Movie Review Happy Hunting

Happy Hunting (2017) 

Directed by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson

Written by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson 

Starring Martin Dingle-Wall, Ken Lally, Kenny Wormald 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 20, 2017 

Happy Hunting is one of the better horror movies of 2017. This Most Dangerous Game knock off takes the premise of hunting humans and puts a redneck, Mexican border setting to it and lets loose with a serious amount of blood and guts. The film reminded me a little of 2016’s brilliant horror-thriller Green Room which used a backwoods milieu to similar effect. That film is far better than Happy Hunting but that this film brings that one to mind says something about how good Happy Hunting really is.

Happy Hunting stars Martin Dingle Wall as Warren, a drunk drifter who gets invited to Mexico to pick up what may or may not be his child. The mother of the child has died and claims the child belongs to Warren but the only way for him to know for sure is to drive to Mexico. Broke and drunk, Warren needs cash so he concocts the worst batch of meth he could cook and tries to sell it to some meth-heads nearby. Needless to say, this doesn’t go well.

After narrowly escaping the meth-heads, leaving bodies in his wake, Warren finds himself in a small Texas border town that looks on the brink of death. Holing up in a motel with the meth-heads money, Warren, naturally stays drunk while he waits to be told where in Mexico he needs to go. Unfortunately, the town hunt is just getting underway and the hunters do not take kindly to visitors. While Warren briefly seeks solace at an AA meeting he meets Steve (Ken Lally) who wants to be his sponsor.

Steve, like everyone else in town, has a secret, he’s a hunter and seeing Warren new in town, he’s chosen him as the prize for he and his wife Cheryl (Sherry Leigh) to hunt down. After drugging Warren they drag him to the town square where he and four other men are set to go running off into the desert to run for their lives from an assortment of small town badasses who’ve become quite proficient at hunting human beings over the years.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Shot

Shot (2017) 

Directed by Jeremy Kagan 

Written by Anneke Campbell, William Lamborn 

Starring Noah Wyle, Sharon Leal, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 15th, 2017 

The new-in-theaters drama Shot starring Noah Wyle and Sharon Leal may look like a very special episode of a TV drama but it’s a very effective very special episode of a TV drama. This anti-gun message movie, which does also play like an 87-minute public service announcement at times, nevertheless does have a valuable message. The shooting style may not blow you away but the performances are solid and the message is potent.

Things are not going great for Mark Newman (Wyle) on this Friday afternoon. He’s just been told that he has 36 hours to finish five days’ worth of work he’s doing as a sound editor on a movie followed by a lunch date with his soon to be ex-wife Phoebe (Sharon Leal). This portion of his rotten day, however, is about to get worse as not far from where he and Phoebe are finishing another argument a teenager named Miguel (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) has just been handed a gun which he immediately fumbles and fires, sending a bullet into Mark’s chest.

Here’s when the film supposedly gets clever as it turns into a real-time drama from the moment Mark is shot, about 7 minutes into the movie, and the next hour or so as Mark lies on the sidewalk, is rushed to the hospital and undergoes an examination by an E.R. doctor played by the wonderful character actor Xander Berkley. These scenes have an exceptional authenticity to them, especially if you’ve ever been in an emergency medical situation.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride (2017) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by William Goldman 

Starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Robin Wright, Andre the Giant, Billy Crystal Carole Kane

Release Date September 25th, 1987 

Published September 20th, 2017 

The Princess Bride is one of the most rewatchable movies in history. This rich, robust, and homey comedy never ages and never falters. Rob Reiner’s direction, aside from a truly terrible film score, is unassailable in every comedy beat. Then there is the absolutely perfect casting. Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, and each of the supporting players, from Chris Sarandon as the evil Prince, Christopher Guest as the evil six-fingered henchman, and Billy Crystal’s cameo as Miracle Max, could not be better.

This weekend, September 25, The Princess Bride turns 30 years old and I am happy to tell you that I have probably seen this movie more than 30 times in that 30 years. The film feels like home to me with these wonderfully erudite characters, their supreme code of conduct, and the wonderfully generous laughs. I can’t call The Princess Bride a perfect movie, once again I will mention that terrible film score, but it’s damn near perfection.

Westley (Cary Elwes) is a young farm boy in the employ of the family of Buttercup (Robin Wright). Though Buttercup attempts to annoy her farm boy with one silly task after another we are told in Peter Falk’s wonderful voiceover that Westley’s constant refrain, "as you wish," to each of her requests is his way of confessing his love for her. Eventually, Buttercup realizes that she’s been annoying him because she’s been trying to hide her feelings for him and the two fall madly in love just as Westley is about to leave.

Westley is to take to the seas to seek his fortune so that he may soon return and give Buttercup the life she richly deserves. Unfortunately, it’s reported that Westley’s ship was attacked by a pirate legend known as the Dread Pirate Roberts and he does not take prisoners. With Westley thought dead, Buttercup becomes distant and lonely and when the Prince (Chris Sarandon) arrives at her door wanting to make the most beautiful girl in the kingdom his future Queen she accepts knowing that she is only giving her body to the task but not her heart.

What Buttercup doesn’t know is that the Prince is merely using her and plans to kill her with his first plan to have her kidnapped and killed in the fields of the rival kingdom of Gilder. The princess’s captors are a wonderful comic mixture with the leader Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) claiming to be the smartest person in the world, while his henchmen, Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) and Fezzik (pro wrestling super-legend Andre the Giant) are the greatest swordsman and the biggest brut in the kingdom respectively.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review American Assassin

American Assassin (2017) 

Directed by Michael Cuesta

Written by Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz 

Starring Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Taylor Kitsch 

Release Date September 15th, 2017 

Published September 16th, 2017 

American Assassin stars Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a normal college age kid who we meet while he is vacationing in Ibiza with his beautiful girlfriend. Just after she has accepted his marriage proposal, terrorists sweep over the beach, killing dozens of people in an all too plausible scenario that calls to mind the Paris nightclub attack. Among the dead is Mitch’s new fiancée while he is wounded in the leg and shoulder but narrowly survives.

Cut to 18 months later, a dejected Mitch is now sporting a full beard and a whole set of new muscles on his thin frame. We watch as he corresponds with Muslim terrorists via a private chat network. Mitch is getting himself recruited to become a terrorist with the goal of getting all the way to the man who organized the attack on the beach that killed his girlfriend. What Mitch doesn’t know is that the CIA, specifically deputy director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan), is in on his private messages and are set to spoil his chance at vengeance.

Once Mitch is the hands of the CIA, he is turned over to a secret training organization headed up by a badass former Navy Seal and spy named Hurley (Michael Keaton). Hurley doesn’t think Mitch is emotionally stable enough for the kinds of missions he trains people for but soon enough Mitch proves to be one of only two recruits with the capability to keep up with Hurley and with a major mission coming up to stop a nuclear bomb from being built, there is no time to waste on whether or not Mitch is ready or not.

American Assassin moves at a brisk pace. Director Michael Cuesta may not have a great ear for dialogue based off the leaden, exposition-laden jargon of American Assassin, but he has a terrific eye for action. The opening assault on the beach in Ibiza is frighteningly real and graphic. Some will consider the scene exploitation but I feel it accurately reflects where the story is heading without being disrespectful to real-life tragedies. This is the kind of attack that we’ve seen before and the way Cuesta captures it is intense and jarring.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Lipstick Under My Burkha

Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017) 

Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava 

Written by Alankrita Shrivastava 

Starring Ratna Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Aahana Kumra 

Release Date July 21st, 2017 

Published July 19th 2017 

“You know what our problem is? We dream too much?”

