Movie Review: You People

You People (2023) 

Directed by Kenya Barris 

Written by Jonah Hill, Kenya Barris

Starring Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Lauren London, Nia Long, David Duchovny 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published January 28th, 2023 

You People is an insufferable bore featuring caricatures of white and black people who talk as if they were programmed by Boomer Facebook memes. Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill are supposed to be better than that but by the evidence of You People, they've taken the lowest hanging fruit of awkward racial humor and blended it all together and reheated it over and over and over again and then called it a movie. The characters may have a point to make about the ways white and black people fail to communicate effectively with each other but it's hard to find that point in the midst of noisy, insufferable characters intended only to inflict themselves on each other rather than talk like human beings.  

You People stars Jonah Hill as Ezra Cohen and Lauren London as Amira Mohammad. These two 30-something kids meet-cute when Ezra mistakes Amira for his Uber Driver. She happens to be lost on her way to a new job and he's able to navigate her there. Along the way, he gets her phone number and the two start a sweet romance. He works in finance but dreams of being a podcaster and she's costume designer working on various different movie and television projects. They have terrific chemistry. Only one thing stands in there way, a terrible script, no wait, I mean their parents. 

Julia Louis Dreyfuss and David Duchovny are Shelly and Arnold Cohen and Eddie Murphy and Nia Long are Akbar and Fatima Mohammad. If you haven't guessed, the Cohen's are Jewish and the Mohammad's are Muslim, how will they ever get along? Sarcasm. Sarcasm. Sarcasm. Surprise, they don't get along and when Ezra decides to ask Amira to marry him things only get worse as Shelly stumbles into ruining their relationship over her woke enthusiasm, and Akbar actively works to undermine the relationship by catching Ezra doing something wrong, whatever that might be. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media linked here 

Movie Review The Civil Dead

The Civil Dead (2023) 

Directed by Clay Tatum

Written by Clay Tatum, Whitmer Thomas 

Starring Clay Tatum, Whitmer Thomas, DeMorge Brown

Release Date February 3rd, 2023 

Published January 30th, 2023 

The Civil Dead is a shaggy charmer of a comedy. Written by, directed by, and starring Clay Tatum, The Civil Dead has wonderful high concept premise delivered a low key, mumblecore style charm. Clay Tatum plays Clay, a struggling photographer living in Los Angeles with his lovely wife, Whitney (Whitney Weir), also a photographer, though slightly more successfully. As we join the story, Whitney is leaving for a job out of town and chiding Clay to do more than just drink beer and lay around while she's out of town. 

Taking his wife's words to heart, Clay ventures out to take photos. While snapping a pick of a strange bit of graffiti, Clay runs into his old friend Whit (Whitmer Thomas). Whit is dead. Clay doesn't yet know that his friend is dead but he does know that he's eager to get away from this awkward reunion. Clay and Whit were friends before they moved to L.A. We will learn over the course of their reintroduction how odd it is that they lived in the same town and ran in the same circle but never ran across each other. It's probably because Whit was more invested in their friendship than Clay was. 

Find my full length review of Geeks.Media linked here 

Movie Review She is Love

She is Love (2023) 

Directed by Jamie Adams 

Written by Jamie Adams 

Starring Haley Bennett, Sam Riley, Marissa Abela 

Release Date February 3rd, 2023 

Published January 28th, 2023 

Through some trick or fate, oddball Patricia ends up a cottage somewhere in England that happens to be the same cottage that her ex-husband, Idris (Sam Riley), is staying at with his new love, Louise (Marisa Abela). Patricia and Idris have not seen each other in 10 years and that, along with the supremely awkward scenario, becomes the subject of Jamie Adams' comedy of modern manners, She is Love. All of it playing out in Jamie Adams' intimate fly on the wall fashion. 

Reminiscing is a fascinating subject. We all have memories we share with others, and it is fascinating to compare how you remember things. She is Love engages with that idea between Patricia and Idris and the power of their memories together is palpable. Their chemistry remains even after nearly a decade apart. Bennett and Riley's conspiratorial glances and emotional bond bubbles with life and energy. Scene after scene they find odd little asides, things to do to fill the seemingly endless amount of time they have in this cottage. 

