an otherwise insincere story, and while I feel like this is one of the most Monkeys’ Paw wishes imaginable, I’d kind of like to see what could be done with a spinoff focusing on them specifically. Andrew Koji also stands out from everything else with a very angry and desperate performance that’s still about as one-note as everything else in the movie, but at least it’s a different note being played and does a great job playing it. Everything else though is just laden with insufferable dialogue and compounding coincidences that just drain any investment you can have in the characters or the plot itself; especially our protagonist who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. For that kind of story to work, it has to ultimately circle back around to them actually being the right person to be there, but that would require a level of emotional investment that this movie is just unwilling to extend and so Brad Pitt feels like as distant to the story as those of us sitting in the theater watching him awkwardly stumble his way through a place he doesn’t belong; like an uninvited party guest asking everyone where the bathroom is. With the threadbare story, the quip-tastic dialogue, and the general lack of impact or weight from any of the narrative beats, it falls somewhere between a Rick and Morty episode and one of those award show skits with a bunch of celebrities are comically inserted into another movie. If we take it on these terms, as little more than entertainment fluff with a bunch of famous people in it, does it manage to work? Sort of, I guess. It’s competent in its action and the actors are fine for what they’re asked to do, but it’s also not that inspiring or clever in its shallowness and I had my fill of everything it had to offer well before it got to its big cameos at the end. At best it’s a misguided attempt from Hollywood to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of early Tarantino as well as the director’s own early success with John Wick, and at worst it’s the cinematic equivalent of Steve Buscemi in a backwards baseball cap asking his fellow kids how they are doing. It’s not without its charms, but why settle for the smoothed-over corporate version of stylized action shlock when the genuine article is easier to find than ever?
Moonfall and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich and I don’t always see eye to eye, but sometimes he can put together a decent enough spectacle to remind us of why he became such a big name in blockbuster cinema. Heck, I’m probably one of the few critics that thought Independence Day: Resurgence was pretty decent, so it shouldn’t take too much for me to give his latest movie a thumbs up; especially with such a brilliantly simple premise! The moon crashing into the Earth? It practically writes itself! Does Emmerich pull it off once again with this rather tenuous adaptation of Majora’s Mask, or will we be hoping for the moon to actually crash into us by the time this movie is over? Let’s find out!!
All the way back in the year 2011, a crew of astronauts was attacked by a mysterious space anomaly that led to one astronaut dying and the other two having to make a daring crash landing back on Earth. They manage to survive the incident, but one of them, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) ends up taking the fall for it as he insists that there was something out there that caused it and that it wasn’t just solar flares or orbital wobble. Fast forward ten years and the other astronaut, Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), managed to make her way to Deputy Director of NASA while Brian has snuggled into the role of a disgraced booze-hound who will surely be quick to sober as soon as everyone realizes he was right all along. Sure enough, the moon starts to fall out of orbit and it looks like this anomaly is responsible for it; not that NASA wants to admit it, but a conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley) manages to get the word out and the world starts to panic over the fact that they’re about to find themselves between a literal rock and a hard place. With little time to put a plan together and even less time to pull it off, Jocinda calls in Brian who drags along KC to try and save the world from utter destruction. Oh, and other people are doing stuff here and there, mostly involving the families of our main characters, but they’re mostly on hand to look at all the stuff getting destroyed. Can our unlikely trio of scientists and pseudo-scientists fix the moon before it turns the Earth into a giant space donut? What is the nature of this anomaly that Brian saw, and are there forces working behind the scenes to stop our heroes from discovering the truth? I don’t know, if we can’t figure out how to stop Global Warming, what are the chances we can stop the moon from headbutting us?