That quote is devastating. It comes from the movie Lipstick Under My Burkha from writer director Alankrita Shrivastava. It’s a remarkable film about four wonderful characters staring into the face of oppression and still trying to live their dreams. Lipstick is only Shrivastava’s second directorial feature and yet she directs with the surety and beauty of a veteran filmmaker. Her eye and ear are perfectly in tune to her characters, who each have big beautiful beating hearts.

Auntie (Ratna Pathak) is at the center of the story, a brilliant, well-respected elder in her community. Yet, she is only 55 years old and a widow and her desires have not cooled with age. Auntie has been Auntie for so long that just trying to say her own name is a challenge. Reclaiming her name is the start of admitting she still has the desires she’s been nursing via a romance novel that she reads as the film’s narration with the story acting as a not too blatant Greek chorus to the story of the movie.

Auntie’s desires come to the fore when she meets a much younger swim instructor whose muscled torso fires the dreams she has of the male character in her book. Pushing her desires ever further she begins to carry on a secret phone relationship with the young man and dreams of perhaps finding the courage to tell him who she really is and how he stirs her soul and so much more. Ratna Pathak could not be better cast in the role of Auntie, still a beauty at 55 with tender eyes and an inner strength radiates to the very end.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Mauvais Sang

Mauvais Sang (1987) 

Directed by Leos Carax

Written by Leos Carax 

Starring Michel Piccoli, Juliette Binoche, Denis Levant 

Release Date September 9th, 1987 

Published September 10th 2017 

Mauvais Sang or Bad Blood, the English title, stars Dennis Levant as Alex, a small time criminal about to break into the criminal big time. After the death of his father, Alex is sought by his father’s former associates, Marc (Michel Piccoli) and Hans (Hans Meyer) to be part of a heist that will require his quick hands. The heist involves stealing the cultures of a dangerous virus that is ravaging France, a plague that affects those who make love without being in love.

The esoteric virus is a relatively minor player in the drama of Mauvais Sang which is far more interested in the love triangle of Alex, Marc and Marc’s much younger love Anna (Juliette Binoche). Though she is very young, Anna makes it clear that Marc is the only love she has ever known until Alex comes along and upsets their insular little world. Marc has recently become distant following the death of Alex’s father as he believes his rival, an old woman only referred to as The American, was behind the death and is plotting his murder as well if he can’t pull off the virus heist.

Marc’s growing emotional distance and Alex’s insistent romancing are the forces at war for much of the film’s second act which features a 30 minute scene in which Alex and Anna talk and bond and flirt and warn each other of the potential downfalls of a relationship between them. Anna maintains that she loves Marc, despite his age and growing coldness toward her. Alex meanwhile is insistent on his feelings and the scene culminates with a glorious expression of Alex’s newfound love, a street dance/run set to David Bowie’s Modern Love.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby (1968) 

Directed by Roman Polanski 

Written by Roman Polanski 

Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Ralph Bellamy

Release Date June 12th, 1968 

Published September 10th, 2017 

Rosemary’s Baby is one of the most sneakily ingenious psycho-dramas ever made. Director Roman Polanski, a quite correctly demonized figure today, was a masterful director in his day. In Rosemary’s Baby, arguably his finest film, Polanski uses film technique and his unique sensibilities to take seemingly normal and mundane things and use our perceptions of those things against us. The most obvious and blatant of these mundane things is using the elderly as the film’s villains, especially the grandmotherly Ruth Gordon.

Rosemary’s Baby is set in New York in 1965. Rosemary is an aspiring housewife to Guy (John Cassavetes), an actor looking for a big break on Broadway while making a living as an actor in commercials. Rosemary and Guy have just landed a beautiful new apartment in a venerated old building with a very creepy history. According to a friend, the building was the home to several disturbing deaths and rumors of occult activities.

This, however, does not put off Rosemary, at least not until she meets the neighbors. Minnie (Gordon) and her husband Roman (Sidney Blackmer) seem like the doting grandparent types by the look of them but when they begin to force their way further and further into the lives of Rosemary and Guy we completely understand why Rosemary feels as uncomfortable as she is. Roman, by some luck, is a producer and when Guy begins spending more time with him his career begins to turn around.

Meanwhile, the couple is trying to get pregnant and here is where Polanski pulls off a really neat and disturbing trick. In what seems as if it could be a dream, Rosemary finds herself slowly beginning to pass out and dream that she is on a yacht with friendly people having a nice time. However, the edges of her dream seem to be tearing away and a bizarre sort of reality is seeping into the fantasy, a dark disturbing reality that finds a nude Rosemary tied to a bed in a room full of nude old people and her freaked out husband. She is then raped by the Devil himself, a cloven hooved demon who climbs on top of her while the old folks chant creepily.

Find my full length review in the Horror Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Mother

Mother (2017) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Darren Aronofsky 

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer 

Release Date September 15, 2017 

Published September 14th, 2017 

I can’t decide if Mother(!) is Darren Aronofsky’s way of pleasuring himself on screen or if it is a legitimate work of art simply out of the grasp of my pea brain. The film has some seemingly obvious metaphors but they are metaphors that are so blatant that your brain fights the idea that they could be so simple to untangle. At least we can all agree that Mother(!) is a pretentious as all get out work of an egotist artist who’s either far too oblique for his own good or a complete troll.

Mother(!) is the title character played by Jennifer Lawrence who opens the film completely engulfed in flames before waking up in bed. Was it a dream? Stick around, the movie has a little something for you on that later. Mother and her writer husband, played by Javier Bardem, are living in an idyllic old home that has been recovered from a fire. This unique home sits in the middle of a field or perhaps a ‘garden,’ one might call it Eden-like.

The idyll of their country home is upended by the arrival of a snake-like gentleman, played by a skinny, leathery, Ed Harris, who claims to be one of the Husband’s biggest fans. Considering there is no place to stay for miles around they allow the man to spend the night. Then the next day his wife arrives played by Michelle Pfeiffer followed by their warring children played by Domnhall and Brian Gleeson who set about acting out a version of Cane and Abel inside these strangers’ home.

This portion of the film ends with a funeral and a finale in which Mother accuses her husband of not wanting to have sex with her to which he replies with what begins as attempted rape and then becomes a brief sex scene leading to a bizarre reveal and an even more bizarre final act of the film that I will leave you to discover on your own. The portentousness of the reveal is kind of fun and exciting but that pay off was a deal breaker for me, I was pretty much done with Mother(!) at this point and there was still a whole act of full on madness to come.

The lead up to the sex scene in Mother(!) basically states that a woman who is angry or unhappy with her husband to the point where she’s ready to leave him can be satisfied with a good sexing. This, to me, is such a gross and simplistic notion, so remarkably, ludicrously sexist that it seems like a provocation just to get that accusation. Unfortunately, Mother (!) doesn’t offer any rebuttal to this idea. Lawrence’s Mother is ready to leave her husband for not loving her, he attempts to take her by force, she eventually acquiesces because his forcefulness is a turn-on and the movie moves on. There is no attempt to satirize this notion, it is merely presented and that, for me, knocked me out of the movie.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction (1987) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne 

Written by James Dearden 

Starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 17th, 2017 

Fatal Attraction stars Michael Douglas as a seemingly happy husband to Ann Archer and father to an adorable 6-year-old daughter. So why, if he’s so happy, does he decide to cheat on his wife? This questions comes to consume the mind of Alex (Glenn Close), the woman Douglas’ Dan decides to sleep with one night while his wife and daughter are away visiting family in the suburbs. Alex can’t understand why Dan would choose to sleep with her and then retreat back to his marriage.

