Movie Review Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo (2023) 

Directed by Neil Blomkamp 

Written by Jason Hall, Zach Baylin 

Starring Archie Medekwe, David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Djimon Hounsou, Geri Halliwell 

Release Date August 25th, 2023 

Published August 22nd, 2023 

There is nothing particularly wrong with Gran Turismo. It's an occasionally rousing, occasionally emotional, sports movie. It's well acted, it's shot well, the special effects are terrific. So why don't I care about this based on a true story melodrama? It's odd, I can remember enjoying Gran Turismo while I watched it and now, as I sit to write about it, most of the movie has slipped away. I'm left with this sort of vague admiration for Gran Turismo but not much beyond that. I'm having to check and recheck notes that I made and go back to the film synopsis for help. Am I just getting old or did this movie just leave that little of an overall impression. 

Gran Turismo, according to my notes, stars Archie Medekwe as Gran Turismo videogame star player, Jann Mardenborough. Jann has long dreamed of becoming a race car driver but that particular track of profession, is not available to most people. Though the movie only glances in the direction of any kind of social conscience, it's clear that many drivers have had long time ties to family and corporate racing interests. Trying to independently become a race car driver, especially on the European circuit, is beyond merely a pipedream. 

The closest that Jann can come is spending most of his waking hours playing the game Gran Turismo, a real life hit videogame series. Created by Kazunori Yamauchi, Gran Turismo is a painstaking recreation of what it is like to race on European race tracks. Yamauchi dedicated years to capturing the cars, the tracks, pit crew experience, everything down to the minute pieces of the car, in order to create a racing simulator so lifelike, it feels like the real thing. I've never played Gran Turismo, I don't play many videogames, nothing against them, but I was really impressed by the glimpses of the game we get in this movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review: Violent Night

Violent Night (2022) 

Directed by Tommy Wirkola 

Written by Pat Casey, Josh Miller

Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Leah Brady, Alexis Louder

Release Date December 2nd, 2022 

Published December 2nd, 2022 

I've long had an aversion to Christmas themed horror movies. I'm a big fan of the innocence of Christmas. I love that I was part of maintaining my Goddaughter's belief in and love of Santa Claus which has continued long after many other kids lost their sense of magic. Santa Claus is sacred to me and thus I have a strong distaste for movies that score points on making Santa look bad. It's one of the rare places in popular culture where I become a pearl clutching media watchdog. I worry about little kids who might see Santa portrayed as a murderer and lose their sense of his magic. 

Thus, my initial reaction to hearing about the new movie Violent Night, was a pit in my stomach. Here is a completely mainstream movie that was set to place Santa Claus, played by Stranger Things star David Harbour, an actor beloved among a relatively young audience, in a bloody, violent, horror movie context. I was more than just skeptical of Violent Night, I was worried that it could be a watershed moment in the horror portrayal of Santa Claus. That makes this review a bit of a catharsis for me as my worries have been allayed by seeing the movie. Violent Night may place Santa in a violent and bloody story but at least he's the hero in this story. It's a little thing, but it made it easier to take and even enjoy. 

Violent Night introduces us to a Kris Kringle who has lost his smile. As we meet Santa on Christmas Eve, he's getting very, very drunk before heading out for his night of delivering presents to kids. Meanwhile, the gears of the story begin to turn as we meet the Lightstone family. Dad, Jason Lightstone (Alex Hassell), and mom, Linda (Alexis Louder), are spending Christmas together for the sake of their daughter, Trudy (Leah Brady). Mom and Dad have split up but Trudy is hopeful they can be reunited. In fact, mom and dad are at the center of Trudy's Christmas wish for her family to be whole again. 

The family is reuniting for one final Christmas with the uber-rich Lightstone family. Jason is planning to abandon the family business and has concocted a convoluted plan. Also attending the Lightstone family Christmas are Jason's greed addled sister, Alva (Edi Patterson), Alva's airhead, movie star boyfriend, Morgan Steele (Cam Gigandet), and Alva's influencer son Burt (Alexander Elliott. Overseeing the whole Christmas get together is the imperious mother of the Lightstone clan, Gertrude (Beverly D'Angelo), a corrupt businesswoman who may or may not have $300 million in cash stored in her basement. 

