Movie Review The Iron Claw

The Iron Claw (2023) 

Directed by Sean Durkin

Written by Sean Durkin

Starring Zac Efron, Holt McCallany, Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White, Lily James, Maura Tierney 

Release Date December 22nd, 2023 

Published ?

Instead of reviewing what I think is a very bad movie, The Iron Claw, I am going to make a list of the many things the movie gets wrong combined with a list of things the film omitted that might have made the film better. As a wrestling fan, I am remarkably familiar with the controversies, the tragedies, and the triumphs of the Von Erich family. The misery porn that director Sean Durkin is engaged in in The Iron Claw is nothing compared to the real life tragedies and controversies that the Von Erich family were part of from the late 1970s and into the early 1990s. 

What The Iron Claw gets wrong: Spoilers ahead, it's based on a true story, but the movie fictionalizes so much that, I guess, this stuff qualifies as spoilers. 

The Timeline 

The Iron Claw proceeds essentially from 1980 when Kevin Von Erich, played by Zac Efron, met and married his wife, Pam, played by Lily James. While at Kevin's wedding, we see Kevin's brother, David, played by Harris Dickinson fall ill. He's vomiting blood and Kevin advises David not to take a trip to Japan the following week, advising David to get some rest first. David assures Kevin he will be fine and he goes on the trip to Japan. Cut to, Fritz Von Erich alone at his kitchen table, distraught. While on tour in Japan, David suffered from Enteritis and died in his hotel room. 

From Kevin Von Erich's marriage in 1980 to David's death from either Enteritis or a drug overdose, depending on whose story you believe, were four years. Four years in which David Von Erich had the biggest successes of his career. In 1980 he broke away from his father and traveled the country working in Florida, where he played a bad guy for a while, a rite of passage in the industry that would not have been afforded to him by his father. He also went to Missouri and was able to win the Missouri Heavyweight Championship, arguably the biggest solo honor of his short career. 

There appears to be little justification for compressing four years into one week and it only serves to remove the devastating emotional impact of David's death, which is reduced to a single scene of Fritz telling Kevin that David had died. Tell don't show is a plague on The Iron Claw as so many significant incidents in the lives and careers of the Von Erich's are either ignored completely or we are told that they happened offscreen. 

Kerry Von Erich's personal life 

In The Iron Claw you would assume that Kerry Von Erich was a lonely, drug addicted playboy whose only life was in the wrestling ring. That's partially true. But what The Iron Claw fails to tell you, I assume because they were cut for time, is that Kerry was married and had children. In the movie, Kerry's marriage and his children, including future pro wrestler Lacy Von Erich, are never mentioned and completely ignored. As Kerry spirals toward his tragic, far to young death by suicide, his brother asks him about some random woman that he'd brought home for the holidays. She was some woman he met on the road or something. He never asks about Kerry's wife or mentions his children as a reason for Kerry not to take his own life. 

More Timeline shenanigans 

If David's death happened a week after Kevin's marriage in 1981, then Kerry Von Erich won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and at the David Von Erich Parade of Champions event a little over a month and a half later. And, according to the timeline in The Iron Claw, Kerry went out and got very drunk and crashed his motorcycle and lost part of his leg that same night. Naturally, that didn't happen that way. Kerry won the title in 1984, a little over a month after David died that same year. Kerry didn't suffer his motorcycle accident and the amputation of the lower part of his right leg until 1986, long after he'd lost the NWA world title. 

The remarkable and tragic story of Kerry's motorcycle accident. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Bricklayer

The Bricklayer (2024) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Hanna Weg, Matt Johnson 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson, Clifton Collins Jr. 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 4th, 2023 

The Bricklayer is a remarkably banal and completely terrible movie. The film stars Aaron Eckhardt as the titular bricklayer. Naturally, he's not bricklayer, not really anyway. He does lay bricks and even builds a small wall early in the movie, but his tragic backstory is soon revealed. The Bricklayer, aka Vail, lost his family when they were slaughtered by his former friend, played by Clifton Collins Jr. This caused Vail to abandon the life of a CIA spy in favor of bricks. He believes that he had killed his former friend but now he's found out that he's wrong. 

Collins' terrorist character is back and is now murdering international journalists and framing the CIA for the kills. The CIA needs Vail to come out of retirement and finish the job of killing the terrorist. Naturally, the only person the CIA could possibly team him with is an inexperienced tech wiz who can find information that the rest of the CIA can't because their lazy and jaded and she's young and beautiful. Nina Dobrev is the whippersnapper CIA agent who will pose as Vail's wife as they snoop their way inside the high society of Greece where the most recent murdered journalist was staying. 

The cliches of The Bricklayer move fast and furious. Literally, some of these were made cliche by the Fast and Furious movies. Aside from a hero who enjoys the trade of bricklaying, there is nothing remotely original about The Bricklayer. I mean everything, right down to star Aaron Eckhardt's raspy tough guy speaking voice. In one of the first scenes in the movie, Eckhardt is shot by one of those bad guys who rarely hits anything while firing a needless number of bullets. So, Eckhardt duct tapes his gunshot would shut, and engages in a hand-to-hand fight that would put most MMA fights to shame. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom

Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (2023) 

Directed by James Wan 

Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall

Starring Jason Mamoa, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II 

Release Date December 21st, 2023 

Published December 29th, 2023 

Wow! Aquaman 2 The Lost Kingdom is quite bad. I truly did not care for this DCEU sequel to what wasn't a bad first film. The sequel is lazy and dimwitted, ponderous and often quite ugly to look at. It's everything we've come to dislike about modern comic book blockbusters. The worst element is the CGI, a rubbery mess of indecipherable visuals and some of the worst fight scenes since Michael Bay assaulted our senses in the Transformers franchise. The biggest disappointment, however, is director James Wan, a supremely talented director who appears to be on complete autopilot in this lazy sequel. 