That Alex is also mentally unbalanced does not help matters. Moments after Dan attempts to leave Alex for good and return to his normal upper middle-class life, Alex attempts to kill herself and Dan, not wanting anyone to find out about his fling, decides he needs to stay the night again to make sure Alex doesn’t die and thus potentially reveal his infidelity in the process. This is a decision he will come to regret as saving Alex’s life only furthers her obsession with him.

Will Dan get up the courage to tell his wife what he has done? Will he do it before Alex’s unhinged behavior becomes dangerous to Dan’s entire family? These are the questions of a very minor, very forgettable sub-genre of thrillers. And yet, somehow Fatal Attraction became a massive hit in 1987 and remains part of the cultural zeitgeist 30 years later. Actress Glenn Close as recently as the 25th Anniversary of the film’s release was still being told that she’d terrified men who saw the film.

Why? Why this movie? Why Fatal Attraction? What is it about this sleazy genre thriller that has lasted this long? What is it that keeps this film in our pop culture memory? It baffles me because I have seen knock off after knock off after knock off of the Fatal Attraction formula and none of them are any good. Certainly there is something to be said for being an original but shouldn’t the movie be better than this to last this long?

Fatal Attraction is a cheap, sleazy, silly thriller with over the top performances and capable but not outstanding direction. Adrian Lyne is a director obsessed with sexual politics but he doesn’t have much depth to his obsession. Lyne’s style is to ask big questions but not give the questions much weight beyond the plot in progress. The big question of Fatal Attraction is ‘What would you do if you were Dan?’ That’s not a very interesting question. Everything that happens to Dan is his own fault and while Lyne seems to want us to sympathize with him as Alex goes on the attack, it’s almost comical how unsympathetic Dan is.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal. 

Movie Review The Wilde Wedding

The Wilde Wedding (2017)

Directed by Damian Harris 

Written by Damian Harris 

Starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Patrick Stewart, Minnie Driver, Jack Davenport 

Release Date September 15th, 2017 

Published September 13th, 2017 

The Wilde Wedding has the chance to be a pretty great movie but lacks the courage to pull it off. The film brings together the talents of Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Patrick Stewart for a wedding comedy and the charm factor would be off the charts except that writer-director Damian Harris can’t resist mucking up the works by having the younger cast too often crowd out the more interesting veterans.

The Wilde Wedding casts Glenn Close as world famous movie star Eve Wilde. Eve is on the verge of her 4th marriage; this time to a novelist named Harold Alcott (Stewart) who could not be less suited for her. We meet Harold as he is arriving for the weekend wedding with his two daughters and a friend and appears to be cramming for a test on Eve’s IMDB page. He can’t seem to remember the names of Eve’s most famous movies and seems to be of the belief that if he can’t remember them he won’t be able to get married.

Joining the wedding party is Laurence, Eve’s first ex-husband played by Malkovich. Pompous but charming, it was Laurence who’d gotten Eve her first role in Hollywood, one that very quickly eclipsed his own Hollywood start and eventually led to trouble in their marriage. Laurence and Eve have three sons, played by Noah Emmerich, Rob Langeder and Peter Fascinelli who are each given one trait to portray based off the simplistic notions of the emotional trauma of having been children of divorce.

They are joined by various girlfriends, assistants, friends or children, all very limited in their screen time and none of much particular interest. Minnie Driver plays one of the son’s rock star ex-wife who sings a pretty terrible cover of Billy Idol’s White Wedding as a supposed wedding gift while Grace Van Patten is the requisite millennial who is on hand to film everything for a documentary as her gift to her grandmother. Van Patten is saddled with an attraction to her cousin whom she insists is a first cousin once removed because that’s somehow less creepy or necessary to the story?

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review The Pick Up Artist

The Pick Up Artist (1987) 

Directed by James Toback

Written by James Toback 

Starring Molly Ringwald, Robert Downey Jr. 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 19th, 2017 

The Pick Up Artist is a bizarrely bad movie of the kind only James Toback seems capable of. This mess of a romantic comedy and a gangster movie attempts to be both conventional and unconventional. Toback’s thing has always been arthouse style talky existentialism with a healthy dose of New York. Watching him try to cram that unusual sensibility into a mainstream movie would be unwatchable were it not for Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald who, at the very least, remain likable even as they struggle against a director lost in his attempt to serve the commercial and the arty.

Jack Jericho is a pick up artist. He practices his terrible pick up lines in his bathroom mirror before he leaves to run the streets like a dog chasing every squirrel in his field of vision. That Jack plies his trade in the morning before he goes to work as a grade school gym teacher, odd, inexplicable choice of profession aside, makes his aims seem strange from the very beginning. Is Jack looking for dates or sex or both? Writer-Director Toback doesn’t seem to know or very much care.

The comedy for Toback is in Jack’s failing, silly attempts at meeting women. He seems fascinated by Downey chatting up chicks and dedicates much of the first portion of the movie to just listening to Jack try and stay in front of the various women he accosts on the street. In fact, the movie pretty much derails from the very beginning because Toback is more interested in the pick up lines and Downey’s charm than he is in setting up the ludicrous gangster story that is shoehorned into this 82 minute movie.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream (2000) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Written by Darren Aronofsky

Starring Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Ellen Burstyn 

Release Date October 6th, 2000 

Published October 2017 

With Darren Aronofsky's latest film Mother starring Jennifer Lawrence arriving in theaters across the country this week, now is the perfect time to look back on the best of Aronofsky's career thus far. You can hear more about Mother and the style of Darren Aronofsky on the next "Everyone Is a Critic Movie Review Podcast" available on iTunes every Monday Morning.

Darren Aronofsky is driven by an obsession with obsession. His characters are those that are driven past the brink of madness by their obsessions. The math in Pi, the drugs in Requiem for a Dream, love and immortality in The Fountain, to be the best in Black Swan, Piety and to build a boat in Noah, Aronofsky’s characters are obsessives who risk everything for their goals no matter how dangerous or wrong-headed those goals may be.

In Requiem for a Dream obsession is the underlying element of addiction. Addiction drives those obsessed with their ideas of what they believe will make them happy. For Harry (Jared Leto), what he believes will make him happy is settling down with Marion (Jennifer Connelly), opening a business, maybe starting a family all the while continuing to shoot heroin. His obsession is the goal of being happy while also remaining on heroin; a poignantly sad goal he doesn’t realize is entirely at odds.

