Movie Review Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) 

Directed by Martin McDonagh

Written by Martin McDonagh

Starring Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Peter Dinklage 

Release Date November 10th, 2017 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri stars Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes, a mother whose daughter was brutally raped and murdered. The crime has not been solved after eight months and a frustrated Mildred is at her wit's end when she sees three empty billboards on a lonely street side outside of the town of Ebbing. Hoping to light a fire under the local Chief of Police, Jim Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), Mildred books all three billboards with a message directed at the chief.

It’s not long before Chief Willoughby is at Mildred’s door and a series of events unfolds that you will not be able to predict. Everyone from the Chief’s loyal deputy, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) to the billboard owner Red (Caleb Landry Jones) to everyday folks like James (Peter Dinklage), who has a crush on Mildred, gets drawn into the ensuing chaos. Some, like Dixon, are the cause of the chaos. Others, like Red and James along with Mildred’s son Robbie (Lucas Hedges), get swept up in the story.

Written and directed by Martin Mcdonaugh, director of the remarkable In Bruges and the middling Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is lacking in McDonough’s usual biting wit but is nevertheless infused with the same angry energy of his previous films. Mcdonaugh is a writer-director fascinated by injustice, righteous anger, and the destructive power of guilt and those themes are dominant and well-explored in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Frances McDormand is a force of nature. Her grief-stricken performance in Three Billboards could not possibly be more effective. Mildred’s grief comes from being a mother but also from a deep well of guilt, especially over the shocking final words she shared with her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton), seen in a powerful flashback scene. Mildred wants the police to go to all lengths to catch her daughter’s killer and McDormand gives us the tragic sense that revenge may be all the feeling she has left.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein (2024) 

Directed by Zelda Williams

Written by Diablo Cody 

Starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse 

Release Date February 9th, 2024 

Published February 12th, 2024 

Lisa is an awkward teenager who has been through terrible trauma. Lisa's mother was murdered by an ax murderer. Now, as we join her story, she's living in the suburbs, her father has remarried to a shrewish, bitter woman, played by Carla Gugino, and Lisa is struggling to fit in. At the very least, her new sister, Taffy (Liza Soberano), is sweet and supportive, to a point. Where Lisa is awkward and an outcast, Taffy is a popular cheerleader with everyone at school fawning over her. Of course, Lisa doesn't make fitting in easy for herself. Lisa's favorite thing to do in her new hometown is to hang out in a decrepit cemetery. 

There, Lisa makes art and chats with the dead. One gravestone in particular, that of a man named Frankenstein, featuring a marble bust of the man's handsome face, catches Lisa's attention more than the others. She decorates this grave and leaves gifts including her late mother's rosary. Thus, when Frankenstein's grave is struck by lightning and the man in the grave bursts back to life, he comes searching for his new friend. Lisa is perhaps the only person who could take this sort of development in stride, after a brief comic chase around her house as she thinks The Creature, as he's known in the credits, played by Cole Sprouse tries desperately to explain who he is without words. 

Click here for my review 

Spoiler Alert: Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania What is Kang's Future in the MCU?

Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania (2023) 

Directed by Peyton Reed 

Written by Jeff Loveless

Starring Jonathan Majors, Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathryn Newton

Release Date February 17th, 2023 

Published February 20th, 2023 

This article carries with it spoilers for Ant-Man and The Wasp Quantumania, a decidedly mixed but not bad entry in the Marvel Canon. If you'd like to avoid spoilers, I suggest seeing the movie before coming back and reading this article. We are going to dig into the ending, specifically the mid and post credits sequences which set the table for the the latest reboot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe known as Phase 5. Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania is the kickoff for this new era of Marvel movies and you will want to see it before you read this thorough spoiler post. 

For those sticking around, welcome, let's talk about what should have been called Kang the Conqueror Quantumania because this was a Jonathan Majors movie far more than it was starring anyone else. Kang the Conqueror looms large over every aspect of Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. He's the new Thanos and the movie does well to put over the idea of just how volatile and dangerous Kang truly is. Jonathan Majors does much of the heavy dramatic lifting in the movie and, for the most part, he's successful in establishing the next big bad of the Marvel Universe. 

Context: Ant-Man and the Wasp comes to a close with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) seemingly sacrificing themselves to a life trapped in the Quantum Realm just so they can prevent Kang the Conqueror from escaping his Quantum Realm exile. Having shrank Kang even smaller than even they've gone, hurtling him into a seeming oblivion, Scott and Hope are then immediately rescued by Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), in an all too rushed and pat conclusion to what could have been a slightly more dramatic ending. 

Back home, Scott resumes his mundane, day to day existence as a pseudo-celebrity, walking down the streets of San Francisco smiling and waving like he was about to run for Mayor. This happy-go-lucky stroll is interrupted by a thought that nags at the back of Scott's mind. It's something that Kang said before he was sent into oblivion, that only he, Kang, could stop what is coming. Kang being a man who could control time would definitely know if something big, perhaps world-altering were coming down the pike. Did Scott just create this world-altering event by eliminating the one man who might be able to prevent it? 

And cut to credits. It's not a bad ending, but there are some things that could have improved it. That said, the intriguing question of what's next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is established with this victory but at what cost ending. Kang the Conqueror may have been vanquished but Kang is not done trying to conquer the multiverse. For you see, dear reader, because of the Multiverse, there are millions of Kangs. Three of them seem to have risen to the top of the Kang Army but there are an unending number of variations and they've all just been given the greenlight to unleash multiversal chaos. 