The film begins with a hacky sitcom monologue which sets up the new dynamic of the Aquaman movie universe. Aquaman, AKA, Arthur Curry (Jason Samoa), delivers a monologue that appears to break the fourth wall except that it is couched as a dialogue with his new baby, Arthur Jr. He's bringing the baby up to speed on where we stand now with Arthur as the King of Atlantis, hating the restrictions of being King and finding ways to be the Arthur of old, a superhero who fights evil and protects the good. His wife, Hera (Amber Heard), is also around... somewhere. 

Much of the early portion of the film is Arthur with his baby and sharing beers with his dad, Tom (Temeura Morrison). That is until, David Kane, AKA, Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) makes his presence felt. He's somewhere in Antarctica searching for The Lost Kingdom. With the aid of a genius scientist, Dr. Stephen Shin (Randall Park), and the effects of Global Warming, he does find something, an ancient weapon called The Black Trident. The possessed weapon begins to infect Black Manta's mind, using his hatred for Aquaman to drive him to free the Lost Kingdom from a centuries long curse. 

In order to find Black Manta, Arthur must do the unthinkable, break his brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), out of a desert prison where he's been held since the end of the last movie. Thanks to the power of lazy screenwriting, Orm knows where to find Black Manta, or the Star Wars cantina where someone else knows where Manta is. It is one of the most boring prison breaks in movie history. It's remarkably by the numbers, hampered by bad CGI, and wildly underwhelming villains guarding Orm. Same can be said for the visit to a pirate bar featuring rejected Star Wars aliens. 

Click here for my full length review. 

Movie Review The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest (2023) 

Directed by Jonathan Glazer 

Written by Jonathan Glazer 

Starring Sandra Huller, Christian Friedel 

Release Date December 15th, 2023 

Published 

The Zone of Interest is a devastating work of art. It's an unflinching and horrific movie but not because it depicts the holocaust in any direct fashion. Rather, The Zone of Interest places the horrors in your mind all while an affluent family headed up by the Nazi Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp goes through the daily routines of your average suburban family. It's the casualness of it all that drills the horror of the holocaust into your subconscious. I should not have been so gobsmacked by seeing the family of a Nazi casually carrying on as if what their father does is just like any other job but it just kept hitting me again and again how horrific this all is. The normalization of the systematic murder of six million people leads you the revelation of how we normalize the horrors of the world every time we turn a blind eye to suffering and death. 

The Zone of Interest centers its story on Commandant Rudolph Hoss (Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Huller). As he goes off to work, she attends to the house staff and gets the kids off to school. It's all so familiar and normal. You see this tableau unfold in every suburb. Except for the part where Rudolph is wearing a crisply detailed Nazi uniform and is walking next door to his job as the commandant at Auschwitz where he's charged with finding the most efficient way to murder Jewish people while keeping just enough of them alive for slave labor for the camp or industry. His approach to his job is no different from your average middle manager holding meetings with higher ups while filing efficiency reports on the number of people he's able to brutally murder. 

Meanwhile, his wife is entertaining friends and family in their well appointed home. The film unfolds a number of callous and cruel scenes as packages are delivered to the home and it slowly dawns on us that the various pieces of clothing and personal items are those of Jewish people being murdered next door. For example, Hedwig receives a package containing a mink coat. She tries it on and poses in front of a mirror. She finds a lipstick in the pocket and starts applying it. She's as carefree as if she'd just purchased these items and they belong to her. If she cares at all where these items came from or how she's taking things that belonged to people her husband is murdering, you can't see it on her face or in her eyes. There is a sociopathic level of not caring in Hedwig. Her sense of cruel entitlement is soul shaking for anyone with a conscience. 

In a later scene, Hedwig's mother comes to visit and they have a conversation about a former neighbor, an elderly Jewish woman. The conversation casually discussed the woman's curtains and how the mother envied those curtains before wondering if the woman had been murdered next door. The mother indicates that she's far more upset that she wasn't the one to end up with those curtains than she's bothered by the fate of her former neighbor. Director Jonathan Glazer does not flinch in his presentation of these scenes. The mundanity of this conversation, the casual disregard for the lives of Jewish people is chilled my spine and that's the point. If you don't find this monstrous, there is something horrifically wrong with you, just as there is something absolutely wrong with these characters. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Maestro

Maestro (2023) 

Directed by Bradley Cooper

Written by Bradley Cooper, Josh Singer

Starring Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan. Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer 

Release Date November 22nd, 2023 

Published ?

There are many things to like about Bradley Cooper's Maestro. This biopic of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein is incredible to look at. Cooper and his cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, and production designer, Kevin Thompson, have put exceptional craft into the movie. Several of the films scenes simply pop off the screen in composition, detail, and the use of color. There is no denying that Bradley Cooper has a wonderful directorial eye aided by an exceptional team behind him. Where Maestro falters, sadly, is storytelling where the tenets of the movie biopic restrict and restrain. It's as if there was simply too much life in Leonard Bernstein to be constricted to the film form. 

Maestro begins its story with Leonard Bernstein being interviewed about his life and reflecting mostly on his beloved wife Felicia. Then we are thrown into a flashback, black and white, a young and eager Leonard Bernstein gets the phone call that will change his life. The main conductor of the New York Philharmonic is ill and cannot perform. His replacement is snowed in upstate. The 25 year old Bernstein with no rehearsal time, will have to fill in. He crushes it, he delivers an incredible performance that skyrockets his career. 