Marion meanwhile, shares some of Harry’s obsession with happiness but is far more defined by her desire to be different from her rich parents. Throughout the film, Marion makes only minor references to her parents but each is a revelation about her character. Early on, Marion mentions that money is not what she wants from her parents but rather for them to show concern for her that doesn’t involve finance. As she goes deeper into her addiction however, it becomes clear that her parents’ inattention isn’t as much the problem as is her desire to be different from them, that which drives her further toward degradation and addiction.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Home Again

Home Again (2017) 

Directed by Hallie Meyers Shyer 

Written by Hallie Meyers Shyer 

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky, Pico Alexander, Lake Bell, Michael Sheen, Candace Bergen

Release Date August 29th, 2017

Published August 28th, 2017

Home Again is a vacuous and inane movie that is otherwise an inoffensive and forgettable romantic comedy about characters who have no problems. It’s the kind of vacuousness that you would think even Hollywood would be tired of by now and yet there still seems to be an appetite for it. I think it’s called lifestyle porn, wherein the poor watch movies like Home Again and fantasize about the architecture and accoutrements without a care for whether or not the characters’ lives are worth enduring.

Home Again makes for fine lifestyle porn if not an actual movie. It’s all very pretty and pretty empty. The film stars Reese Witherspoon as the mother of two daughters who has just fled her marriage to a rock promoter in New York, played by Michael Sheen, for her late father’s home in Los Angeles. Her life is upended like a bad CW show when she has a near one night stand with a much younger man who her kooky mom (Candace Bergen) invites to live in her guest house along with his two pals.

The three guys are Harry (Pico Alexander), Teddy (Nat Wolff), and George (Jon Rudnitsky), three aspiring filmmakers. Harry is the impossibly handsome… director? Yeah, the super-handsome guy is the one who plays the director. I’m not saying directors can’t be handsome, but it was a curious choice in the casting here to take the relatively unknown but super-handsome Pico Alexander and cast him as the artistic visionary and have the much more well known and slightly less handsome Nat Wolff play the movie star.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review It Chapter 1

Stephen King's It (2017)

Directed by Andy Muschietti 

Written by Chase Parker, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman

Starring Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgard, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis 

Release Date September 8th, 2017

September 7th, 2017 

To say that the 2017 take on Stephen King’s Magnum Clown Opus IT is better than the 1990 mini-series is an understatement. The mini-series was a punishing nearly four-hour mix of a pretty good kids’ story and a nearly impossible to watch adult story. Jettisoning the adult story in favor of focusing on the far superior kids’ story from King’s novel, the 2017 IT crafts a tightly wound, creepy horror flick that plays on some serious issues about grief and abuse while delivering the kind of machine tooled jump scares that modern audiences go to the movies for.

IT stars Jordan Lieberher as Bill, the ringleader of a group of friends who are often picked on and lean on each other for support. Bill’s friends include Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), and Stanley (Wyatt Oleff). Along through, the story the core group adds Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a chubby kid who is new in town, Mikey (Chosen Jacobs), a home-schooled farm kid, and Beverly (Sophia Lillis), a young beauty who has an unwarranted reputation around the small town of Derry, Maine.

The story kicks off in 1988 when Bill’s little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) goes outside to play in the rain and goes missing at the hands of the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). In a scene that is actually quite shocking for modern horror film, Georgie’s disappearance sets a tone of fear and dread that director Andy Muschietti, a first-time feature director, does a tremendous job of maintaining over the course of the film’s two hour and fifteen-minute running time. The scene is legit frightening and Pennywise "The Dancing Clown” could not get a better or creepier introduction.

Naturally, the story from there is our group of young heroes battling Pennywise and trying to stay alive, but much like Stephen King’s book, director Muschietti and screenwriters Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga, who was going to direct the film before dropping out, do an exceptional job of introducing each of the kids’ obstacles and fears. While these scenes played like filler in the 1990 mini-series, because it’s TV and there are things you can’t do on TV, the movie is filled with genuine horrors and traumas these kids must overcome and that Pennywise uses to great advantage.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Rememory

Rememory (2017) 

Directed by Mark Palansky 

Written by Mark Palansky, Michael Vudakinovich 

Starring Peter Dinklage, Julia Ormond, Anton Yelchin, Henry Ian Cusick 

Release Date August 24th, 2017 

Published August 22nd, 2017 

Rememory wants desperately to be a deep meditation on memory, grief and loss, and a sci-fi mystery. The film achieves some of that goal thanks to the performances from the stellar cast headed by Peter Dinklage and Julia Ormond. That said, the deep meditation part only skims the surface and the sci-fi mystery movie is achieved only through the use of a Deus Xx Machina, a magic memory machine.

Rememory stars Game of Thrones MVP Peter Dinklage as a deeply wounded man coping with the death of his brother in an accident that opens the film. Cut to several years later as Dinklage's Sam Bloom is sitting in the audience of a lecture being given by an acquaintance named Gordon Dunn (Martin Donovan). Dunn has created a remarkable piece of technology that can extract full length memories from human beings.

The nature of this technology is kept mostly under wraps as it is merely the simplistic set-up for a sci-fi detective story wherein Gordon dies under suspicious circumstances and Sam, because he seems to have no job, or family, or life of any kind, dedicates himself to finding Gordon’s killer. What luck then that he can scam Gordon’s grieving widow Carolyn (Julia Ormond) into giving him the chance to steal Gordon’s magic memory machine from his office.

The other side of that story is that Ben hopes to use the machine to recover his memory of the night his brother died in order to collect his brother’s dying words and uncover their meaning, or so he thinks. Meanwhile, Ben’s investigation leads him to three possible suspects, Gordon’s business partner, Robert (Henry Ian Cusick), Gordon’s mistress and patient Wendy (Evelyne Brochu), and Todd (the late Anton Yelchin to whom the film is dedicated), another of Gordon’s patients and the mystery man who visited Gordon on the night he died.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Killer Clowns from Outer Space

Killer Clowns from Outer Space (1988) 

Directed by Stephen Chiodo 

Written by Charles Chiodo, Stephen Chiodo 

Starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, Royal Dano, John Vernon 

Release Date May 27th, 1988 

Published May 27th 2018 

The latest adaptation of Stephen King’s IT hits theaters this weekend and with that the Everyone is a Critic podcast needed a clown movie for our classic. Only one movie could fit the bill as a classic movie about clowns: Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This bizarre 1988 horror comedy about murderous, alien Klowns and starring John Allen Nelson and John Vernon both baffles and entertains.

It’s an average night in a southern California suburb where the kids like to gather in spot on the edge of the woods to make out. Two of the kids are our heroes Mike and Debbie, played by Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder. When they see a massive light in the sky they go to investigate and find a giant circus tent. The inside is bigger than the outside like circus Tardis and Mike and Debbie stumble upon dead bodies wrapped in cotton candy and eventually gigantic alien clowns with murder in their eyes.

Narrowly escaping the craft, Mike and Debbie go to the police where Debbie’s ex-boyfriend Dave (John Allen Nelson) is a local cop. Dave is skeptical but after encountering one of the Killer Klowns himself, he quickly joins up with Mike and Debbie while the Killer Klowns wrap the townspeople in cotton candy as if they were snacks for a long trip back to their home planet.

Trust me when I tell you that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is even crazier and more fun than my description. It’s a work of remarkable imagination from a pair of brothers who are better known in Hollywood for their puppet work than for having directed this film. In fact, Killer Klowns from Outer Space is the only film directed by brothers Stephen and Charles Chiodo though they have worked consistently in Hollywood for the past 30 years, mostly in puppetry.

That may be due to the fact that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. The film was a relative failure upon release but slowly but surely it developed a cult following. It makes sense, anyone in their right mind would dismiss a movie called Killer Klowns from Outer Space as some ludicrous, unwatchable drive-in movie which it most definitely is but I urge you to look closer.

