Movie Review Titane

Titane 

Directed by Julia Ducournau

Written by Julia Ducournau, Jacque Akchoti, Simonetta Greggio

Starring Agathe Roussell, Garance Marillier 

Release Date October 1st, 2021 

Director Julia Ducournau is among the most challenging and unique filmmakers in the world. Her work on 2016’s Raw was deeply unsettling and yet entirely engrossing. The same could be said of the director’s new film, Titane, a film that matches Raw for every unsettling beat and perhaps out does Raw for outlandishness. Does that mean that Titane is entirely successful? Perhaps not, but it is undeniably memorable and teeming with ingenuity, dark wit, and bizarre insight into humanity and our desire to connect. 

Titane tells the story of a little girl named Adrien whose life is forever changed by a car accident. Adrian was badly maimed in the accident in which she was tormenting her father from the back seat before removing her seatbelt and causing her father to swerve into an accident that threw Adrien’s head into a passenger side window. Adrien was lucky not to be killed. Instead, she came away with screws and metal plates in her head and torso.

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

Documentary Review Adrienne

Adrienne 

Directed by Andy Ostroy

Written by Documentary 

Starring Adrienne Shelly, Sara Bareilles, Robert John Burke, Nathan Fillion

Release Date December 1st, 2021

One of the darkest days of my career happened on November 1st, 2006 and I didn’t even know it at the time. That was the day that actress turned director Adrienne Shelly was murdered in her office in New York City. I was aware of Adrienne Shelly but I had not yet seen her masterpiece, Waitress. Once I saw Shelly’s extraordinary film, and named it among my favorite movies of 2007, I was both deeply moved and desperately distraught over her loss and the loss of the incredible works of art she undoubtedly would have created in the future. The new documentary, Adrienne, was a cathartic experience for me as an admirer of Adrienne Shelly the artist and the human being. 

Adrienne Shelly bubbled under mainstream success for several years from the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. She got her start with visionary weirdo Hal Hartley and eventually graduated to more mainstream roles in Hollywood features. But, Shelly's greatest successes came in independent film where her status as an It-Girl of the future helped her work get noticed while allowing Shelly to continue to flex her artistic muscles outside of the shackles of mainstream Hollywood feature films.

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

Movie Review House of Gucci

House of Gucci

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by Becky Johnston, Roberto Bentivegna

Starring Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino

Release Date November 24th, 2021

House of Gucci is a true crime story about the death of Gucci scion, Maurizio Gucci, played by Adam Driver. As a true crime story it’s not bad, as a serious drama about real people in a real life tragedy, House of Gucci is rather disastrous. Unable to distinguish whether he is making a real life crime drama or a campy satire of wealth and privilege, director Ridley Scott has made a strange and off-putting movie that is consistently at odds with itself, it’s intentions, and it’s actors who swing wildly from parody to serious intent. 

House of Gucci picks up the story of Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) as she is working for her family trucking company. The immediate sense is that Reggiani has ambitions that exceed her family’s relatively modest fortune. At a party she may or may not have been invited to, Patrizia meets Maurizio Gucci, mistaking him for a bartender. In her defense, the future head of the House of Gucci was behind a bar and wearing a traditional tuxedo at what is purported to be a costume party.

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

Documentary Review Punch 9 for Harold Washington

Punch 9 for Harold Washington 

Directed by Joe Winston

Written by Documentary

Starring Harold Washington, Richard Daley, David Axelrod

Release Date October 14th, 2021

Punch 9 for Harold Washington documents the rise to Chicago Mayor of former Congressman Harold Washington, a brilliant, charismatic, and dedicated reformer. After years of patronage determining the fate of Chicago under the Mayor Daley regime, Washington’s rise to the highest office in the third largest city in the country felt like a breath of fresh air. The optimism and heart of Washington’s leadership felt like a new dawn and made his far too early death all the more tragic, especially as Chicago sank back to the depths of Daley era duplicitousness. 

Punch 9 for Harold Washington picks up in the late 1960s when the patronage and corruption of the Mayor Richard J Daley regime was in full effect. We don’t linger here but we get enough of a sense of how a political machine worked. We need that information to show us just what a reformer like Harold Washington was up against, a city run by one man, shaped in his image and crafted via graft to keep it as it was, a self-sustaining, greed addled monstrosity built to keep Richard J Daley at the top.

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

Documentary Review Jagged

Jagged 

Directed by Alison Klayman

Written by Documentary

Starring Alanis Morissette 

Release Date November 21st, 2021 

On November 25th, 1995, I was 19 years old and I was in the audience at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa to see Alanis Morrissette on one of the dates from her Jagged Little Pill tour. This isn’t clout chasing on my part, Alanis was, by this point in her career, even being only 21 years old herself, already one of the biggest stars in the world. By November of 1995, You Oughtta Know had already rocketed Alanis to superstar status by the time she brought the Jagged Little Pill tour to Davenport, Iowa. 