Knives Out and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Rian Johnson
I gotta tell you, I was in LOVE with this movie from the very first trailer! Seeing great actors like Michale Shannon, Toni Collette, and Daniel Craig, on screen with Captain America in a movie from the Last Jedi guy, AND it’s a juicy as heck murder mystery? What more could one person ask for!? Even with the best of trailers however, there’s always a possibility that what we saw was a cleaned up version of the best bits while the finished product is a compromised and messy waste of time; the Suicide Squad approach if you will. Can Rian Johnson prove once again how great of a filmmaker he is despite how… “controversial” his last film was, or is this just more fuel to the fire for the more obnoxious anti-fans of The Last Jedi? Let’s find out!!
The morning after the eighty-fifth birthday of famed mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), he is found dead by his nurse Marta Cabrera (Ana De Anmas) with this throat slashed open by a knife, and because of his massive wealth and greedy family members it only makes sense to investigate things a bit further despite it looking like a suicide. Not only that, famed detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) with his rich southern accent was brought in to investigate by a mysterious correspondent who sent him no identifying information but a wad of cash to find out if there was foul play or not. His entire family was in attendance the night before and most of them stayed the night in the giant and ridiculously furnished mansion complete with a giant display of knives that looks like a rejected Game of Thrones prop, so there was plenty of opportunity for someone to get the drop on him and possibly make it look like a suicide. The suspects include his children Linda and Walt (Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Shannon), his children in-law Richard and Joni (Don Johnson and Toni Collette), and his grandchildren Hugh, Meg, and Jacob (Chirs Evans, Katherine Langford, and Jaeden Martell); all of whom are bizarre in their own way, but hardly seem to be the types to kill unless VERY highly motivated. The key here is not finding the right method or the most capable suspect, but who had the most REASON to kill, and chance are it has to do with money as Harlan seems to have upset quite a few people at the party last night, though everyone is staying rather tight lipped about it. Can Detective Blanc find the truth among all the lies, misdirection, and self-serving half-truths? Which member of this eclectic family has the most to gain now that Harlan is gone, and who has the most to hide? Is the big twist at the end that Detective Blanc was ACTUALLY Joe Bang in disguise this entire time!?
“There was a time where I thought cracking bank vaults would solve all my problems. Then I realized that my true passion was in cracking cases. And also cracking bank vaults. That’s just fun!”
Jexi and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate
Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
We are still VERY much in catch up mode right now and it’s starting to get a bit distressing as more and more movies I wanted to see close to leaving theaters, but at least I managed to catch THIS one which somehow got to my second run theater a good three to four weeks before I would have expected it to! You know how I found out that they had it? I USED MY PHONE!! It all connects if you look hard enough! Anyway, does this story about a phone with a heart of gold and the mouth of a sailor manage to be a biting and hilarious critique of how we interact and even bond with our electronic devices, or is it just a silly movie about the kids these days and their addition to screens? Let’s find out!!
This is the story of a man named Phil (Adam DeVine) who spends all his time on his phone and has no connections with anyone else; especially at his job where he writes top ten lists for a website run by the maniacal Kai (Michael Peña). I’m not sure why he has to go to an office to do that, especially since he doesn’t seem to get anything out of being around other people like his coworkers Craig and Elaine (Ron Funches and Charlyne Yi), but that’s his life and he seems to be content with it. Until of course his phone breaks after a run in with a local bike shop owner named Cate (Alexndra Shipp) and he has to go buy a new one which seems simple enough but turns into madcap hilarity when the AI assistant turns out to be a wise cracking, truth telling, emotionally berating, hard ass named Jexi who doesn’t put up with ANY of Phil’s crap and tries to get his life in order if for no other reason than how embarrassing it is to be around him. At first it seems to work as her tough love advice leads to him making friends at work, expanding his horizons a bit, and even landing a date with Cate, but once the job of fixing him comes closer and closer to being finished what is left for Jexi to do? Can Phil put his life back on track and learn to be the kind of person those MILLENNIALS ARE RUINING EVERYTHING articles wants us to be? What will Jexi do once she’s no longer needed and Cate starts to horn in on her territory? Is this what the AI in HER would have acted like if she was the star of that Joker movie?
“You wanna know how I got these scars? YOU DROPPED ME WHILE EATING THAT CANDY BAR!!“ “Oh come on baby! I got you that protective case, didn’t I?”