Find my full review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Horror in the 90's Brainscan

Brainscan (1994) 

Directed by John Flynn 

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker 

Starring Edward Furlong, Amy Hargreaves, T. Ryder Smith, Frank Langella 

Release Date April 22nd, 1994 

Published April 29th, 2024 

When I saw that the sci-fi horror movie Brainscan was written by Andrew Kevin Walker, famed screenwriter of David Fincher's Seven and the credited screenwriter on several famous Blacklist screenplays, I got a little excited. Walker is a brilliant, risky, and unpredictable screenwriter with a lurid edge to his work. I went from having exceedingly low expectations to curious and hopeful. Then, I watched Brainscan and my hopes were dashed. It turns out, Andrew Kevin Walker wrote and sold the screenplay seven years before it arrived in theaters as a very, very different movie. 

Brainscan stars Edward Furlong, fresh off his blockbuster role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as horror movie junkie, Michael. Michael's life revolves around horror movies. Alongside his best bud forever, Kyle (Jamie Marsh), Michael runs a horror movie club at school. The club has even attracted Michael's crush, his next door neighbor Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who we first meet as Michael is spying on her with a telescope as she undresses in front of her bedroom window, which is completely open. This is so the screenwriters can cheat and have dialogue indicating that Kimberly wants Michael to spy on her. 

See, he's not a creep, it's a weird fetish thing. It's totally okay. Not hard to tell that men wrote and directed Brainscan, is it? Anyway, getting past what a little creep Michael is, let's get back to his horror movie obsession. While reading Fangoria Magazine, in a bid for free coverage from the magazine, yay corporate synergy, am I right, anyway, Michael finds an ad for a new CD-Rom horror game called Brainscan. The game promises an immersive experience as you go inside the perspective of a serial murderer as he carries out a murder. 

As the title and plot indicate, Michael orders the game and sets about playing it while his friend's are having a party next door. Once the game begins, the outside world fades away and Michael finds himself inside a stranger's bedroom. There is a knife in his hand and Michael watches helplessly as the man is stabbed to death. We watch everything from the killer's perspective, as if Michael were the killer and we were in Michael's head. Waking up the next morning after playing the game, Michael is deeply disturbed. 

It turns out, spoiler alert: Michael was the one killing this guy. It turns out that the guy who got murdered is from Michael's neighborhood and the cops, headed up by Detective Hayden (Frank Langella) are crawling all over the place. When Michael runs home, having discovered that he was a killer, he encounters the breakout character of 1994, The Trickster (T. Ryder Smith). The Trickster is the host of Brainscan leading Michael through the four stages of gameplay. First up was the murder. Next, Michael has to play the game again if he wants to destroy the evidence that he's the killer. 

Find my full length review on Vocal's Horror Community 

Movie Review Boy Kills World

Boy Kills World (2024) 

Directed by Moritz Mohr 

Written by Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers 

Starring Bill Skarsgard, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Famke Janssen, Sharlto Copley 

Release Date April 26th, 2024

Published April 29th, 2024 

We are at a tipping point when it comes to ultraviolent revenge thrillers. The John Wick movies created a brief and shiny new genre in movies so violent they border on parody. Films with more bullets than words of dialogue became a fashion after Keanu Reeves killed the people who killed his dogs. Naturally, the results have been a copy of a copy ever since. And the diminishing returns are only now becoming clear. Boy Meets World is one of the movies demonstrating that we may have fully tired of the blood and bullets invincible hero genre. 

Boy Kills World stars Bill Skarsgard as the titular Boy. Rescued as a pre-teen from a fascist group of criminals who were in the process of hanging his family, the Boy is raised in the forest by a crazed Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). The Shaman teaches Boy to become a warrior and trains him specifically to kill the Vander Koye Family, the leaders of the fascist government and the people directly responsible for killing Boy's family. Boy especially wants revenge for the killing of his beloved little sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), who often appears to Boy as an apparition from his own imagination and subconscious. 

After years of training, Boy finally decides to set his revenge in motion. Witnessing a massacre overseen by members of the Vander Koye Family, Glen (Sharlto Copley) and Gideon (Brett Gelman), who bicker like children before directing their top henchwoman, June 27 (Jessica Rothe) to execute anyone resisting them. The Vander Koye's were in the midst of selecting poor people to be executed on live television as part of 'The Culling,' an annual event overseen by the Vander Koye leader, Hilda Vander Koye (Famke Jannssen). Boy especially wants to kill Hilda as she directly oversaw the killing of his family. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Documentary Review Fallen

Fallen (2017) 

Directed by Thomas Marchese 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Michael Chiklis 

Release Date September 1st, 2017

Published August 29th, 2017 

How do I write fairly about a documentary about police officers? It’s harder than it seems. Police officers have become polarizing figures in our culture and writing about them inevitably leads to arguments on all sides. If I don’t write critically of police officers I will be accused of ignoring the terrible traumas that police officers have inflicted upon the innocent and guilty alike. If I write negatively of police officers I am accused of not understanding the difficulty of their job and having some leftist political agenda.

So, how do I write about the new documentary Fallen and serve both the masters of being truthful and being respectful. Just by saying there are two sides to this I’m already in trouble with one side or the other so maybe whatever I write here doesn’t matter. Those of you who believe the police are corrupt bullies and those of you who believe police are being persecuted likely stopped reading this to argue after the first paragraph.

That’s a shame because the new documentary Fallen is one of those that deserves to be seen by anyone with a beating heart and not just those for whom it fulfills a side of an argument. Narrated by Michael Chiklis, Fallen takes us to the homes and families of police officers who were killed in the line of duty. The documentary aims to humanize the loss of a life, not just the death of a police officer, and it is a powerful and moving message about grief and loss.

Directed by former LAPD officer Thomas Marchese, Fallen tells five specific stories, including Thomas’s own brush with death which enters the narrative just as the film is being made. Fallen contains some very disturbing footage of actual encounters where police officers are shot or otherwise assaulted and had their lives threatened or taken. The footage is shocking for its visceral, Faces of Death level violence and its complete, uncompromising reality.

The shock footage thankfully is only a portion of Fallen, though a necessary one. The bulk of the film takes us to the hometowns of officers who’ve been killed to talk about the human and specific impact of these people’s deaths, from a pair of police officers murdered in a coffee shop while doing paperwork to the stunning story of a motorcycle cop who simply stopped to aid what he thought was a broken down motorist and wound up being shot and killed.

Read my full length review at Serve.Media 

Classic Movie Review Hamburger Hill

Hamburger Hill (1987) 

Directed by John Irvin 

Written by James Carabatsos

Starring Michael Boatman, Don Cheadle, Dylan McDermott, Courtney B. Vance 

Release Date August 28th, 1987 

Published August 29th 2017 

There are those who claim that Hamburger Hill is the least remembered of 80s Vietnam movies, a niche genre all its own in that decade, because it was a right wing, reactionary movie intended to defend soldiers. Time has a way of changing perceptions and now that Hamburger Hill is turning 30 years old, it’s interesting to look back on the film and talk about the perceptions of the film and how they’ve evolved over the years and the ways in which guilt, shame and history have altered the way many view Vietnam.