It was an amazing experience. I had great seats, about the 15th row, center of the building. By this point, Alanis was already working on new music that would eventually end up on her next record, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie and I got to hear an early, stripped down version of Thank U and Unsent. (Okay, that was a little bit of clout chasing on my part.) It was an incredible experience and it all came rushing back to me as I watched the new documentary Jagged on HBO Max.

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

Movie Review The Shuroo Process

The Shuroo Process 

Directed by Emmrhys Cooper

Written by Donal Brophy, Emmrhys Cooper

Starring Fiona Dourif, Donal Brophy, Tommy Dorfman

Release Date November 24th, 2021 

The Shuroo Process cannot decide what kind of movie it wants to be. The film stars Fiona Dourif as Parker Schaefer, an infamously fearless magazine writer who has finally gone off the rails. As we join the story, Parker has returned from what we can fairly assume was a binge. Parker is a fast talking mess and it doesn’t take long for her husband, who we only meet this one time, to clock her as drunk and high. He’s leaving, as we can see he’s all packed, and he’s taking the kids that are implied but never seen. 

Instead of waiting for her husband to leave however, Parker throws herself out of the house and goes to stay with a friend. Parker has a red carpet event on this night and given the state that she’s already in, it’s no surprise that it goes horribly wrong. When Parker accepts her award she’s falling down drunk and rambling about conspiracy theories. The speech ends with Parker face down on the stage, her dress nearly over her head and her butt on display to the world. All of this is played with distinctly arch, comic tone.

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

Movie Review Drive My Car

Drive My Car 

Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Written by Haruki Murakami, Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Starring Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toki Miura

Release Date August 18th, 2021

A three hour movie can be intimidating, even for a professional film critic, such as myself. A three hour long movie has to be very, very good to justify that length, especially if you are not watching it in a movie theater where you have fewer potential distractions. That makes the movie Drive My Car, from director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, all the more impressive. Drive My Caris a three hour movie about art, infidelity and personal trauma. It’s not flashy or bombastic, it’s deeply human and warm. These aren’t qualities one assumes of a three hour movie. 

And yet, Drive My Car exists and never feels like a three hour movie. The story of an actor and his screenwriter wife, Drive My Car stars Hidetoshi Nishijima as Kafuku and Reika Kirishima as his wife, Oto. Our introduction to this husband and wife is unique and fascinating. In bed late at night, Oto begins to tell a story. She tells of a teenage girl obsessed with a teenage boy that she’s never spoken to before. The girl develops a habit of sneaking into the boy’s home and into his bedroom while no one is home. Each time she does this she takes an item and leaves an item of her own.

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

Movie Review Red Rocket

Red Rocket

Directed by Sean Baker

Written by Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch

Starring Simon Rex, Bree Elrod

Release Date December 24th, 2021

I find the movie Red Rocket loathsome. It’s not a moral objection to the film as some might assume since the movie centers on the relationship between a former adult film actor and a 17 year old girl, though I do understand why moral objections to this movie exist. No, my issue isn’t that I am some kind of prude or I don’t like to have my values challenged by a work of art. Rather, I just find Red Rocket to be unendingly obnoxious. 

From moment one to moment last Red Rocket is annoying in the way that obnoxious people in the real world can be annoying. Simon Rex’s character Mikey is the kind of person I avoid at all costs because he’s loud and obnoxious and I really can’t stand people who seem to inflict themselves upon others. Some see this character as being challenging and transgressive. I see him as the kind of person who makes me leave social situations so I can avoid being thrust into an unwanted conversation with them which will invariably be about themselves.

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

Movie Review The Lost Daughter

The Lost Daughter 

Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal

Written by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elena Ferrante

Starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson

Release Date December 31st, 2021 

Few movies have triggered my secondhand embarrassment senses like The Lost Daughter. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut stars Oscar winner Olivia Coleman as a college professor on holiday in Rome. Coleman’s Leda is desperately awkward and incapable of relating to other, lesser human beings. We get a sense of Leda in her first interaction with Lyle (Ed Harris), the caretaker of the apartment she has rented for her vacation. Lyle, in his 70s, is struggling while carrying her remarkably heavy bag to her room and yet he still tries to flirt with the near 50 year old Leda, much to her confusion and dismissiveness. 

It’s deeply weird and awkward and a credit to Maggie Gyllenhaal for capturing the feeling of two people deeply NOT connecting in the same way. This pattern will repeat throughout The Lost Daughter as the character of Leda appears incapable of relating to people on a base level. That fact has little to do with the story at play in The Lost Daughter, rather it is just the default mode of the character who seems to carry some sort of childhood trauma through her life that only allows her to interact with a select group of people in any kind of comfortable fashion and only on her terms.