Neither appears to have any reason to be where they are. Louise is here for a movie role. We see her reading lines and struggling to get into character. Ironically, the dialogue she's practicing mirrors the situation she's in as her character laments not wanting to spend time reflecting on the past. Louise is very much an outsider in this situation and her insecurity isn't played for laughs, nor is her cluelessness as she leaves her boyfriend alone with his ex-wife. 

At one moment, the film stops to allow Louise to express all of her tense emotions in a lonely dance to an upbeat French song. It's a lovely and revealing moment, capturing the anxiety of both her professional and personal struggle. I love the small ways that Adams allows her the space to explore her emotions. She's not a foolish character. In other, lesser movies, she'd be the villain standing in the way of true love between a pair of exes. Jamie Adams doesn't waste time on such things. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media linked here

Documentary Review Downwind

Downwind (2023) 

Directed by Douglas Brian Miller, Mark Shapiro 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Martin Sheen, Patrick Wayne, Michael Douglas 

Release Date January 23rd, 2023 

Published January 27th, 2023 

Downwind is a terrifying title. Being downwind simply is not a place you want to be in most, if not all contexts. That is especially true if you are downwind from sites where the American government was testing nuclear weapons. Between 1951 and 1992 the United States Military tested 928 Nuclear Weapons on a site in Mercury, Nevada. Despite promises of security and safety, those who lived downwind over Mercury, Nevada, to this day, die more frequently from cancer than anywhere in the country. That the community most affected by being downwind from Mercury, Nevada is a community of the Shoshone Indian Tribe only adds another layer of awful to this terrible story of misguided hubris and disregard of basic human decency. 

The documentary Downwind tells the story of the American nuclear project and the various effects testing nuclear weapons on American soil has had on the American people. The dropping of Atomic weapons on Japan in World War 2 touched off an arms race unlike any in the history of the world. Then, when nuclear weapons were developed, a whole new horror was brought to bear on mankind, one that brought the world to the brink of complete extinction. You see, the American government knew all along that the use of Nuclear weapons would lead to dangerous and deadly fallout but pushed forward with nuclear weapons anyway out of fear that Russia would develop the weapon first. 

In order to develop nuclear weapons, the American government needed to test those weapons. Needing a secure place to do the testing, away from the potential for foreign spies finding out about these developments, and not wanting to create fallout near population centers of the United States, the government settled on tiny Mercury, Nevada. Not so much a town, as a ghost town, Mercury was several miles from anywhere people were living. It would, perhaps, be the safest place this type of testing could be done if there were such a thing as safely testing nuclear weapons. 

Naturally, the desire to harness a new, more powerful weapon, overcame good sense and testing moved ahead despite the fact that everyone was aware of the possibility that anyone living 'downwind' of Mercury could be exposed to radiation fallout, a deadly result of the use of nuclear weapons. The reason nuclear weapons could cause mass extinction if ever used isn't because of the thousands of people who would die from a nuclear blast. Rather, the radiation fallout from the use of nuclear weapons on a global scale, such as the scenario of Russia and the United States firing weapons at each other, would poison the planet and hasten a relatively slow and painful end via disease, famine and drought. 

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

Movie Review Teen Wolf The Movie

Teen Wolf The Movie (2023) 

Directed by Russell Mulcahy 

Written by Jeff Davis 

Starring Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Tyler Hoechlin

Release Date January 26th, 2023

Published January 26th, 2023 

I did not watch Teen Wolf when the series arrived on MTV in the mid-2000s. I wasn't opposed to the series, it just wasn't for me. It's a series engineered to excite a fanbase of teenaged girls and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The series had a very successful run and seemed to end on a high note with fans. Now, the series is back for a one off Teen Wolf movie which starts streaming on January 26th, 2023, on Paramount Plus, the streaming home of MTV products. 