Find my full length Spoiler Alert at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Pokemon Detective Pikachu

Detective Pikachu (2019) 

Directed by Rob Letterman 

Written by Dan Herdandez, Rob Letterman, Benji Smart, Derek Connelly 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Suki Waterhouse,Bill Nighy 

Release Date May 10th, 2019 

Published May 8th, 2019 

Pokemon Detective Pikachu is some hardcore fan service. In fact, if you are not immersed in the universe of Pokemon, you aren’t likely to find much to enjoy beyond the occasional Ryan Reynolds quip. Reynolds himself is a kind of Pokemon fan service as giving this franchise the voice of one of the world’s most popular and charismatic actors is akin to one of the cool kids passing up the cool kid table in the cafeteria so he can sit with the A.V Club and they can absorb some of his aura. 

Pokemon Detective Pikachu opens in pure, visual chaos. A car is escaping from a mysterious lab facility while being chased by a powerful Pokemon called a Mewtoo. The Mewtoo appears to blow up the car, knocking the vehicle over the side of a bridge. The driver appears to have been killed but the swirling vortex of CG chaos makes it impossible to know what happens and since this is our introduction to the story, we are at a loss to care much for what is happening. 

The film slam cuts from the car crash to a field in a small, vaguely Asian town. Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) is one of the few people in his small town who doesn’t have his own Pokemon, a tiny, animal-like creature, who people capture using a special ball that opens up to capture the Pokemon, but only if the Pokemon likes and trusts its new owner or master or trainer? I’m not familiar with the terms and the movie is less than forthcoming for newcomers. 

Tim’s lack of interest in Pokemon is a reaction to his father’s dedication to Pokemon, as a law enforcement officer with his own Pokemon partner named Pikachu. Work took his father away and Tim resents Pokemon for his dad not being around when his mom died. Tim is soon thrust back into his father’s world however when he receives a message that his father was in a deadly car accident. 

Tim must travel to his father’s home in Rhyme City, the rare place where Pokemon and humans live in harmony together. Everyone has their own Pokemon and peace reigns as the two species live in harmony under the watchful leadership of Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy). Howard created Rhyme City as a utopia for Pokemon and humans alike. Naturally, however, there are snakes in Eden and Pikachu is on the lookout. 

Pikachu was believed to have died in the crash that killed Tim’s father so when the two come face to face in Tim’s father’s apartment, they nearly kill each other. In what we are told is a completely unfathomable anomaly, Tim has the ability to hear Pikachu speaking English. No one else on the planet has the ability to communicate with a Pokemon directly and this will not be used in any useful way beyond quips, lots of quips, mildly amusing, inoffensive, only occasionally funny, quips. 

Together, Tim and Pikachu will team with ace junior reporter Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton) to find the source of some strange Pokemon behavior. This strange behavior harkens back to the days before humans and Pokemon became friends and it is the key to finding out who is behind Harry’s disappearance, the dangerous Mew-Too and the apparent intention to create a rift between Pokemon and humanity. 

Rob Letterman directed Pokemon Detective Pikachu and he has packed it full of stuff that Pokemon fans will adore. There are Easter eggs on top of Easter eggs with appearances by fan favorite Pokemon doing fan favorite Pokemon things. Characters from the longtime Pokemon cartoons make cameos, I am assuming, special attention is paid, ever so briefly, to a character even I recognized from years of cultural osmosis. Fans will be excited and the inclusion could hint at a wider Detective Pikachu-Pokemon cinematic universe. 

Or so I assume, only Pokemon fans will be able to tell me if I am right or wrong about that. The bottom line issue that I have with Pokemon Detective Pikachu is with the remarkable amount of fan service. The movie is very bland and basic in its general storytelling and so the only thing left in terms of making Detective Pikachu special would either come from making it funny, which it really isn’t or in making it so packed with Pokemon stuff as to render story unnecessary for the hardcore devotees. The makers of this movie went with the second option and left non-Pokemon fans scratching our collective heads waiting for Ryan Reynolds to get funny.

The story takes elements of the mystery genre and mushes them up into a highly predictable story arc. The opening scene is meant to provide a mystery that will play out over the course of the movie but the story cheats this opening repeatedly throughout the movie to fit the narrative. This particular narrative feels as if it was altered numerous times, something strongly indicated by 6 credited writers for Pokemon Detective Pikachu. 

If you can’t tell who the bad guy is from the cast list you aren’t really trying. It’s glaringly obvious throughout where the movie is headed, albeit the actual endgame of the story is a tad bizarre, but by then it was hard to care. In fact, a lot of fans might really have liked what the movie plays as an evil scheme, but that’s an odd digression for another, spoiler filled time. Weird ending aside, there isn’t a story beat in Detective Pikachu that will surprise you from the mismatched partners, the convenient bouts of amnesia, to a third act separation that is so perfunctory the screenwriters should step on screen to introduce it while thanking and giving credit to every screenplay guide ever written.

But, as I stated earlier, I am not the audience for this movie. I am not a Pokemon fan. I have nothing against Pokemon, I know plenty of people who find Pokemon delightful. I am just not into it, it doesn’t do anything for me and since the movie isn’t very funny, even Ryan Reynolds is missing that classic Ryan Reynolds wit, there isn’t much for me to invest in. Fans of Pokemon will likely flip for all of the neato Pokemon stuff in Detective Pikachu but if you are not part of the cult of Pokemon, you’re better off sitting this one out.