Movie Review Get Away if You Can

Get Away if You Can 

Directed by Dominique Braun, Terrence Martin

Written by Dominique Braun, Terrence Martin

Starring Ed Harris, Dominique Brau, Terrence Martin

Release Date August 19th, 2022 

Imagine being trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight. Now imagine it’s you and the most insufferable, bickering married couple you can imagine. That’s the equivalent experience of watching the new movie Get Away if You Can. A romantic boat trip intended to save a marriage becomes a slog from one boring encounter to the next, and from one obnoxious argument to another. 

Get Away if You Can was written by, directed, and stars Dominique Braun and Riley Smith as the married couple. She’s from Brazil, he comes from a wealthy family in the boat business, headed up by his domineering father, played by Ed Harris. While he is deeply in love with his wife, the man’s family is opposed to his wife. The man’s father is fully convinced that the wife is a golddigger who is out to get her son’s fortune after Dad kicks off.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Mack & Rita

Mack & Rita 

Directed by Katie Aselton

Written by Madeline Walter, Paul Welsh

Starring Diane Keaton, Elizabeth Lail, Taylour Paige, Loretta Devine

Release Date August 12th, 2022

I’ve been struggling with this silly review of this very silly movie for a couple of days. Why? Because I like Diane Keaton and I don’t enjoy hating her movies. Diane Keaton is a classy actress with a wealth of talent and style who was great… in the 1970s. Ever since the late 90s something has possessed Diane Keaton to make some of the most unwatchable movies of the past 30 years. Movies such as Because I Said So, Mad Money, Town & Country, The Family Stone, Poms, The Book Club, Hanging Up, And So It Goes, are some of the most dull and insulting movies I have ever seen. 

Naturally, I’ve been told over and over and over again that Diane Keaton simply doesn’t make the kinds of movies that would appeal to my male, 40 something year old sensibilities. That’s true, but in my professional standing, a film critic of more than 20 years of experience, I feel I am still quite qualified to judge the work before me and the work before me is desperate, cringe-inducing, and often quite unintentionally sad. Keaton goes for laughs in these movies and I just end up feeling sorry for her.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing 

Directed by Olivia Newman

Written by Lucy Alibar

Starring Daisy Edgar Jones, Harris Dickinson, David Straithairn

Release Date July 15th, 2022

Where the Crawdads Sing is too cowardly to be the kind of unconventional movie it could be. The story of a young woman raising herself in a South Carolina Swamp, Where the Crawdads Sing has an intriguing idea at heart but fails to capitalize on that idea. Instead, the film, and, I am told, the book, fall back on a conventional courtroom story to carry the drama. There is nothing wrong with a good courtroom mystery but it needs to be better than your average episode of Law & Order television episode or it needs to be scrapped. Crawdads fails that test. 

Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya Clark, played as a child by Jojo Regina and Leslie France, and played as an adult by Daisy Edgar Jones, is known as ‘The Marsh Girl." The judgmental nickname is given to Kya by residents of the town closest to her swamp home. Kya’s family each left the marsh years ago, a series of leavings that are covered in a well crafted montage, while Kya chose to stay. At first, Kya stayed to care for her alcoholic father, played by Garret Dillahunt. Eventually, Kya just came to love the marsh and after finding ways to care for herself, she stayed.

Find my full length review linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Xanadu

Xanadu 

Directed by Robert Greenwald

Written by Roger Christian Danus, Marc Reid Rubel

Starring Olivia Newton John, Michael Beck, Gene Kelly

Release Date August 8th, 1980

This week, Olivia Newton John passed away. She was 73 years old and had bravely fought cancer for several years. Tributes have poured in for the singer who holds a wonderfully unique place in our culture. She's at once a figure of resolute earnestness that Generation X held up for mockery. But she's also a person who is remarkably easy to like and whose work is very easy to enjoy. Take for instance her rather checkered film career. Aside from Grease, a movie that has achieved cult fame, she wasn't in many movies and she was certainly not in many good movies. 

In fact, my favorite Olivia Newton John movie is one that falls into the not very good category. Xanadu is an epic fever dream of cocaine fueled 1970's weirdness. It's a musical that longs to bring the generations of the big and the disco together for a Brady Bunch style family singalong. It's pure bland white bread on one side and goopy, gooey Hollywood cheese on the other. It's a massive misfire of intent and yet a wildly enjoyable failure.

Find my full length review at Geeeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Emily the Criminal

Emily the Criminal 

Directed by John Patton Ford

Written by John Patton Ford

Starring Aubrey Plaza 

Release Date August 12th, 2022 

Emily the Criminal stars the always appealing Aubrey Plaza as the title character. Emily works as a food delivery drone for a catering company. Her life is generally uneventful. She’d wanted to be an artist when growing up but life got in the way of her dreams. Now, she struggles to get by while watching friends climb corporate ladders and live lavish lifestyles and her frustration grows. 