That would explain why the Lightstone Family Christmas is overtaken by terrorists led by Jimmy Martinez (John Leguizamo), codename Ebenezer Scrooge. Jimmy and his team infiltrated the family Christmas under the guise of caterers and are in place for a violent takeover once the family is all in the same room. What they don't know is that someone else is crashing Christmas, a drunk Kris Kringle is has dropped in and it's no surprise that Jimmy and his entire team are on Santa's naughty list. 

Read the complete review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy (2019) 

Directed by Neil Marshall

Written by Andrew Cosby

Starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 11th, 2019

Do we really need a Hellboy reboot? No, no we do not. But, Hollywood does not appear to care for our opinion on this matter. Hellboy is a character that many people recognize and thus may pay money to see and regardless of the compromised state of the character and the story, his marketability is what truly matters. Hellboy has a Q-rating that rings a bell in marketing meetings among the right demographic of desirable young consumers. That’s why we have a new Hellboy.

Stranger Things breakout star, David Harbor, picks up the mantle of Hellboy, for this reboot. In this re-imaging of Hellboy, we join the story with our hero, already a member of the Paranormal Bureau of Investigation and working for his father, Professor Bloom (Ian McShane). Hellboy is out on a personal errand as we join his story, he’s traveled to Mexico to locate a friend and fellow agent who has gone missing in the world of Lucha Libre wrestling.

This is a clever and colorful way to start the movie but, sadly, it’s all downhill from here. Hellboy finds his friend and is forced to kill him when he becomes a demon bat. Before he dies, the friend warns Hellboy that the end of the world is coming. In a prologue to the story, we meet the Blood Queen (Milla Jovavich). The Blood Queen intended to bring monsters and demons out of the shadows and destroy humanity thousands of years ago before she was stopped by King Arthur and Merlin.

Now, The Blood Queen is about to make a comeback. Despite having been beheaded and having her body carved into several pieces and locked inside boxes, The Blood Queen is set to return and only Hellboy and his friends can stop her from destroying humanity. Aiding Hellboy are his long time friend Alice (Sasha Lane), a psychic with ever changing and growing powers, and Major Ben Daimio, an English secret agent who claims to hate monsters like Hellboy while harboring a monstrous secret of his own.

Together, reluctantly, they will battle The Blood Queen and several other deathly threats put forward by director Neil Marshall, a man with a known knack for quality monsters. Neil Marshall was the director of one of my favorite monster movies of recent memory, 2005’s The Descent. Where that remarkable talent has gone since then is anyone’s guess. Marshall followed up The Descent with a mediocre Mad Max knock off called Doomsday and has never again looked like the director who crafted The Descent.

Hellboy demonstrates some of the craft that Marshall was once known for but it is also lacking in many of the same ways that Marshall’s post-The Descent features are lacking. Much like Doomsday, which cribbed heavily from the worst tropes of the Mad Max movies, Hellboy feels overly familiar with an arc that is indistinguishable from any number of fantasy adventure or superhero-comic book movies. There is little to no invention in this story.

David Harbour cuts a giant figure as Hellboy but the choice to direct him as a larger, slower, version of Deadpool is perhaps the film's biggest failing. The R-Rating for Hellboy essentially gets second billing to Hellboy himself with the film using the freedom of the R-Rating to attempt to appeal to hardcore comic fans. Unfortunately, Hellboy lacks the skill and intelligence of the makers of Deadpool and there is simply no wit and not nearly enough style to the R-Rated violence in Hellboy as there was in Deadpool.

Hellboy doesn’t need an R-Rating. The violence that director Neil Marshall has employed that earns the film that rating never feels organic or necessary. The violence of Hellboy somehow fails to even induce shock and without that pinch of shock it comes off as merely gross. Hellboy comes off as childish and infantile in comparison to other R-Rated heroes such as Logan and Deadpool, and that’s saying something given the level of juvenile in Deadpool 2. In Deadpool, the hardcore violence is delivered with such style and humor that no matter what Deadpool the character does, the film feels mature. Hellboy never achieves anything similar.

Hellboy is a kid brother’s version of an R-Rated fantasy comic. It’s all flash and no style. It’s all blood and guts and no character or wit. Hellboy has all the pretension toward something edgy without ever actually becoming edgy or even controversial. Small kids might lose sleep over some of the gory images of Hellboy 2019, but anyone with fully developed sensibilities will find the film witless, charmless and infantile, especially when compared to other R-Rated comic book hero stories