Hamburger Hill tells the story of one company in the midst of a battalion ordered to take a single hill from the North Vietnamese. The hill would come to be called Hamburger Hill because meat may be all that’s left of a soldier after he gets blown away while climbing this ungodly, muddy, and eventually blood-soaked hill. It’s grisly and part of the film’s reputation comes from what the title implies, a gruesomeness that put audiences off just from the title.

The film is gruesome as director John Irvin doesn’t hold back on the blood and guts but where the film’s reputation is somewhat misguided is the notion that that is all Hamburger Hill was, just blood and guts. The film actually takes time to build toward the blood guts. Hamburger Hill has a slow build where you take the time to get used to the young faces and personalities preparing to die on the hill. It’s not until the film’s remarkable third act that the gruesomeness moves to the foreground.

Until the third act the film is relatively tame in terms of violence. Instead we get a warts and all look at these soldiers whom we watch become more and more detached from life back at home and unmoored from the reality around them because death seems so close. The film shines a harsh light on the reality of Vietnam, the way the soldiers were mistreated to the point where us against the world was the only mentality that made any sense.

While people back home accused these soldiers of being bloodthirsty killers, the reality was so much more complicated than that. These were men who were abandoned in Vietnam. Whereas people like Patton, McArthur, and Eisenhower had the weight and experience to give soldiers courage and purpose, the soldiers of Vietnam are rudderless, tools of the government abandoned by a society crumbling from the optimism of the 50s into the greed infested era to come where the divide between rich and poor was often defined by those who went to Vietnam and those rich enough not to have to.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Tulip Fever

Tulip Fever (2017) 

Directed by Justin Chadwick 

Written by Deborah Moggach, Tom Stoppard

Starring Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Jack O'Connell, Tom Hollander, Christoph Waltz 

Release Date September 1st, 2017 

Published August 31st, 2017

Tulip Fever tells the story of an orphan girl named Sophia who is plucked from a Dutch orphanage to become the wife/concubine of a rich trader named Cornelis Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz). Sophia’s life is a relatively dull routine but nothing she really notices as, aside from the orphanage, it’s all she’s ever known. Sophia’s worldview changes when the outside world comes crashing into her secluded domesticity in the form of a lusty painter named Jan Van Loos (Dane Dehaan) who awakens the kind of desire within Sophia that her arranged marriage could never possibly create.

Not a bad story? So why is Tulip Fever such silly nonsense? It’s illogical. Director Justin Chadwick covered similar period drama lustiness in The Other Boleyn Girl to fine effect and Tom Stoppard won an Academy Award for writing Shakespeare in Love and also wrote Brazil and Empire of the Sun. Add to this the rising star Alicia Vikander, two time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz and the ingredients are here for an incredible film. Tulip Fever even has Academy Award winner Judi Dench and it’s still a miserable sit.

The simple fact is that the simple plot I described has been done to death. Stoppard’s own Shakespeare in Love is little more than a less haughty and more prestigious version of this same story. To attempt to escape the notion that the film is a poor copy of previous period movies, Tulip Fever adds two more characters and convoluted plot about faked pregnancy and a faked death and while the plot wheels spin in desperate effort to avoid repeating period cliché we in the audience grow ever more weary of the whirring, blurring silliness of the plot.

Jack O’Connell and Holliday Grainger play Willem and Maria. Maria is Sophia’s servant and Willem is the local fish-monger. They’ve fallen madly and love and Willem has a plan for them to escape servitude. Willem is entering the high stakes trade of Tulips which have become the hottest commodity in all of Denmark at this time. When Willem comes into luck, growing a rare Tulip that could get he and Maria out of their poverty only the lame contrivance of the plot can intervene and boy does it.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Lust for Life

Lust for Life (1956) 

Directed by Vincente Minnelli 

Written by Norman Corwin 

Starring Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn

Release Date September 17th, 1956 

Published September 5th, 2017 

Our classic this week on the Everyone is a Critic movie review podcast is Kirk Douglas and director Vincent Minnelli’s portrayal of the life of troubled artist Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life. If the film illustrates one thing more than anything else it is that acting has changed a great deal since 1956. While Douglas and co-star Anthony Quinn, as fellow painting legend Paul Gaugin rage at each other, it’s not hard to see why the directors of the next generation began to strive for something more natural and genuine from their actors. Lust for Life seems to me to be among the last films for which theatrically trained actors were the vanguard of the cinema.

Lust for Life picks up the life of Vincent Van Gogh as he is first rejected for a position as a priest. After pleading with a church leader that he must be allowed to minister and preach the word of God he is finally given an assignment. Van Gogh travels to a small mining town where he fails to connect with the mineworkers and their families with his scripted sermons. It isn’t until a parishioner takes Van Gogh into the mines that he begins to see that he must not hold himself above his flock.

The church is horrified by Van Gogh’s choice to live without the garish accoutrements his church salary should have allowed him. Their theory is that living a life of privilege away from the common people is to live as an example of what the poor should strive for. What they don’t understand and what Van Gogh completely understands is hopelessness, the way it seeps into the bones of people who’ve never known anything but toil and suffering.

While it is unspoken in the film, my interpretation was that Van Gogh was so moved by what he saw in the mines that he lost his faith in God and began searching for the meaning of life in his paint, a search that consumed him so deeply that his life ended at the age of 38 with suicide. Lust for Life hints that Van Gogh's suicide is part madness and part his belief that he was unable to capture the meaning and beauty of life on his canvas, even though today he is recognized as genius for capturing and enhancing the beauty of humanity and nature in his work.

When Van Gogh is dismissed from the church he begins dedicating himself to painting, specifically attempting to create art that respects a good hard day’s work. He wants to capture life on canvas but his restless mind robs him of the faculties necessary for managing the rest of his life. What little money Van Gogh received from his more successful and stable brother Theo, Van Gogh spends on more paint and canvases, even after he briefly marries a woman who has a small child.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review A Boy Called Po

A Boy Called Po (2017) 

Directed by John Asher 

Written by Colin Goldman 

Starring Christopher Gorham, Julian Felder, Kaitlin Doubleday 

Release Date April 23rd, 2016 

Published August 31st, 2017 

I must be getting soft as I get older because movies like A Boy Called Po never used to get passed my ironic armor. As a younger critic, a movie like A Boy Called Po with a premise that reads like a Lifetime Movie and a cast lacking star power would have been one I would dismiss without a glance. Admittedly, I used to be kind of arrogant and quite snobbish. It could be I have become more evolved and mature or it could be that director John Asher’s inspired by true events movie is actually so good that I had no need for my emotional armor.

A Boy Called Po stars 12-year-old Julian Feder as Patrick, or Po, as his father David (Christopher Gorham) calls him. Po is autistic and his father is struggling to care for him in the wake of the death of Po’s mother from a battle with cancer. On top of being a single father to an autistic son, David has a high-pressure job as an engineer for an airplane company and is attempting to craft a brand new, more environmentally friendly airplane.

At school, Po is being bullied by a much larger boy in his class and the bullying plus the absence of his mother is causing him to "drift." Drifting is when an Autistic person, most often a child, begins losing touch with reality for long stretches of time. This concept is explained by Amy (Caitlin Doubleday), Po’s physical therapist and David’s appointed love interest. Here is where director Asher and screenwriter Colin Goldman take a big risk. No, not the stock romance, the presentation of Po’s "drift."