Meanwhile, in his private life, Bernstein is enjoying life as a gay man in New York, collaborating on various musical projects and spending time with his lover, David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer). These moments are brief but show a playful and wildly creative Bernstein constantly in creative mode, in the flower of his youth. Soon after however, he's met a woman at a party. Her name is Felicia (Carey Mulligan) and the two spark immediate chemistry. It's never stated that Bernstein is bisexual and the movie is remarkably vague on this point, perhaps because, until late in his life, Bernstein himself was vague on this point. 

The two undergo a whirlwind romance accompanied by Bernstein's remarkable successes on the stage, screen and as a composer of numerous symphonies. A lovely scene has Bernstein take Felicia to the stage where a musical he's working on with Jerome Robbins is rehearsing. The two get swept up in the dance rehearsal before being pulled apart. The symbolism rages aloud in this scene as the two sides of Bernstein's sexuality are pulled in different directions, one toward Felicia, one away from her. Dancers keep pulling both in different directions with Felicia imagining a man who might have taken her from Bernstein earlier in their life. It's an exceptional and exciting sequence that demonstrates Cooper's terrific direction. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review American Fiction

American Fiction (2023) 

Directed by Cord Jefferson 

Written by Cord Jefferson 

Starring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown 

Release Date December 15th, 2023 

Published December 23rd, 2023

American Fiction is the sharpest American comedy of 2023. This brilliant deconstruction of writers, writing, society, and popular culture from Cord Jefferson fearlessly points an accusing finger at the audience while not letting its main character off the hook either. Featuring one of our finest actors, Jeffrey Wright, at his absolute best, American Fiction takes elements from classic literature and mixes them with a touch of the angsty self-analogizing of the formerly great Woody Allen, and crafts a near perfect comedy. 

Monk, played by Jeffrey Wright, is a dyspeptic college professor and long struggling author. Despite having published several books, he cannot escape the specter of being a 'black author' and he's desperately frustrated. After suffering a loss in his family and the decline of his mother's health, Monk gets drunk and writes the kind of novel that he despises. It's a novel filled with stock characters from popular culture centered on the supposed 'black' experience. 

It's written in broken English and Monk's fictional author, Stagg R. Lee, is supposed fugitive from the law. He hopes to use the book to shame those that claim this kind of book is 'important' and 'raw' and explores the 'black' experience. It centers on a gang member with a deadbeat dad and no mother. The book is cobbled together from every 'important' piece of black popular culture aimed at white liberal guilt of the late 20th and 21st century. And in what should come as no surprise, it becomes a massive hit when Monk's agent sends it out to white publishers. 

Faced with the conundrum of having written a book he despises and being offered big money to publish the book he despises; Monk begrudgingly takes the money. With his mother being in declining health and needing round the clock care and his brother, Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), being of little help as he drugs and sexes his way through a nasty divorce, Monk needs the money, even if it is coming at the cost of his self-respect. Where this story is headed, you will need to see for yourself. I can only tell you that it is an exceptionally smart and funny journey to get there. 

Writer-Director Cord Jefferson has written one incredibly nimble and lithe comic script. It bubbles with wit and a contempt for a culture that reduces people to stereotypes. At the same time, the keystone of the movie is revealed in a terrifically awkward and deeply uncomfortable opening scene. Here, Monk in his job as a professor is teaching about the work of Flannery O'Connor. When he writes the title of one of O'Connor's short stories on the board, the title of which I can't comfortably write in this review, the student, a young white woman objects. The title contains the N-word and while the young white woman expresses her discomfort at having to see the word, Monk becomes frustrated and berates her. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Ferrari

Ferrari (2023) 

Directed by Michael Mann

Written by Troy Kennedy Martin 

Starring Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, Penelope Cruz 

Release Date December 25th, 2023 

Published December 21st, 2023 

There is no question from me that Michael Mann is an exceptional director. His talent is undeniable but if you need proof, check his Oscar nominations for The Insider and for being a Producer on The Aviator. His films have seen remarkable success and shown incredible staying power. Take, for instance, his beloved classic Heat which still gets rapturous reviews from new audiences who discover it year after year. You can sense that I am setting you up, right? It's not entirely what you think. Michael Mann's newest film, Ferrari, starring Adam Driver, features exceptional direction, superb cinematography, and exceptional effects and stunt driving. 

I just can't make myself care about the subject. Is that a failing of Michael Mann as a filmmaker or, is it merely that the problems of a rich, philandering, man obsessed with car racing just isn't relatable or compelling as the lead character in a movie. Adam Driver invests the character of real life car magnate, Enzo Ferrari, with charisma, personality, and a not terribly distracting Italian accent but, he's still playing a character that defied my ability to care about him. I don't care about car racing. And, I supremely, assuredly do not care about the supposed problems of a very rich man on a journey to remaining a rich and troubled man despite being responsible for multiple deaths in the pursuit of his love of race cars. 

Ferrari picks up the story of Enzo Ferrari, founder of the famed Ferrari car company, in 1957, in the immediate aftermath of his beloved son and heir, Dino Ferrari. The death of his son has driven a wedge between Enzo and his wife, Enzo's mother, Laura Ferrari (Penelope Cruz), a turbulent personality expressing her pain and grief via explosions of vitriol toward the husband she feels is responsible for their son's death. By Laura's reasoning, Dino stretched himself to the breaking point pursuing his father's love of car racing, causing him to die at 24 from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. 