Having not watched a single episode of Teen Wolf I expected the film to be dense with lore and incomprehensible. What a surprise then to find that the makers of Teen Wolf The Movie appear eager to welcome new fans. Yes, the movie is certainly for the faithful fans of the series, but as an outsider, I found the action and the story easy to follow and the movie as a whole, very entertaining. There is a particular lack of pretense, a certain understated charm that permeates Teen Wolf The Movie, giving it a welcoming quality that doesn't squander the love of the long time fan. 

Teen Wolf The Movie kicks into gear with an intriguing opening scene. A man enters a restaurant where two of the series star are living and working. The man is there to take a particular mystical MacGuffin that will play a role in the plot. This leads to a fight scene that sets the stakes and allows stars Amy Workman as Hikari, and Dylan Spayberry as Liam, to show off their powers for people who might not be familiar with the role they play in the series. 

The opening heist scene sets up a plot in which the father of Werewolf Hunter Allison Argent, who died in series canon, to bring his daughter back to life. Returning to where she died, he recruits Allison's Werewolf boyfriend, Scott McCall (Tyler Posey), along with Dr. Alan Deaton (Seth Gilliam) to help him. Secretly, Allison's dad is the vessel for an ancient evil who hopes to use the reborn Allison to kill Scott and all other Werewolves and magical beings that stand with him. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media linked here

Documentary Review Filmmakers for the Prosecution

Filmmakers for the Prosecution (2023) 

Directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz 

Written by Documentary 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published January 28th, 2023 

Filmmakers for the Prosecution is a riveting and necessary documentary. The doc captures the remarkable role that filmmakers played in the prosecution of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg in 1945-46. The legendary filmmaking family, the Schulberg's were on the front line of the final days of World War 2 as Americans and Russians made their way into the heart of Berlin and the end of the Nazi regime. Along the way, those filmmakers captured images that have lasted for decades, seered into the collective memory that is world history. 

Filmmakers for the Prosecution begins on Bud Schulberg, a stalwart of the studio system whose family was deeply affected by the holocaust. Schulberg committed his vast resources and influence in Hollywood to helping the war effort. It was the Schulberg family who recruited director John Ford to be in Europe helping to oversee the effort of filming and cataloguing the Nazi atrocities. Those films would go on to be essential to prosecuting Nazi War criminals including Rudolf Hess and Herman Goering. 

Act 2 of Filmmakers for the Prosecution then turns to the efforts of recovering the films made by the Nazis themselves. For reasons that can only be attributed to insane hubris, the Nazis filmed their horrific crimes. Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's own film director enters the story briefly as she helps the Americans find some of the most shocking footage in world history. This footage, which you will see in Filmmakers for the Prosecution, shows Nazi soldiers bulldozing the bodies of Jewish prisoners into improvised graves. 

Find my review at Swamp.Media linked here. 

Movie Review Maybe I Do

Maybe I Do (2023) 

Directed by Michael Jacobs 

Written by Michael Jacobs 

Starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, William H. Macy, Susan Sarandon, Emma Roberts 

Release Date January 27th, 2023

Published January 28th, 2023

Somewhere there is a dusty shelf that someone cleaning that hadn't been cleaned since 1994. On that shelf was a script for a truly awful romantic comedy called Maybe I Do. To whomever failed to leave this script on that dusty, forgotten shelf is a truly cruel human being. The script for Maybe I Do belongs on an ash heap, not on a big screen. This insipid throwback to awful boomer politics of the time when their opinion of popular culture mattered, is a relic of a time when men made jokes about hating their wives and wives joked about their husband's inability to satisfy them sexually. Ugh! 

That this insipid film stars Diane Keaton is seemingly inevitable. The once great actress has an uncanny ability to find the absolute worst movies that play to her worst instincts as an actress. How a woman with this much talent manages to choose the worst movies is some kind of cosmic joke. Keaton's last 20 plus years include some of the worst movies of this young century and Maybe I Do belongs to that epic, awful canon of the worst of the worst. 

In Maybe I Do, Diane Keaton plays a married woman whose idea of lying to her husband, Richard Gere, is going to the movies by herself. Meanwhile, her terrible husband is off having sex with his sort of mistress played by Susan Sarandon. Gere hates Sarandon and lets her know that in no uncertain terms. She still wants to have sex with him. When he finally decides to end things with her, basically stating how much he hates her, Sarandon says she will kill him if she sees him again. Plot point! 