Rambo Last Blood is such a b movie that the writer of the original book David Morrell has called it degrading embarrassment, and if you’ve read my review you’ll know that I share the same sentiment. Still, the movie may have done one thing right which is make me reflect on the other Rambo films and wonder if this latest movie is truly as much of a departure from them as my rose tinted nostalgia believes them to be. For this reason I’ve decided to rewatch the other four Rambo films and approach them from as much of a fresh perspective as I can manage and see if the good ones still hold up and if the bad ones are even worse than I remember. This is probably gonna be a rough one. Let’s get started!!
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First Blood (1982)
Yeah, this one still holds up. Right off the bat, the movie does a great job of setting up the world in which Rambo lives which frankly I kind of have a hard time believing was really the case. I mean considering where we are NOW I might be a bit naïve saying that, but the fact that a cop is profiling a white dude with an American flag on his jacket, well that just seems really odd to me as someone for whom adulation and thanks are the bare requirement when interacting with a veteran. That said, patriotism and worship of the troops has ALWAYS had a two-faced nature to it where the same people screaming about respecting the troops and waving flags are the usually the first ones to trample human rights and backstab veterans who are in desperate need of help, so a small town sheriff using his outsized sense of power to quietly shuffle this guy along isn’t the MOST unrealistic thing, and like I said the movie does a great job of setting up the world in such a quick amount of time. Stallone has a quiet intensity to his performance that belies the rage burning just beneath the surface, and after only three minutes with Brian Dennehy you’d want to torch the town too. This movie excels at the way it escalates tension and how the situation just snowballs as one slight leads to a definite act leads to another sleight and so on. And sure, it does have its cheesy moments. Every time he flashes back to Vietnam it’s only a notch below the ridiculous flashbacks in Meet the Feebles (made even more so by his AMAZING mustache) and some of Stallone’s shouty faces come off as comical, but all those extremes really add to the utter desperation of this character and how despite all his muscles, his movie star good looks, and his unmatched skills at whooping ass, he’s still a complete mess as a person; exemplified by the speech at the end which is both heart breaking to listen to and a little bit funny to watch. What was really solidified for me on this latest watch is that while Rambo himself is an interesting character, he’s more of a symbolic force of nature whom the drama and political commentary revolve around. Heck, I’d wager that in overall screen time we get more of Brian Dennehy than we do of Rambo as it’s his movie first and foremost even if Rambo does eventually take center stage once we get to the aforementioned finale and the rather blunt coda of the movie. First Blood is ultimately a movie more about the time it takes place in than about the characters within it; the man pushed too far by an uncaring system and the ghosts of his past, the cops who abuse their authority under the guise of keeping law and order, even the dipshit gun toting National Guardsmen which may or may not be an accurate or fair portrayal (weekend warriors versus the REAL soldiers), but is definitely there to make a point. With the latest movie, it felt like the incoherent ramblings of a perpetually terrified racist who couldn’t even see the humanity of those who are perceived to be the enemy. To a certain extent, I can see where that sort of extreme flailing of emotions originated in this film with how much of its heart is on its sleeve, but where Last Blood wants to fuel the fires of discord, this movie is trying to draw out some kind of understanding from all of its characters and from the audience who watches it. It’s a bit tone oblivious at points and has some drastic tonal shifts throughout (the comic relief National Guardsmen REALLY stood out for me), but it has genuine heart behind it which is why it holds up so well. Now the only thing I know about the book this is based on is how it ends which greatly diverges from the movie. At the end of the book, Trautman ends up killing Rambo at the police station, and while the filmmakers did shoot a version of this for the movie they ultimately decided to go with the happier one where Rambo lives and goes quietly with the faint hope that maybe he’ll get the help he needs and that the country can do better by others like him. Well that, or they’ll just make a series of increasingly ludicrous and jingoistic movies, but what are the odds of THAT happening!?
The Reviewers Unite 