The rift between husband and wife has grown to such a degree that Enzo has started a new family with his mistress, Linda Lardi (Shailene Woodley). Enzo has purchased a villa for Linda and their son, Piero, where he comes to stay regularly while somehow not letting on to Laura that he's been cheating. This is a lot padding and not particularly compelling. Woodley is fine but exists mostly as a device to strain Enzo and Laura's marriage, regardless of how true the story of Enzo and his mistress may be. Michael Mann doesn't appear to be very interested in developing Laura as a character or giving her a function in the film beyond being a plot device. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Color Purple

The Color Purple (2023) 

Directed by Blitz Bazawule 

Written by Marcus Gardley 

Starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo, Danielle Brooks 

Release Date December 25th, 2023

Published December 20th, 2023 

The Good Lord Works in Mysterious Ways. That's what the opening song in the new musical adaptation of The Color Purple tells us. Oftentimes, people use this phrase to excuse or explain the seeming whims of the almighty God. When something unpredictable happens, god works in mysterious ways. The opening of the movie is setting us up for the notion of the unpredictable nature of fate. The fate that separates two loving sisters. And, perhaps, the same fate that will eventually reunite them. God works in mysterious ways and we can't no until we reach a conclusion, what God's intent was, what lesson God was imparting, and how the journey through God's various mysterious ways will help us learn, grow, change or merely adapt. 

Oh I know, she be mine is the next song. After having given birth, featuring a distracting cameo by Whoopi Goldberg, star of the Spielberg adaptation of The Color Purple, Celie sees a baby in her father's store. The baby has the same name as one of the babies that her father has forced her to immediately give up after their birth. This leads Celie to visualize a sequence in which she walks through a series of convicts breaking rocks before she walks into a gorgeous scene set in a small creek bed, clear, clean water, a small shimmering waterfall, and a series of women who are cleaning clothes in washtubs. 

The sequence is gorgeous, especially the dance sequence in front of the waterfall, spectacular visuals that are beautifully captured. Young Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, playing the young Celie that will eventually give way to Fantasia Barrino's take on the adult Celie, sings beautifully. Her voice is superb. It's a standout sequence, a lovely fantasy and a moment of joyous escape for a character who will spend so many of the next years of her life imprisoned, first by her abusive father and then by the husband she never asked for or wanted. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Perfect Days

Perfect Days (2023)

Directed by Wim Wenders,  

Written by Takuma Takasaki, Wim Wenders

Starring Koji Yakusho 

Release Date November 10th, 2023 

Published December 19th, 2023

The story behind Perfect Days, as Wikipedia tells it, is that friends of filmmaker Wim Wenders invited the director to Japan to view the remarkable new public restrooms that have been built in Tokyo. Each of these public restrooms was designed by an artist using remarkable design, modern tech, and extraordinary design. Not many people get a specific invitation to come and look at arty toilets but not everyone is Wim Wenders. These friends of Wenders hoped that by inviting the filmmaker to see these art installations that happen to be working public toilets, he would be inspired to make a short film about them. Instead, Wenders was inspired to make a two hour feature length movie about a humble man who takes pride in cleaning these incredible works of art, that happen to be public toilets. 

The work of art inspired by Tokyo's remarkable art-toilet project is one of the most lovely, gorgeous, and inspiring movies that I have seen in my more than 20 years as a film critic. Perfect Days stars Koji Yakusho as Hiroyama. Hiroyama asks for little and doesn't expect much. He goes to work everyday for Tokyo Toilet Service and painstakingly cleans every inch of every public restroom on his route. He takes pride in his hard work, even as the people who make the mess take little care to make Hiroyama's job easier. The pride that Hiroyama takes in his job is inspiring and shows a man who may not appear special from a glance is a great deal more than the sum of your perceptions of him. That's true of everyone you meet but it feels special in this case because it's in a movie, a communal experience like few others in the world. 

When Hiroyama isn't diligently assuring that every public restroom on his route is as clean as possible, he's listening to his collection of classic rock and underground cassette tapes. Dear reader, the soundtrack to Perfect Days is utterly sublime. The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, The Animals, Otis Redding, the music of Perfect Days is a series of amazing needle drops that celebrate the greatest music of all time and appreciating that remarkable music and how it enriches our lives. The music and art we love and consume makes our lives better and when you consider that the public restrooms that Hiroyama takes such care to clean, the movie is a whole is about an appreciation of art of all kinds, diligent dedication appreciating the beauty of the world. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Fallen Leaves

Fallen Leaves (2023) 

Directed by Aki Kaurismaki 

Written by Aki Kaurismaki 

Starring Alma Poysti, Jussi Vatanan 

Release Date November 17th, 2023 

Published December 18th, 2023 

Continuing to catch up on movies of 2023, I've recently had the pleasure to enjoy Kelly Reichardt's Showing Up, and Justine Triet's engrossing, Anatomy of a Fall. I've still got a few titles to go but I'm making great progress toward my best of 2023 list. The hard part is going to be having so many great movies to decide between. It would honestly be easier this year to create a top 20 but nevertheless. Making my end of year list is a joy, even as I will have to wrestle with where to put Aki Kaurismaki's new movie Fallen Leaves on my list. Fallen Leaves is a lovely, sincere, slice of life drama set among the poor of modern Finland. 

Ansa (Alma Poysti) lives a solitary single life in a tiny apartment in Finland. She survives mostly on taking home out of date food from her job at a local grocery store. Sadly, she will soon lose that job. An over zealous security guard sees her letting another poor person take some out of date food that she was throwing in a dumpster. As she's leaving work, the security guard and an officious store manager make her empty her bag and inside they find a piece of expired food that was to be her dinner that night. She's fired on the spot and two of her co-workers choose to quit in solidarity. They too had been taking expired food to survive on. 

In a parallel story, Holappa (Jussie Vatanan) is working a menial job cleaning rust off of metal with a high powered hose. It's just him standing and spraying for endless job. It's mind numbing and to cope with the dreariness of the job, Holappa has developed a drinking problem. He hides a bottle near his work station and regularly grabs a swallow in between spraying pieces of metal. As you can imagine, this won't last. Eventually, Holappa will get caught drinking on the job and he will be fired. Before that happens however, Holappa meets Alma and in a world of dreary, lonely, desperation, the two find a bit of a spark. 