Meanwhile, while at her elicit movie, Keaton meets a sadsack played by an actor who embodies that term all too well, Wiilliam H. Macy. Seeing Macy crying his eyes out over whatever movie they were watching; Keaton takes pity to comfort him. This leads them to spend the evening together but not in the way you think. They do go and get a hotel but it's only so that they can watch TV, eat fried chicken, and talk about the misery of their loves with their miserable spouses. 

You get no points for guessing that Keaton's spouse is Gere and that Macy's spouse is Sarandon. Making this convoluted nonsense even more convoluted is the other plot of Maybe I Do. At a wedding between their closest friends, Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey appear to be a very happy couple. Then, Bracey sees Roberts about to catch the bouquet and he loses his ever-loving mind. Racing across the room, he leaps off of a table and catches the bouquet right out of his girlfriend's hands. 

Find my full length review linked here at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Ghosts of Monday

Ghosts of Monday (2023) 

Directed by Francesco Cinquemani 

Written by Francesco Cinquemani

Starring Mark Huberman, Julian Sands, Elva Trill, Joanna Fyllidou 

Release Date January 23rd, 2023 

Published 

A television producer travels to Cypress to make a reality show about a supposedly haunted hotel in the new horror thriller Ghosts of Monday. Julian Sands stars as the host of the documentary, a man desperate to see an actual ghost after years of documenting non-haunted hauntings. Mark Huberman is the documentarian, the man charged with keeping his host in line while also investigating any potential haunting. Naturally, this being a horror thriller, ghosts do start showing up. 

In the 80s and early 90s, Julian Sands was a much-respected leading man with international acclaim. It's been years since Sands has stood at the center of a film and Ghosts of Monday is a strong demonstration as to why. Sands is hammy and completely checked out throughout his short stint on screen. Early on, his character is shown to be a bit of a drinker and it's hard not to imagine that the actor was getting a tad bit method in his performance. That's one thing that might explain Sands' rather bad performance. 

Ghosts of Monday relies heavily on a creepy soundtrack filled with atonal shrieks and symphonic flourishes. It's not a great soundtrack but at least it's trying harder than the rest of the movie to be creepy. Most of Ghosts of Monday is stultifyingly mundane. Clues are given as to the nature of the haunting at the hotel, and the link one of the main characters has to the haunting, but these clues aren't particularly intriguing. The film employs some of the tricks of reality TV ghost hunting shows and that only serves to show how low rent the whole movie is.

When your movie has to borrow from YouTube ghost hunting channels to create even a notion of tension, it's not a good sign. The film's best asset is being only a few minutes longer than your average episode of a ghost hunting reality show on YouTube. At a slight 75 minutes with credits, Ghosts of Monday doesn't linger. That's the nicest thing I can say about the movie however as nothing about film ever rises to being more than passably, professional. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Imitation of Life

Imitation of Life (1934) 

Directed by John M. Stahl 

Written by William Hurlbut, Preston Sturges 

Starring Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Rochelle Hudson 

Release Date November 26, 1934

Published January 10th, 2023 

The 1934 mother-daughter drama, Imitation of Life has joined the Criterion Collection. On January 10th, 2023, Criterion released newly remastered 4K version of Imitation of Life featuring a new introduction to the film by film and cultural historian, Imogen Sara Smith and a new interview with author Miriam J. Petty, author of "Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood." That book is a deep dive on the careers of Imitation of Life stars Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington and their unique paths to Hollywood as black women in 1930s Hollywood. 

If I may be blunt, Ms. Petty's book is perhaps more relevant and vital than the movie Imitation of Life which is little more than a minor melodrama with solid performances, muted and neutered by the racism of the time. Certainly, the filmmakers can be commended for trying to tackle racial issues at a time when such virulent racism was inflaming the country, but Imitation of Life really never gains much momentum, likely because of that rampant racism. 