A Boy Called Po attempts to demonstrate where Po goes when he drifts. Their idea is that he is becoming lost in a fantasy world where he has a pair of friends played by Andrew Bowen and Caitlin Carmichael. Bowen and Carmichael give lovely, graceful performances with just the right amount of whimsy and empathy. These are not easy roles to play as portraying an autistic boy’s fantasy friends is not a casual notion. Some people with experience with autistic children may find this portrayal a little iffy. I found it to be sweet, if a little uncomfortable.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review I Do Until I Don't

I Do Until I Don't (2017) 

Directed by Lake Bell 

Written by Lake Bell 

Starring Lake Bell, Ed Helms, Mary Steenburgen, Paul Reiser, Amber Heard, Wyatt Cenac, Chase Crawford 

Release Date September 1st, 2017 

Published August 30th, 2017 

Lake Bell is quickly proving herself as a jack of all trades. She started her career in the role of the slightly less gorgeous best friend in movies before taking a major U-turn from pursuing movie stardom. When her What Happens in Vegas co-star Rob Corddry pitched the idea of the then web series Children's Hospital, it was an unlikely choice, one I’m sure her agent wasn’t exactly excited about. Then the series became a cult hit, earning a place on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup it showed Hollywood that Lake Bell was more than just the pretty face.

But Lake Bell wasn’t finished taking risks. In 2013, instead of making the move back to features or a full-time TV gig, she had plenty of options, Bell decided to cultivate a small budget and make a movie of her own in which she was writer, director, and star. In a World was a charming, delightful and highly original love story about a voice-over artist who dreams of getting that one big gig and become the first woman to utter the phrase that became a cliche of so many sci-fi action movies of the past In a World.

With the small budget, In a World became a solid hit and earned Lake Bell the capital to do more writing, directing and starring. This time her idea, called I Do Until I Don’t, was a bit more of a struggle. Having begun writing the screenplay immediately following the production and release of In a World, Lake began the story as a skeptical exploration of why people get married. The intent then was to deconstruct marriage and ask why this seemingly antiquated ritual was still a thing.

Then Lake met and fell in love with her husband Scott Campbell and they had two kids and the story, throughout this wonderful, if tumultuous time, evolved from a skeptical take to a more nuanced and thoughtful take on why people fall in love and the work it takes to stay in love.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Amazon Women on the Moon

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) 

Directed by Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss 

Written by Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland 

Starring Arsenio Hall, Michelle Pfeiffer, Joe Pantoliano, David Allan Grier, Rosanna Arquette 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 18tth, 2017 

One of the first movies I ever reviewed on my podcast, when it was still called I Hate Critics, now Everyone’s a Critic, was a disconcerting sketch comedy movie called Movie 43. The film was a series of appalling short films strung together with no narrative under a title that one could imagine it having been randomly assigned by a movie studio for storage purposes, not intended for theatrical release. That this series of short films starred such actors as Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Liev Schreiber, and Naomi Watts are the only reason Movie 43 ever saw the light of day.

When I saw Movie 43 I had never even heard of the obscure 1987 comedy Amazon Women on the Moon. I take that back, I did hear of it but I assumed it was some sort of softcore pornographic comedy. I think I may have also confused it with the movie Cannibal Women in the Amazon Jungle of Death, an epically unfunny spoof movie starring Bill Maher, before Politically Incorrect, oddly enough, and Shannon Tweed.

It turns out, Amazon Women on the Moon is everything that Movie 43 wished it could have been, trenchant, hilarious, weird, and just plain fun. Twenty-six years before Movie 43 strung together a random assemblage of movie stars in unfunny short films, writers and directors John Landis, Carl Gottlieb, Robert K. Weiss, and Carl Dante, all born from the Roger Corman school of filmmaking, pulled off the trick Movie 43 so desperately failed at, a ragingly funny sketch comedy movie.

Amazon Women on the Moon consists of 19 short films, some related, some not. The sketches do vary in quality, with Joe Dante really stealing the show in his portions, while Robert K. Weiss struggles a little with the film’s title sketch. Landis and Gottlieb go a far less traditional route with mostly good results, especially Gottlieb’s use of nudity which is wonderfully absurd and genuinely inspired.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Birth of the Dragon

Birth of the Dragon (2017) 

Directed by George Nolfi 

Written by Christopher Wilkinson, Stephen J. Rivele 

Starring Phillip Wan-tung Ng, Xia Yu, Jin Xing, Billy Magnusson 

Release Date August 25th, 2017 

Published August 24th, 2017

Birth of the Dragon has been marketed as the story of Bruce Lee learning to grow and become more disciplined, humble, and dedicated to his craft after being confronted by a famed Shaolin Master named Wong Jack Man. Instead, Birth of the Dragon is a ludicrously misguided combination of faux-history and one of the worst conceived Bruce Lee movies in history. It's as bad as the films that inserted old Bruce Lee footage after his death into different movies that were then marketed as Bruce Lee movies.

Birth of the Dragon was directed by George Nolfi who acquits himself well as a visual stylist but as a writer he fails to understand why this movie should not have been made in the first place. The story is based off an ungodly awful, mostly apocryphal story in a 1980 Kung Fu magazine. The writer of that story brings together three separate accounts of a fight between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man and it is written in a style that is reminiscent of the worst of modern internet writing. Supposed professional writers dedicate themselves to writing about information in other people’s articles, stealing without stealing what others wrote as if by stealing from multiple other sources you’ve somehow written your own article.

That is not exactly the best place to begin an artistic endeavor but then things get so much worse from there. The idea is supposed to be about this legendary 1964 fight between two Kung Fu masters that forever changed how Bruce Lee used Kung Fu, creating his legendary Jeet Kune Do style. However, because the writers, director, producers, and distributors apparently felt that mass audiences wouldn’t take to a story about Asian Americans, even if one of them is portraying BRUCE LEE(!!!!!!) we get an entirely invented character named Steve McKee who is so terribly portrayed by Billy Magnusson that I genuinely felt sorry for the young man that this performance is preserved on screen.

Magnusson is awful because his role is so incredibly stock and was built solely for the purpose of creating a character that dumb white audiences could relate to. This is the kind of quietly insidious racial politicking that we as critics and audiences have been allowing Hollywood to get away with for far too long and frankly, I am done. I recently wrote about a wonderful film called Wind River which shone a different kind of light on this type of casting. That film cast white movie stars because it had an urgent cry of a story to tell and needed to use white movie stars as a megaphone for an important purpose. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review England is Mine

England is Mine (2017) 

Directed by Mark Gill 

Written by Mark Gill 

Starring Jack Lowden, Jessica Brown Findlay, Laurie Kynaston 

Release Date August 4th, 2017 

Published August 3rd, 2017

I have to believe that writer and singer Morrissey is more interesting than the version of him brought to light in the movie England is Mine. I cannot sit here and tell you I know much more about Morrissey than what I read on his Wikipedia page. I can’t name a single Smiths song or Morrissey solo single. That said, I still know who he is. Somehow through some kind of pop cultural osmosis I know who Morrissey is and that is enough to tell me he must be interesting, he has to be more interesting than this mopey, dopey boring version of Morrissey in England is Mine.

England is Mine, which I am told is a lyric from a Smiths song, picks up the story of Steven Patrick Morrissey in his teenage years. Steven is not your standard English teenager. He likes to write lengthy letters to the music magazine NME criticizing the music scene in his corner of England and secretly hoping that someone at NME might read him and give him a job. His other hope is to become part of a band but he seems so crippled by social anxiety that even when an opportunity presents itself he’s too frightened to pursue it.