Holappa buys Ansa a cup of coffee and takes her to a movie, things she could not do on her own as she's still looking for a new job. His kindness is touching and their tentative flirtation is sweet. The film even gives them a romantic comedy complication as Alma promises to tell Holappa her name if they go on a second date. She gives him her number and he loses it, and that sets up the rest of their story together. It's a complication that would be just as at home in a Hollywood rom-com but it feels more meaningful and heartbreaking in the context that writer-director Aki Kaurismaki places it in. 

Two sad, lonely people struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder find each other and give each other comfort only to seemingly lose their one chance of finding comfort in a cold and uncaring world, that's poetry. Great art from great sadness. Kaurismaki doesn't inflate the importance of this moment, if anything, it's merely just an incident on our way to somewhere else in this story. The brilliance of Kaurismaki is using something as simple as a rom-com complication and using it to magnify the sadness and heartache of his characters in a way that feels honest. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review La Chimera

La Chimera (2023) 

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher 

Written by Alice Rohrwacher 

Starring Josh O'Connor, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato 

Release Date December 6th, 2023 

Published December 15th, 2023 

The great catch up continues with a film that made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival back in May of this year. La Chimera tells the story of an English Archaeologist who falls in with a group of grave robbers in a small Italian village. As we join the story, the archaeologist is fresh out of jail after having been arrested for robbing a grave and selling the stolen treasure. Arthur, the archaeologist, played by Josh O'Connor, wants to leave the life of a grave robber behind but finds himself drawn back into this criminal world out a lack of being able to do anything else. 

Arthur is disgraced, an ex-pat, the only people he knows are the grave robbers who recruited and befriended him years ago. Without them, his only tether to the world is the loving mother of his late, missing, ex-girlfriend Beniamina. Is Beniamina dead? Has she just wandered off on her own, as her mother hopes and believes, the movie will answer this question eventually. Meanwhile, as Arthur tries to find a way to avoid going back to jail, he finds himself drawn to Italia (Carole Duarte), a student of Beniamina's mother who also acts as a servant to the elderly woman and her gaggle of unforgiving daughters. 

Italia is carrying a secret. While staying in this decaying mansion as student and servant, she's also hiding her two children in one of the many, many rooms in this ancient home. She has a baby and a pre-teen and seems to pick up strays as the movie goes along. Arthur, being a bit of a stray himself, might have a place to land with Italia if he can give up his grave robbing. Arthur seems to want to quit but he's also drawn to the remarkable and incredible works of art that are buried with those who died in the Ancient Italian Etruscan era. Even while he was imprisoned, Arthur dreamed about the items he'd pulled out of the ground and kept for himself, his last connections to his time as a legitimate archaeologist. 

That Arthur returns to the life of a grave robber out of a sense of inertia. He desires change but his grief and his disconnection from the world as he hoped to have it, leads him to the path of least resistance, a life that welcomes him, favors him, a rare place in the world where he is respected. Arthur has a strange talent. He can locate a grave filled with treasure using dowsing. Dowsing is a mostly debunked form of locating things underground. For the purpose of the movie, whether Arthur is a bit of a con man or if he genuinely has a magical talent, he using a stick to point to a place in the ground where treasure is located. It just also happens to a place where death is located. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Showing Up

Showing Up (2023) 

Directed by Kelly Reichardt 

Written by Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt

Starring Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, John Magaro, Maryann Plunkett, Andre Benjamin, Judd Hirsch 

Release Date April 7th, 2023 

Published December 14th, 2023 

The Great Catch Up of 2023 continues with Kelly Reichardt's festival favorite, Showing Up. Teamed with her muse, Michelle Williams, Reichardt crafts a portrait of loneliness, disconnection, and art that feels a little like Reichardt's take on Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielmann, a languid, observant, sometimes bleak comedy about a disconnected woman longing to be seen and cared for while also nursing a mostly combative relationship with most other human beings. For Williams' Lizzy, other people are mostly a functional element of life that she must navigate while trying not to be bothered. 

Lizzy is an artist who crafts remarkable, fragile statues out of clay and fire and paint. Her work is abstract but painstaking. When she isn't making art in her garage, Lizzy also works as a secretary at an artist commune or art school, depending on how dismissive you want to be regarding art and artists. Lizzy got the job because her mother is in charge of the college and hired Lizzy as her top assistant. Lizzy does a good job while spending most of her time creating new ideas for her art. 

This would normally where I would launch into a thumbnail sketch of the plot, spoiler free, of course. However, Showing Up is not a movie that lends itself to such an easy boiling down. Kelly Reichardt's film is very much a slice of a relatively mundane life. Lizzy has few friends and a troubled family but she spends most of her time alone making art and feeding her cat. The biggest incident of any average day for Lizzy is badgering her fellow artist and landlord, Jo (Hong Chau) to repair her hot water heater which hasn't worked in weeks. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Sanctuary

Sanctuary (2023) 

Directed by Zachary Wigon

Written by Micah Bloomberg

Starring Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley 

Release Date May 19th, 2023 

Published 12-13-2023

Playing some late in the year catch up with movies I missed and what luck, Neon sent me a copy of Sanctuary. I've been looking forward to this movie since I saw YouTube Amanda the Jedi rave about this movie coming off of its festival run. Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley are two of the terrific young stars on the rise, with Abbott being among the most adventurous and courageous actors working today and Qualley only just starting to come into her own as an actress. Sanctuary is a single set drama about sex, kink, and power dynamics that is darkly comic and insightful. 