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

Movie Review National Champions

National Champions 

Directed by Ric Roman Waugh

Written by Adam Mervis

Starring Stephen James, J.K Simmons, Alexander Ludwig

Release Date December 10th, 2021

National Champions aims to tell the story of how College Football exploits players. It’s a compelling bit of polemic on behalf of the players as the story gives strong voice to the complaints that many have had regarding the millions of dollars given to coaches and the billions of dollars raked in by universities and conferences that do little to benefit the young men laying their bodies on the line to actually earn that money. 

National Champions stars Stephan James as LeMarcus James, a college football superstar. LeMarcus is set to become the number one overall pick in the NFL draft after he plays in the national championship game. However, LeMarcus has decided not to play the big game. Along with his best friend and teammate, Emmett Sunday (Alexander Ludwig), LeMarcus has decided to use the national championship game as a moment to protest on behalf of unionizing College Football and forcing the Universities and the NCAA to pay players.

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

Movie Review Don't Look Up

Don't Look Up 

Directed by Adam McKay

Written by Adam McKay, David Sirota

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothee Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill

Release Date December 24th, 2021 

Don’t Look Up is a savage satire that pulls few punches in calling out those who would deny either COVID-19 or climate change. Playing like a modern Doctor Strangelove, the famously anti-war war movie, Don’t Look Up uses clever caricatures of modern politics to criticize and humiliate those who appear prepared to watch the world burn just to protect some ego born version of their political team, one they believe can’t lose no matter what winning might look like, even if it looks like the death of humanity. 

Don’t Look Up stars Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky, a doctoral candidate in Astrology at Michigan State University. As the film opens, Kate is watching the sky through a massive telescope. Here she spots a large comet that is on a track that is bringing it toward Earth. For a doctoral candidate, it’s a huge find so she immediately contacts her professor, Dr Randall Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He begins to do the math on the trajectory of the comet and slowly it dawns on him, the comet is headed directly toward Earth.

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

Movie Review Being the Ricardos

Being the Ricardos

Directed by Aaron Sorkin

Written by Aaron Sorkin

Starring Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem

Release Date December 21st, 2021

The talent of writer-director Aaron Sorkin is undeniable. Sorkin is a man of words, of wit, and caustic observation. I have no intention of diminishing Mr Sorkin’s talent but I have to quarrel with his choice of subjects. While Sorkin’s rat-a-tat banter and scintillating discourse on important issues is usually very welcome when providing a voice to good hearted politicians on The West Wing or when creating a recognizable version of a social media titan like Mark Zuckerberg, under the strict direction of David Fincher, in The Social Network. However, having that same style saddled onto the legend of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez feels completely out of place. 

There is a deep disconnect between Sorkin’s style of wordy, fast talking, tete a tete and the fall down funny of I Love Lucy. I’m sure there are parallels between typical Sorkin characters and the staff of I Love Lucy but Sorkin’s picture of Lucille Ball, as portrayed by Nicole Kidman, is shockingly humorless, often cruel, and downright joyless. Even when she’s creating comedy, Sorkin’s Lucille Ball approaches comedy with an architect-like dryness as if she were mathematically constructing comedy that she didn’t particularly enjoy.

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

Movie Review The Novice

The Novice 

Directed by Lauren Hadaway 

Written by Lauren Hadaway 

Starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsythe

Release Date December 17th, 2021

Obsessive, compulsive, driven, damaged, out of control, these are some of the ways I could describe the protagonist of the new movie, The Novice. Played by Isabelle Fuhrman, Alex Dall, the protagonist of The Novice, is obsessed with everything she does. Having deemed herself less than others she makes up for her perceived deficiencies by outworking everyone around her with methodical tendencies bordering on insanity. Whether in academics, sex, or sports, Alex’s crazed determination is both impressive and terrifying. 

Having earned a scholarship to college, Alex finds herself in need of something to keep her motivated. She chooses the hardest thing that she can find, the women’s rowing team. If you aren’t familiar with rowing, it’s one of the most grueling and time consuming sports imaginable. The average person doesn’t join a rowing team. Rowing is a calling for people, an obsession that gets passed down from generation to generation.

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

Documentary Review Beanie Mania

Beanie Mania 

Directed by Yemisi Brookes

Written by Documentary 

Starring Colleen Ballinger, Lina Trivedi 

Release Date December 23rd, 2021 

YouTuber Jenny Nicholson, arguably that platform’s best personality, has been talking about doing a video on the Beanie Baby phenomenon for some time now. And that is, in all honesty, the only reason I subjected myself to the new HBO Max documentary Beanie Mania. I am really eager to see Jenny do a video on this unique subject and I thought having a little more background on the topic might enhance how much fun her video will be. That said, there are some fascinating elements to Beanie Mania in and of itself. 