Naturally, the rest of Emily the Criminal is about how Emily’s life is changed, for better and for worse. She becomes a criminal, she starts a romance, and major incidents reveal who she really is. Believe me, I am not slagging off this plot, it’s solid and not remotely as rote or predictable as I made it out to be. That said, the plot is the hanger on which rests a dynamic dramatic and romantic performance from Aubrey Plaza.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Fall

Fall 

Directed by Scott Mann

Written by Scott Mann, Jonathan Frank 

Starring Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Release Date August 12th, 2022

Well, it’s official, I am afraid of heights. Watching the new movie Fall, the story of two extreme climbers going to the top of the tallest TV tower in Texas, confirmed something I had kind of already known about myself. I’d had a minor panic attack while at the top of the former Sears Tower in Chicago about 10 years ago and I am pretty sure it came from just looking out of a window at the vastness of the City of Chicago and quickly growing dizzy. 

The movie Fall confirms the diagnosis. Watching this movie I nearly passed out on two occasions and had to stop watching for a few minutes after one particularly harrowing look down from the top of the tower. Say what you will about some aspects of Fall, once the movie arrives at the top of the television tower in the midst of a vast desert, the terror is no joke. Fall is a movie you watch through your fingers and yell at in your mind as you root for the characters to take tighter grips and not lean over the edge so much.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Us

Us 

Directed by Jordan Peele 

Written by Jordan Peele 

Starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

Release Date March 22nd, 2019 

Us was a horror movie event when it was released in 2019. Jordan Peele has turned his every work into something everyone needs to see, something confirmed by his recent film Nope. Following the breakout success of his Academy Award winning Get Out, Peele busted through some very high expectations and created another masterful horror movie. Us is a chilling, gripping, watch-it-through-your-fingers, entertaining creepfest. That it is also masterfully acted and directed is an example of how too many filmmakers allow genre to hold them back. The best filmmakers, like Peele elevate the genre rather than lower themselves to it. 

Us stars Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson, a suburban mother of two. Adelaide is happily married to Gabe (Winston Duke) and the two of them have a daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright), and a son, Jason (Evan Alex). As we meet them, the family is on their way to Adelaide’s mother’s former home where they will spend the weekend and go to the nearby beach to spend time with their friends, party boy, Josh (Tim Heidecker) and wine-mom Kitty (Elizabeth Moss).

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review The Invitation

The Invitation (2022) 

Directed by Jessica M. Thompson

Written by Blair Butler

Starring Nathalie Emmanuel, Thomas Doherty, Alana Boden

Release Date August 26th, 2022 

The Invitation is an extraordinarily boring and predictable bit of horror nonsense. Though it is competently crafted and not terribly acted, the film holds no life, no energy, and no form of invention. The Invitation is the kind of movie that simply... exists. Competent filmgoers will guess the twist very quickly and what remains of the movie is tedious, aside from one terrific and sadly underutilized supporting performance. 

The Invitation stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie, a struggling would be artist living in New York City. Evie has recently lost her mother and believes that she has no other living family. This changes when she is gifted a DNA testing kit and free chance to find new relatives. Through this, Evie finds that she has roots, indeed a full family line, living in England. In fact, Evie's Cousin Oliver (Hugh Skinner) happens to be coming to New York on business and wants to have lunch.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Low Life

Low Life (2022) 

Directed by Tyler Michael James

Written by Hunter Milano, Noah Rotter

Starring Wes Dunlap, Lucas Neff, Lucy Urbano

Release Date August 26th, 2022

I'm a huge fan of true crime channels on YouTube. Creators and channels like Lazy Masquerade, Savox, The Internet Investigator, and Hanna the Horrible have given me endless hours of fascinating content on the macabre and terrifying side of true crime. Amidst that genre of channel is a sub-genre of videos where the creators detail the often horrifying yet totally real downfalls of other YouTubers. Whether they were child predators using their fame to lure victims or crazed narcissistic murderers, these stories carry an even greater fascination because so much is known and available about these people. The video evidence of their emotional and professional declines are available for the world to say on their very own channel. 