Hal (Christopher Abbott) is the heir to a hotel fortune who is about to ascend to the top of the family business. Hal's well respected and revered father has recently passed away and Hal is dealing with conflicting emotions about the idea of being a CEO and trying to live up to the impossible standard set by his father and the unrealistic expectations of his mother. Meanwhile, Hal is maintaining a secret that could endanger his chances of taking over the company. He likes to have a woman come to his various hotel room homes and dominate him. 

Rebecca (Qualley) enters the movie as someone who appears to be a lawyer. She's well coiffed, wearing an expensive suit, and she's here to ask Hal a series of questions that are seemingly coming from the perspective of people who operate his hotel empire. Soon however, the ruse is exposed as the questions become more and more intimate and finally, Hal breaks the the growing tension by accusing Rebecca of going off the script. It turns out, Rebecca is a dominatrix. Her job is to place Hal into humiliating or subservient situations that he gets off on. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall (2023) 

Directed by Justine Triet 

Written by Justine Triet, Arthur Harari 

Starring Sandra Huller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner 

Release Date August 23rd, 2023 

Published December 11th, 2023 

A man is found dead in a pool of his own blood lying outside of his home. Tragically, the first person to find his body is his young son, a boy who was partially blinded in an accident several years earlier. He can see up close and it's not until he's up close to the body of his late father that the gravity of what he can see really hits him. Boy screams for his mother who comes running. The police are called and a grueling investigation is set to occur to determine how the man got from the attic of the home where he was installing insulation to being dead on the ground outside of his home. 

Suicide is the story that Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller) is going with but there are questions about her account of what occurred. Sandra has lied about key details of what led to her husband's death. She lies about how close they were, she lies about having had a screaming argument with him. Caught in the midst of all of this is the boy, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) whose memory of that day will be the key to unlocking what happened that day. Did Sandra murder her husband after a particularly nasty argument? Did dad take his own life by throwing himself out of a third story window? That's the mystery that drives Anatomy of a Fall. 

Directed by Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall is a gripping courtroom thriller. Featuring an icy and fierce leading performance by Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall separates itself from the legal drama genre by taking what is familiar and doing it better. It helps a great deal that we are in a French courtroom and not an American one. The French, according to this movie, my only reference point, follow a much more loose structure. Lawyers for the prosecution and defense are allowed to linger over theories and converse with people who are not currently on the witness stand. It's strange to watch if you've never seen a court room thriller in France and that raises the bar for this relatively creaky genre. 

I was captivated when the prosecuting attorney turned from the person who was testifying and began addressing Huller's Sandra directly to get her reaction in real time to what the witness had alleged. In an American courtroom this would be out of line and would like get a contempt citation. In France, this is normalized behavior and Sandra is forced to address the evidence presented as it is presented. The prosecutor can turn heel and speak to Sandra as if she were on the witness stand at all times. This does give Sandra a chance to respond to all of the evidence presented but it's also intentionally jarring as Sandra is given no chance to be ready when the spotlight falls on her. 

The court structure of Anatomy of a Fall is enough to create a gripping legal story but it takes a truly great lead performance to bring it all together and that is certainly what we get from Sandra Huller as author Sandra Voyter. Though she maintains her innocence throughout the movie, you can sense that she's holding things back, hiding things away, and that leads you to, at the very least, wonder whether or not she could have killed her husband. The film smartly lays out the case of how the murder could have happened while deftly avoided a deliberate recreation that might tip the hand of the movie. 

Triet doesn't want us to see Sandra as the killer, even in a dream scenario. Rather, she allows the court case to frame our feelings about Sandra and allows the room for Huller to reveal the character, her flaws, and the reasons that might make her appear guilty. The court scenes in Anatomy of a Fall are so well done that you need little more than hearing about what is happening, placing you in direct connection with Daniel, the only fully innocent character in the movie. Torn between believing his mother and hearing horrible things about his mother and how she has slept around during her marriage to his father, Daniel struggles with the adult task of deciding what is true and not true about his mother. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review It's A Wonderful Knife

It's a Wonderful Knife (2023) 

Directed by Tyler McIntyre 

Written by Michael Kennedy

Starring Jane Widdop, Jess McLeod, Joel McHale, Justin Long, Katherine Isabelle 

Release Date November 10th, 2023 

Published December 5th, 2023 

Do you ever see a movie character, most often a side character, whom you adopt as your own? This happened to me as I watched the new holiday horror movie, It's A Wonderful Knife. The introduction of the character Bernie, played by Jess McLeod, won me over immediately. The adorable, shy, sad, outcast that McLeod plays is called Weirdo by everyone she meets but her actual name is Bernie and she's wonderful. My mantras became, as It's a Wonderful Knife played out, became "Protect Bernie at All Cost" and "If Bernie Dies, the Movie is Over." McLeod is just that good at being lovely, sweet, and sympathetic. My heart rose and fell with Bernie. 

That's not to take anything away from the star of It's a Wonderful Knife, Jane Widdop's Winnie, she's also terrific. It's just that I identified far more with Bernie's struggle than anyone else's. Outcasts stick together. Once you have seen It's a Wonderful Knife you can begin to understand why my adopting Bernie as my favorite character made the movie a rollercoaster of jump scares and cathartic surprises as Bernie's role grows in the 3rd act in the most unexpected and wonderful ways. Ways that actually use her as a way to honor the beloved holiday classic that lends its premise to this holiday horror flick. 

It's a Wonderful Knife stars Jane Widdop as Winnie, a teenager from a happy family with a great brother, Jimmy (Aiden Howard) and two loving parents, David (Joel McHale) and Judy (Erin Boyes). It's Christmas Eve and the family is supposed to be together but David is called to go to work. His boss, Henry Waters (Justin Long), is the richest man in town and feels no guilt about separating David from his family on Christmas, especially when a shady deal needs to get done. Henry needs to demolish one historic home to get his massive mall project up and running and he needs David to help lean on the elderly homeowner, something David doesn't want to do. 