Morrissey’s life, according to England is Mine, hinges on his chance friendship with artist and singer Linder Sterling (Jessica Brown Sterling). Sterling entered Morrissey’s life after criticizing one of his letters to NME and then arranging to meet him. Linder is everything that Steven is not, outgoing, aspiring, happy. She takes to Steven in the fashion of a muse but not exactly an inspiration. Linder is the gentle prod that finally gets Steven to take himself seriously and become a singer. Linder herself could be the subject of a film as her influence as both an artist and a singer was a significant part of English punk and new wave music and yet you would not know that from England is Mine which doesn't even mention that she had her own band.

One might think that Morrissey taking the stage for the very first time with the band The Nosebleeds in 1978 might be some incredible moment. I would imagine that there are Smiths fans who wish they could have been at that club that night. And yet, England is Mine barely gives the moment any weight. Here is a true pop cultural artifact for the very people England is Mine is attempting to appeal to and the film gives it less weight than scenes where Morrissey is angrily scribbling in a notebook while suffering the mediocrity of a day job in the tax office.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Cupid's Proxy

Cupid's Proxy (2017) 

Directed by Jason Dallas 

Written by Jules Howe 

Starring Jet Jurgensmeyer, Valerie Azlynn, Jackee Harry, Steve Byrne 

Release Date September 12th, 2017 

Published September 11th, 2017 

Cupid’s Proxy imagines a world in which newspapers still employ advice columnists like the Landers’ sisters and paid them well enough to live in toney suburbs. The advice columnist here is Olive aka Cupid (Jackee Harry) whose advice column has grown stale and out of touch, much like the newspaper that still employs an advice columnist. To spice up her column Olive turns to the actual star of Cupid’s Proxy, 12 year old Disney star Jet Jurgensmeyer as 12 year old Justin Murphy.

When Olive asks Justin’s advice about what to write to a young reader, she rips off his reply wholesale and it becomes a viral hit. On the verge of being fired, Olive hires the 12 YEAR OLD BOY to give love advice using the kind of stereotypical Millennial-speak that even Millennials would make fun of, and that’s quite an accomplishment considering they’re the first generation post-sarcasm. The story, such as it is, revolves on Justin giving love advice under the pseudonym Cupid’s Proxy and ending up giving love advice to his music teacher, Stewart (Byrne) about how to romance Justin’s own mother Rebecca (Valerie Azlynn).

I promise that the premise is far less creepy in execution than in my horrifying description. There is genuinely nothing insidious about Cupid’s Proxy, it’s just another obvious, unfunny product, market tested into mediocrity. For the most part, Cupid’s Proxy is harmless; some might even find it cute. I found the film cloying, pushy, pointless, slightly sexist and brainless but again, mostly just a mediocrity.

Jet Jurgensmeyer is not a terrible young actor. He seems to have good timing for a young comic actor and he sparks well with the other characters but he’s not ready for the primetime spotlight of a leading role in a feature film. He has yet to master that thin line between trying and trying too hard to sell a gag or a line. It’s something that might come with time but for now, he’s no match for a leading role, especially one as poorly conceived as the lead role in Cupid’s Proxy.

That said, Jurgensmeyer could learn a little something from his young co-star Carolyn Dodd. Dodd plays Nat, a neighbor girl with a crush on Justin. Nat has a bad habit of talking way too fast and way too much and it’s this tick that steals a few scenes and earns a few of the film’s minor chuckles. Dodd has little experience but she’s quite adorable in Cupid’s Proxy, even amid the mediocrity around her.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Wind River

Wind River (2017) 

Directed by Taylor Sheridan 

Written by Taylor Sheridan 

Starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olson, Graham Green, Gil Birmingham, Q'Orianka Kilcher  

Release Date September 8th, 2017 

Published September 8th, 2017 

Wind River is one of the most emotional experiences I have had at the movies in 2017. The modern western from writer-director Taylor Sheridan is a cold and harsh drama about a cold and harsh place where these characters don’t merely live, they survive. The film also shines a devastating light on the plight of Native Americans and the criminal lack of care we give to their living conditions and well-being. That it takes a white writer-director and two white movie stars to get this story told says nearly as much as the movie itself.

Wind River begins terrifyingly with a young Native American woman running through a barren, snow covered valley. You can feel the cold simply from her manner and the way Sheridan films her running at a distance. Upon closer look your fear for her amps up as it is revealed that she is not wearing shoes or gloves. She collapses and tries to get up and keep going, she’s bleeding. The scene fades to black with her running toward a forest on a mountainside.

The body of the young girl, Natalie, is found a day later by Corey (Jeremy Renner), a hunter employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Administration as he is tracking mountain lions that have been attacking livestock. Corey knows the young girl and her family, they live on the reservation where he met his now ex-wife (Q’Orianka Kilcher). The dead girl was a friend of Corey’s late daughter.

Since the death happened on an Indian Reservation, the jurisdiction is murky, somewhere between County Sheriff’s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI. The FBI is represented by Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olson), an inexperienced agent from Las Vegas who is ill-prepared for the frozen conditions of Utah; she is somehow the closest available agent for the job despite being stationed nearly 400 miles away.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Leap

Leap (2017) 

Directed by Eric Summer, Eric Wann 

Written by Eric Summer, Laurent Zeitoun, Carole Noble 

Starring Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, Maddie Ziegler, Carly Rae Jepsen

Release Date February 24th, 2017 

Published February 25th, 2017 

It’s bizarre to me at times the things we feel are alright simply because they are animated. Take for instance the new animated family movie Leap which, while it tells a lovely story of an aspiring ballerina, spends a portion of its third act following a crazy woman as she attempts to murder two orphan children. Now, I get it, they’re animated but the choice made here is so incredibly forced and horrible that it doesn’t feel like Elmer Fudd’s failed attempts to murder Bug Bunny but something far more grim, ugly and worst of all, unnecessary.

Leap tells the story of Felicie (voiced by Elle Fanning) and her friend Victor (voiced by Nat Wolff) who escape from an orphanage on the outskirts of France and head to Paris to achieve their dreams. While Victor dreams inventing a way to fly, Felicie dreams of being a dancer and her dream is what drives the plot as she quite literally stumbles her way into the most prestigious dance company in Paris. There she meets Odette (voiced by Carly Rae Jepsen) who becomes her mentor and mother figure.

After Felicie nabs an invitation to attend the famed dance company from a talented but bratty rival (voiced by Maddie Ziegler) she begins attending classes while Odette begins to train her in secret. Odette used to be a dancer herself and in one of the film’s many abandoned plot strands, her background as a famed dancer is barely mentioned before it is pushed aside. Eventually, Felicie’s ruse is uncovered by the evil mother of her bratty rival (voiced in typically over the top manner by SNL star Kate McKinnon), and Felicie must fight for her chance to remain in class and in competition for the lead role in a major production or end up being sent back to the orphanage.

There are lovely moments in Leap but for each lovely moment there is a head-scratchingly awful moment such as a montage of Victor regaling Felicie with his own Paris adventure which he describes as triumph while we suffer/watch footage of him stumbling, falling and at one point lighting farts. Yes, this lovely movie about a young girl dreaming of life in the ballet contains a scene where a young boy lights his fart. Because, apparently, Hollywood hates your children

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media