Beanie Mania takes audiences back to the mid-1990s when a small-time toy company executive named Ty Warner struck out on his own and somehow struck gold with socks shaped like various animals and stuffed with plastic beans. It’s a complete mystery as to why this stuffed toy became a worldwide phenomenon and Beanie Mania doesn’t really offer much of an answer for why this product of all products became such a ludicrously over the top fad. A combination of good timing and clever marketing created a one of a kind phenomenon that has yet to be duplicated.

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

Movie Review American Siege

American Siege 

Directed by Edward Drake 

Written by Corey Large, Edward Drake

Starring Bruce Willis, Rob Gough, Anna Hindman

Release Date December 28th, 2021

American Siege kind of stars Bruce Willis as a lazy, slightly corrupt, County sheriff in some small corner of Georgia. Willis plays Ben, a character so lazily rendered that giving him a last name was too much effort. Reportedly, Willis shot every one of his scenes for American Siege in a single day and boy does it show. Willis acts as if he’s paid by the length of every word, slowly slurring every line. No, Willis isn’t drunk, this is the slur of a man uttering lines he’s reading off a cue card just out of frame and for the very first time. 

Watch Willis’s eyes in American Siege and you can play the 'which direction is the cue card guy' home game. A fun American Siege drinking game might be watching Willis’s eyes searching for the cue card at the start of his scenes. That’s certainly more fun than anything else in this latest late period Bruce Willis paycheck job. American Siege finds Willis at his laziest, hiring his friends and standing around while the action happens around him, seemingly refusing to shoot scenes with the rest of the main cast.

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

Movie Review The Pink Cloud

The Pink Cloud 

Directed by Iuli Gerbase

Written by Iuli Gerbase 

Starring Renata De Lelis, Eduardo Mendonca, Girley Paes 

Release Date January 29th, 2021 

The Pink Cloud was made before the pandemic hit in 2020. I have to mention this because as I lay out the description of the plot of The Pink Cloud you may find that fact hard to believe. The Pink Cloud posits a story in which a man and woman hooking up on a one night stand end up stuck together in the woman’s home when their home in Brazil is surrounded by a Pink Cloud that kills anyone it touches in a mere 10 seconds of exposure. 

The echoes of Shelter in Place at the start of the pandemic are undeniable and the claustrophobic memories of isolation and fear are palpable. And yet, The Pink Cloud came into existence before we could all relate to it on such a bone deep level. This fact only serves to underscore the hypnotic power of this Brazilian movie which went from science fiction to speculative fiction with no effort whatsoever on the part of the filmmakers.

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

Movie Review Nocturna Side A/Side B

Nocturna Side A The Great Old Man's Night

Nocturna Side B Where Do Elephants Go to Die

Directed by Gonzalo Calzada

Written by Gonzalo Calzada

Starring Marina Artigas, Lautaro Delgado, Mora Dela Veccia

Release Date September 30th, 2021 

After watching Noctura Side A and Nocturna Side B, I sent a message to my Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast Co-Host, Bob Zerull, that indicated what I had watched and that I would have trouble sleeping that night. So haunting, engrossing, and agonizing is the Side A-Side B duo of Nocturna movies in their psychological horrors and soul aching sadness that I was unsure I was capable of sleep anymore. Nocturna Side A and Nocturna Side B are the kind of movies that etch themselves into your subconscious. 

Nocturna Side A subtitled The Great Old Man’s Night stars Pepe Soriano as Ulises, a 100 year old man living the last day of his life. It’s never stated for sure that this is the last day of Ulises life but, context clues, visual and aural, hint at the fact of Ulises approaching his final hours. A disembodied voice from an unseen television talks about dying elephants who develop the ability to see and communicate with dead ancestors as they themselves approach the final moments of life. How anyone would determine this about Elephants is unclear but it’s also not important.

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

Documentary Review Poly Styrene I Am a Cliche

Poly Styrene  I Am a Cliche 

Directed by Celeste Bell, Paul Sng 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Celeste Bell

Release Date March 5th, 2021

If you aren’t a fan of the British punk rock wave of the late 70s and early 1980s then you may not be aware of the trailblazer known as Poly Styrene. Poly Styrene was the rebellious and distinctive voice of the punk band X-Ray Spex. The band is arguably best known for being banned by the BBC over their song “Oh Bondage, Up Yours,” an anti-authority, anti-patriarchy punk anthem that became a big hit in spite of and because of the BBC ban. 

Poly Styrene was a mixed race teenager growing up in a London suburb with few dreams of becoming a punk rock pioneer. Forming a band was an idea she had while writing poetry and searching for a way to share her poetry. Turning her spiky poetry into songs was a natural extension of wanting a way to speak louder and get heard. Punk was the most influential genre of the time and it happened to perfectly fit Poly’s anarchic style of poetry.

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