That same night, Winnie decides to attend a party with her boyfriend Pete and her best friend, Cara (Hana Huggins). It's a fateful choice as a serial murderer is suddenly on the loose. He's dressed all in white and he's murdered the old man whose house was coveted by Henry Waters. The killer then tagets Cara who happens to be the granddaughter of the old man. Cara was to inherit the house that Waters wants and so she ends up brutally stabbed to death along with her boyfriend. Winnie's brother, Jimmy is nearly killed after confronting the killer and keeping him from killing Winnie. Jimmy survives because Winnie uses jumper cables to murder the serial killer. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Eileen

Eileen (2023) 

Directed by William Oldroyd 

Written by William Oldroyd, Luke Goebel 

Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham 

Release Date December 8th, 2023 

Published December 8th, 2023 

Someone is sitting in a car on the side of a lake with smoke filling the vehicle. Someone is apparently committing suicide by smoke inhalation. The scene shifts back in time, the owner of the car, whom you presume is the person committing suicide in the opening scene. We meet our main character, Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) as she's in this same car, sitting next to this same lake but this time she's surrounded by other cars. She's alone in her vehicle while watching other cars where people are making out. She starts to touch herself but thinks better of it. Opening her car door, Eileen grabs some dirty snow and stuffs it down the front of her dress, seeming to quell her burning loins. 

Sexual repression and inexperience has a big role to play, or so you assume, in Eileen as our mousy protagonist comes out of her shell when basking in the glow of an older and more worldly woman. Eileen works as an assistant secretary at a prison somewhere in Massachusetts. Her days are the same, working, going unnoticed, suffering from sexual frustration, and going home to her drunk bully of a father, a former cop named Jim (Shea Whigham). Having been retired or fired from being the chief of police, he now spends everyday getting drunk and waving his service revolver around. 

Only Eileen appears capable of calming him down though her means of doing that is to fetch him a fresh bottle. Eileen's life is altered forever when she meets to the prison psychiatrist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway, in full Hitchcock blonde mode). Rebecca seems to adopt the mousy and shy Eileen as the only person close to her in age and attractiveness. Eileen seemingly seduces the inexperienced Eileen who realizes that she doesn't mind having an older woman attracted to her romantically. This doesn't go anywhere but, it does provide motivation for a third act twist that's intended to be shocking but feels more random, as if the story needed to create drama that just hadn't emerged to that point. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Boy and the Heron

The Boy and the Heron (2023) 

Directed by Hiyao Miyazaki 

Written by Hiyao Miyazaki 

Starring Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura 

Release Date December 8th, 2023 

Published December7th, 2023 

In 2013 it appeared that the gorgeous and utterly brilliant film, The Wind Rises, would be the last animated feature film from Hiyao Miyazaki. It appeared that at the age of 72, Miyazaki was ready to step away from his home studio, Studio Ghibli and spend his days curating the Studio Ghibli catalogue and museum presentations. Three years into his retirement however, Miyazaki got a story in his head and he could not shake it. In 2016, Miyazaki began working in secret on what would become The Boy and the Heron, another lovely, graceful, and gorgeous exploration of childhood grief, sadness, and recovery. No surprise, it's another work of genius from perhaps the finest director of animated features ever. 

The Boy and the Heron features the voice of Somo Santoki as Mahito, a boy who lost his mother in World War 2. The hospital where Mahito's mother worked was bombed and she was killed in the blast. Soon after, Mahito's father moves himself and his son out of Tokyo to a village on the outskirts where he has a factory. More importantly, this is where his wife's sister, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), is living and preparing to have a baby. Natsuko will provide a motherly presence for Mahito at a time when he needs such an influence. 

Of course, this won't be an easy transition. The relationship between Mahito and Natsuko is troubled early on, especially with Mahito's father spending most of his time at his factory where he is manufacturing parts for planes that will be going to war. As Mahito and Natsuko struggle to find common ground, Mahito's attention is captured by a Grey Heron (Masaki Sudo), who cryptically keeps showing up in the house and seemingly trying to capture Mahito's attention. The Grey Heron eventually speaks to Mahito and promises that he can take Mahito to a place where he can see and speak to his late mother. 

A strange tower on the family land leads to a mystical and often frightening realm somewhere in between life and death. Traveling into this mystical realm, Mahito will get a chance to see his mother again and interact with her. But, he's also drawn here because Natsuko has been drawn here as well and is being held captive. Mahito wants to save the woman who has become a new mother to him and is about to give birth to a child who will be Mahito's new little brother or sister. Assisting Mahito in this strange realm is Kiriko, one of Natsuko's elderly hand maidens who is returned to her youthful self in this world. Here she oversees the beginning of new life while protecting pre-born souls from from desperate pelicans somehow trapped in this realm. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Wonka

Wonka (2023) 

Directed by Paul King 

Written by Simon Farnaby, Paul King 

Starring Timothee Chalamet, Sally Hawkins, Olivia Coleman, Hugh Grant, Keegan Michael Key, Calah Lane 

Release Date December 15th, 2023 

Published December 5th, 2023 

Wonka is a spectacular good time. This musical from director Paul King charts the origin of everyone's favorite chocolatier, Willy Wonka, played by Timothee Chalamet, from his time before he opened his magical chocolate factory. Pressing aside the Johnny Depp take on the character, Chalamet's Willy Wonka feels more like a spiritual predecessor to Gene Wilder's iconic take on the character. He's charming, he's funny, and he has just a slight hint of impish, prankish, bitterness to him. It's a wonderful performance from Chalamet who carries the film with the presence of a movie star. 