The new to streaming thriller Low Life is like witnessing one of these YouTuber crime stories firsthand and as a fan of this content, the film captivated me. Low Life stars Wes Dunlap as Benny Jansen, a loud mouthed, motor mouthed YouTuber who specializes in catfishing and exposing child predators. Benny's efforts are noble, in theory, we should all surely want to see predators get taken down. However, as Benny uses these stories to make himself famous and to make money, the ethical and legal lines surrounding what he does become very blurry.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review The Beach

The Beach (2000) 

Directed by Danny Boyle 

Written by John Hodge 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoye, Robert Carlyle 

Release Date February 11th, 2000

The Beach is a deeply odd movie. Directed by Danny Boyle, The Beach stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Richard, an American traveling in Thailand. While staying at a cheap motel, Richard meets a crazed weirdo named Daffy (Robert Carlyle) who gives him a map to a hidden island paradise. Later, after finding Daffy dead, Richard goes to a pair of strangers he’d been vaguely stalking and asks them if they’d like to try and find this hidden paradise with him. 

The two French strangers are a couple, Etienne (Guillaume Canet) and Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen). If you haven’t guessed that Richard chose this couple because he’s developed a crush on Francoise, you’re the only one. You can guess it just from what I wrote but in the movie you couldn’t miss it as Danny Boyle is not subtle about showing Richard staring holes through Francoise on a regular basis.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Samaritan

Samaritan (2022)

Directed by Julius Avery 

Written by Bragi F. Schut 

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Javon Walton

Release Date August 26th, 2022

30 minutes into the new Sylvester Stallone action movie, Samaritan the titular superhero has yet to appear. Instead, we’ve spent 30 minutes watching a child character named Sam, played by Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, attempt to determine what we already know: Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Joe Smith’ is secretly the Superhero known as Samaritan. To this point the movie has established plenty about Joe while showing a city in the depth of economic despair and Sam and his mother as struggling so badly that mom has to borrow her son’s lunch money to get to work. Never mind that the kid is wearing a pair of classic red and white Air Jordan shoes. 

At the 30 minute mark we know that the bad guy in the movie, Cyrus (Pilou Asbaeck) has acquired the only weapon in the world that could kill Samaritan, a hammer forged by Samaritan’s late twin brother, Nemesis. And we can assume, since Sam’s investigation is still going at the 30 minute mark that we are still not very close to Samaritan actually arriving in the movie. Convention dictates that Sam gets caught snooping around by ‘Joe.’ Sam explains that he knows who Joe really is and that Joe first denies his identity, followed by a scene where he’s forced to reveal himself, and then he must reluctantly enter the fray against Edwin and his gang, likely to rescue Sam.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Bullet Train

Bullet Train (2022) 

Directed by David Leitch

Written by Zac Olkewicz 

Starring Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Bryan Tyree Henry, Joey King, Sandra Bullock, Bad Bunny, Zazie Beetz. 

Release Date August 5th, 2022 

Bullet Train gives us a whole new side of Brad Pitt, a mature, comic, borderline neurotic, voice that somehow fits with his uncommon movie star good looks. Where Pitt has spent years trading on cool, Bullet Trainfinds the actor giving himself to a fully comic performance in a way that is completely un-self-conscious. Brad Pitt is still a movie star but his performance in Bullet Train is not a movie star performance in the traditional sense. And it's certainly not a typically Brad Pitt performance. 

Bullet Train stars Brad Pitt as a criminal given the code-name Ladybug by his unseen handler, voiced by Sandra Bullock. Ladybug is headed back into the criminal world for the first time since a nervous breakdown took him to a therapist's couch and time away from death that has haunted so much of his life, especially recently. As related in a terrific sequence that opens Bullet Train, we learn that Ladybug is paranoid about his luck. He stopped killing people a while ago and yet, his bad luck finds him repeatedly in proximity of death.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Documentary Review Hallelujah Leonard Cohen A Journey A Song

Hallelujah Leonard Cohen A Journey, A Song (2022) 

Directed by Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller

Produced by Sony Pictures Classics

Starring Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Brandi Carlisle, Eric Church

Release Date July 1st, 2022 

My first exposure to the work of Leonard Cohen came from the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume. That film starred Christian Slater as a teenage pirate radio host. Slater’s character used Cohen’s song, Everybody Knows, as an emblem of the character's own cynical worldview. It was a potent and memorable inclusion. Cohen’s voice and his reputation provided a gravitas to the movie with Cohen having a reputation as a thinking man’s pop star. 

I heard, and became infatuated with, Everybody Knows even before I had heard and loved the song that became Cohen’s most beloved and memorable work, Hallelujah. For me, it was not until Jeff Buckley had died tragically and his version of Hallelujah had become the most well known and talked about version of the song that I had heard the song. Eventually, I heard Cohen’s version and found it inferior to both Buckley and John Cale’s more mainstream takes on the song.

Find my full length review at Beat.Media, linked here. 

Documentary Review This Land

This Land (2022)

Directed by Matthew Palmer 

Produced by Jim Cummings 

Starring America 

Release Date September 6th, 2022

This Land is an interesting and ultimately failing documentary that follows several different stories all set on election day of November 2020, the day that Joe Biden won election as the President of the United States. Biden’s victory over now former President Donald Trump was chaotic and divisive and remains a flashpoint in American history with warring factions still making claims and accusations to this day. 

