Movie Review Quiz Lady

Quiz Lady (2023) 

Directed by Jessica Yu

Written by Jen D'Angelo 

Starring Awkwafina, Sandra Oh, Will Ferrell, Jason Schwartzman, Holland Taylor

Release Date November 3rd, 2023 

Published November 7th, 2023 

Quiz Lady is a curiously boring movie. Despite having a spitfire star in comedian and actor Awkwafina, Quiz Lady sputters and drags its way through a dimwitted plot on the way to an unearned happy ending. As someone who is a huge fan of Awkwafina's work, Quiz Lady is uniquely disappointing. Playing against type as a grumpy, frumpy, afraid of the world shut-in, the typically appealing qualities of Awkwafina are dialed back to nothing. Why would anyone want to make a live wire like Awkwafina into a wet blanket? It makes no sense. 

In Quiz Lady, Awkwafina plays Anne Yum, an office worker who is obsessed with a Jeopardy-style quiz show, Can't Stop the Quiz. Hosted by Terry McTeer, the show became a life preserver for young Anne when her parents broke up. Since then, Anne has never missed an episode. She's memorized the questions, and is so familiar with the trivia and tropes, she can reel off the answers to any question right off the top of her head. No one knows yet that she can do this, she doesn't get out of the house much.

Naturally, that state of affairs will change. Anne's ordered, shut-in, life is upended when her mother goes missing from her nursing home. The disappearance leads to the return home of Anne's tornado of a sister, Jenny (Sandra Oh). Jenny is homeless and jobless, couch-surfing while she waits for what she claims will be a big payout from a lawsuit she filed against a chain restaurant. Jenny is coming home to stay but not long after arriving, she puts her sister on a path to get out of the house. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Totally Killer

Totally Killer (2023) 

Directed by Nahnatchka Khan

Written by David Matalon, Sasha Perl Raver, Jen D'Angelo 

Starring Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen 

Release Date October 6th, 2023 

Published October 12th, 2023 

Totally Killer stars Kiernan Shipka as Jamie, a High School student with a typically standoffish relationship with her mother, Pam (Julie Bowen). The two fight and disagree as mothers and daughters are wont to do but when Pam is murdered, Jamie is devastated. The killer is one familiar to the town they live in, a vile serial murderer known as the Sweet Sixteen Killer. The moniker comes from the killer's M.O, stabbing his victims 16 times. The killer made a splash in 1987 when he killed three teenagers who happen to have been Pam's best friends as a kid. 

The killer left a note indicating that he'd planned on killing Pam all along though why he waited until now to get around to it is unclear. Nevertheless, Jamie is despondent until her best friend, Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), reveals that she has built a time machine for their school project. It's based on a design created by Amelia's mother, Lauren (Kimberly Huie), who gave up her inventing dreams when she became a single mom. Amelia believes that she can send Jamie back to 1987 which would give Jamie the chance to stop the killer before he's able to take even one victim, thus saving her mom in the future. 

This time travel theory is put to the test the same night when the Sweet Sixteen killer tracks down Jamie and chases her right into Amelia's time machine. Stabbing the control panel, the killer inadvertently sends Jamie back in time. Arriving in 1987, Jamie must now convince people that she's from the future to stop the murders but, she has to be careful not to change too much of the past or it could lead to her not having a future. In the past, Jamie meets her mom, played as a teen by Olivia Holt, and finds out that she's a mean girl. 

Pam was the leader of a group of bullies known as The Molly's. They're The Molly's because the four of them all dress like Molly Ringwald. It was the three other Molly's, Tiffany (Liana Liberato), Heather (Anna Diaz) and Marisa (Stephi Chin Salvo), who were the original victims of the Sweet Sixteen Killer. From here, the movie lays out several potential killers including the future school Principal, Doug, the future Gym Teacher Randy, and future Podcaster, Chris, who happens to specialize in documenting and exploiting the Sweet Sixteen Murders as a True Crime Podcaster. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media