Willy Wonka's early life was tragic. He lost his beloved mother, portrayed by Sally Hawkins, when he was quite young. But, her adventurous spirit lives on in her son who undauntedly threw himself into the world to seek his fortune and make his mother proud. Willy, also a magician by trade, has traveled the globe on just his wits and guts, and discovered flavors of chocolate that no one has ever dreamed of. He's managed to pack it all away in a magical suitcase with which he can whip up a unique chocolatey concoction on a whim. 

Having arrived now in London for the first time, he's hoping to achieve the dream his mother always had, opening a Chocolate shop in the most famous chocolate market in the world. But first, Willy needs a place to stay. In a lovely opening song, Willy explains how much money he has before quickly parting with all of it as he helps out those in need. It's a lovely, graceful song that shows a generosity of spirit in Willy as he gives his last coin to young woman with a baby so that they can find a place to stay on this cold English night. 

As for Willy, he's planning to bed down on a chilly bench when he's approached by a man named Bleacher (Tom Davis). Bleacher is a big intimidating and threatening man who appears to reveal a softer side when he tells Willy about a place to stay... on credit. Mrs. Scrubbit (Olivia Coleman) operates a boarding house where she will allow Willy to stay on the promise that he will pay for his room the following day. This comes with a caveat however as Willy has to sign a contract for his room. The contract is page after page after page of fine print. A naive Willy decides to sign it anyway and that sets a portion of our plot in motion. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review All of Us Strangers

All of Us Strangers (2023) 

Directed by Andrew Haigh

Written by Andrew Haigh 

Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy 

Release Date August 31st, 2023 

Published December 4th, 2023 

Imagine returning to your childhood home as an adult and finding members of your family who have long since died, living there. They see the adult you that they never knew but they still recognize you and welcome you inside. You share laughter and memories and tears and promises are made about more visits. That's where the movie, All of Us Strangers from writer-director Andrew Haigh, begins. Adam, played by Andrew Scott, lost his parents when he was quite young. The harm from this traumatic loss has lingered through his entire life. When he returns to his childhood home and is greeted by his parents as he remembered them from youth, the confusion, heartache, and catharsis are bubbling over. 

If that's where the story of All of Us Strangers begins, you can't begin to imagine how it ends but I won't spoil that here. Adam is a deeply sheltered and broken man. As an adult he lives in an eerily empty apartment building in London. The lonely hallways are underlined by a scene where a fire alarm goes off and Adam retreats from the building surrounded by no one else. As he glances up to the building, there are so few people around that he is able to lock eyes with a neighbor who blew off the alarm and remained in the building. Adam knows he and his neighbor are communicating because no one else is around. 

That neighbor is Harry (Paul Mescal) who took their unique meet-cute, Adam glancing up at the building, Harry smiling and waving to him, as an invitation to meet Adam at Adam's apartment. After Adam has returned to the building, Harry is at his apartment door. He has a special bottle of whiskey and offers to share it with his lonely neighbor. The implications here are not subtle, Harry is openly flirtatious and Adam reluctantly so. Despite Harry's charm, Adam sends him away. That's not the last we will see of Henry however, as eventually, Adam's interaction with his late parents, played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy, to take a chance on his own potential happiness. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) 

Directed by Francis Lawrence 

Written by Michael Lesslie, Michael Arndt 

Starring Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Viola  Davis, Jason Schwartzman

Release Date November 17th, 2023 

Published November 17th, 2023 

Is there a need for another Hunger Games movie? The original foursome of Hunger Games films felt vibrant and alive, a commentary on the cultural moment as the 1% became villains, and the populace approached a consensus about too much wealth. That moment died a death and we've receded back to a place where the rich get richer and the poor suffer to support the ungodly wealth at the top. Into this fray comes a new Hunger Games movie that still feels reflective of the moment in which it is being released but not in the exciting and invigorating way that the original Hunger Games did. 

This new Hunger Games movie seems to support the 1% and have contempt for the poor. The film asks us to sympathize with the personification of the 1% in the original Hunger Games movies, Coriolanis Snow (Tom Blyth). As played by Donald Sutherland originally, Snow is pure malevolence, a scheming villain of the classic, mustache twirling variety. There is no gray area between the good of Katniss Everdeen and the evil of President Snow. The prequel on the other hand, while charting Snow's heel turn, seems to admire Snow as a man of conviction forced into a place of malevolent pragmatism. 

In this telling, Snow isn't evil, he was simply a good person who was betrayed. He's a good guy who happens to have adapted to the cutthroat world around him. He's a poor kid just trying to protect his formerly prominent family from poverty. He's a successful student whose successfully hiding his family secret, gasp, they are no longer rich. Can you believe it? The scandal. It's okay, the Snow family won't be poor for much longer. Corio, as his friends call him, is on the brink of winning a major prize that guarantees financial security and a full ride college education. 

The prize is all but in his grasp until a deceptive Professor, an enemy of Snow's father, schemes to keep Corio from his prize. The prize is centered around the annual Hunger Games. The students in Snow's hoity toity capitol school are being assigned as mentors to the poor district living souls who must fight to the death in The Hunger Games for the entertainment of the capitol. In its 10 year, residents of the capitol are no longer excited for The Hunger Games. The games need something to get people interested again and the mentors are being encouraged to help turn their fighters into spectacles, celebrities that the TV watching elite can root for or against. 

When Snow is assigned a girl from District 12 named Lucy Gray Baird, he's concerned that she will be killed quickly and cost him a chance at the prize. However, Lucy has spirit, she's attractive, and she sings, all of which could make her marketable, if she can survive longer than a few hours in the arena. At the behest of his beloved sister, Tigris Snow (Hunter Schafer), Corio decides to get close to his charge, meeting her train as she arrives and doing his best to endear himself to her so that he can give her tips to survive longer in the arena. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media