In many ways, America was never more divided than on that election day in 2020 when Americans went to the polls with a fiery passion, creating one of the biggest election day turnouts in history. This Land is an attempt by director Matthew Palmer and executive producer Jim Cummings to bridge the gap between right and left, Republican and Democrat, and get to the heart of why America has become seemingly so deeply divided.

Find my full length review at Swamp.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Beholder (2000) 

Directed by Stephen Elliott

Written by Stephen Elliott 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, K.D Lang 

Release Date January 28th, 2000 

Eye of the Beholder is so much crazier than I ever imagined. This seemingly straightforward turn of the 21st century thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd is utterly bats***. That’s really the only way to describe it. A vaguely defined secret agent turned creepy stalker falls in love with an insane woman after witnessing her murder two people. As an expression of his love he begins murdering people to protect her and that’s only half of the creeptastic narrative of Eye of the Beholder. 

Ewan McGregor stars in Eye of the Beholder as Steven Wilson aka The Eye, aka The Angel. He’s also known as the single worst secret agent in history. Wilson works for some unnamed spy agency where he uses a gun he modified into a camera, and still a gun, to take pictures of creeps screwing their secretaries. I imagine there is more to his job than this but this is what we first see. The first mission of Wilson’s we see we think he’s going to assassinate some guy in the midst of having sex.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Documentary Review Three Minutes a Lengthening

Three Minutes A Lengthening (2022)

Directed by Bianca Stinter

Featuring Gary Kurtz, Maurice Chapman

Release Date August 26th, 2022 

Open your imagination for a moment. Picture in your mind a small boy, close cropped buzz cut, ratty clothing. The boy sticks out his tongue and nods his head up and down excitedly. It’s a very silly, childish bit of acting out. It’s not particularly notable in any way out of context. So, let’s give it context. The boy we are talking about is Jewish and he lived in Nasielsk, Poland in 1938. That year, nearly the entire Jewish population of Nasielsk were violently torn from their homes in Nasielsk and within the next 2 years, most would be dead in concentration camps.

An image that would be innocuous, charming, or innocent in any other context takes on an immensely poignant and deeply sad quality when you give it a context. This thought occurred to me while I watched the extraordinary documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening. The documentary directed by Bianca Stigter takes three minutes of film footage of Polish Jews from Nasielsk that was found in a closet in Florida several years ago and spins out the lives of people who could be recognized and remembered from this 84 year old piece of film.

Find my full length review at Swamp.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Corpse Bride

Corpse Bride (2005) 

Directed by Mike Johnson, Tim Burton

Written by John August, Caroline Thompson, Pamela Pettler

Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Albert Finney, Joanna Lumley, Christopher Lee

Release Date September 23rd, 2005

Corpse Bride is, for my my money, Tim Burton's best movie. I know I should say Batman and I do love his Batman, but that should only communicate the esteem in which I hold Corpse Bride. I enjoy this dark yet playful animated feature even more than I enjoyed Michael Keaton as Batman. That speaks volumes of the quality of the work that is Corpse Bride, part of Tim Burton's rather exceptional forays into stop motion animation. 

The story of Corpse Bride is a highly unconventional love story. Johnny Depp provides the nervous, shy voice of Victor Van Dort who is set to marry Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), the daughter of an old money family that has fallen on hard times. Victoria's parents, Finis and Maudeline Everglot (Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley), only reluctantly agreed to the marriage of Victor and Victoria because they are broke and Victor's parents are new immigrants with new money. They are voiced brilliantly by the wonderful Tracy Ullman and Paul Whitehouse.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Clerks 3

Clerks 3 

Directed by Kevin Smith 

Written by Kevin Smith

Starring Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith 

Release Date September 13th to the 18th, 2022 in theaters

Kevin Smith Clerks 3 Convenience Tour 2022 September 4th through November 14th, 2022

I cannot be objective regarding the work of Kevin Smith. I am an unabashed Smith fan. I’ve loved everything Kevin has done. Clerks was a moment in my life, the first time I really identified with characters who reminded me of slightly more witty versions of myself and my friends. The film’s foul sensibilities, outrageous dialogue, and those wonderful characters spoke to me like no movie characters’ had before. 

Subsequently, Mallrats came out and I loved it to pieces. Then came Chasing Amy and it spoke to me about romance and sex in a way I didn’t think movies were capable of. I was 19 years old and only beginning to experience the possibilities of how movies can communicate with the audience. Dogma hits differently when you are first exploring the idea of faith and the absence of God in your life. It seemed as if Kevin Smith was speaking directly to me, like he was speaking with a friend.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.