Instead of the woke, for the time, racial dynamic of Imitation of Life, what we really have is a story of mothers and daughters and the sacrifices two mothers make to give their daughters a better life than the ones they've led. Colette Colbert stars as Bea Pullman, mother of Jessie, and recent widower. Bea is struggling to find time to raise her daughter while also keeping her husband's business alive long enough to keep a roof over her head. 

Bea's life is changed forever by complete chance. While she's trying to get her daughter ready to go to the babysitter so she can get to work, Bea is visited by Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers). Delilah is looking for work and was following up on ad in the newspaper. Since she's here, she asks Bea for work and though Bea insists she can't afford to hire Delilah, Delilah persists, saying she will work in exchange for room and board for herself and her young daughter, Peota. 

Bea relents and soon the household is humming with activity including Delilah's incredible pancakes which pair well with Bea's family syrup business. In fact, the Delilah's pancakes are so good that Bea takes a huge leap and opens a restaurant. Using her charm and savvy, Bea finagles a deal for the restaurant space, furniture, and equipment and within months, Aunt Delilah's Pancakes are the talk of the town. The next step takes the pancakes national and makes both Bea and Delilah wealthy, though Delilah insists on remaining Bea's cook.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review My Father Muhammad Ali

My Father Muhammad Ali (2023) 

Directed by Tom Denucci, Chad A. Verdi 

Written by Documentary

Starring Muhammad Ali Jr. 

Release Date January 13th, 2023 

Published January 9th, 2023 

As much as I did follow the life of the legendary Muhammad Ali, I was somehow unaware that he had a son. And yet, indeed, the greatest boxer of all time did have a son and he did name that son, Muhammad Ali Jr. How is it possible that he was not part of the story of Muhammad Ali's life? How did it happen that even people like me, people who think they know Muhammad Ali's life story, never knew that he had a son that he named after himself? It's a weird and harrowing story. 

Muhammad Ali Jr. was born in 1971, at the height of his father's return to the world stage. Ali had just come out of jail for having refused to go to Vietnam and was fresh off of the first fight against Joe Frazier, billed as The Fight of the Century. Muhammad Ali wasn't around for much of the early part of his son's life as he was training and fighting in the midst of the greatest run of his boxing career. That's not an excuse. I have no idea what kind of Father Muhammad Ali was, only that I know he was a very busy man in the early 1970s/ 

From the time Muhammad Ali Jr was born through most of his life, he was not much known. According to the new documentary My Father, Muhammad Ali, his teenage years were spent with his mother's parents while his mother and famous father toured the world. In High School, Muhammad Ali Jr. fell into drugs and spent a number of years battling addiction and being estranged from his famous family. He had a family of his own. a couple of daughters from a couple of moms and struggled until not long after his father passed away in 2016. 

At some nebulous point following his father's death, Jr beat his addiction and started to use the Ali name to garner attention. This may or may not have been at the behest of a friend, and former New York City Police Officer, named Richard Blum. Together they star in this unusual documentary that follows Muhammad Ali Jr today as he tries to start a boxing-based charity alongside his supposed best friend. The notion of this 'best friend' taking advantage of Ali Jr. hangs thick over My Father, Muhammad Ali. 

Part of what makes My Father, Muhammad Ali so strange is the odd structure employed by directors Tom Denucci and Chad A. Verdi. The film opens with them introducing Dr. Monica O'Neal, a psychologist known for her appearances on reality television, as much as for her work as a Harvard graduate and psychologist. She made her name profiling the 'psychology of Bravo,' with special attention to the various cast of Real Housewives of insert large city here. 

That's not intended to impugn her integrity as a doctor, it's just what she's known for, your opinion of Real Housewives characters or series, is entirely up to you. Dr. O'Neal is here to examine/interview Muhammad Ali Jr. but that doesn't really happen. What does happen is a series of odd encounters wherein Muhammad Ali Jr. lovingly recalls his father and talks about some of the troubles in his life in relatively vague terms. The film teases talking about Muhammad Ali Jr's daddy issues, but he continues to go back to what a great man and father his legendary father was. O'Neal meanwhile, doesn't make much of an impression. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review On Sacred Ground

On Sacred Ground (2023) 

Directed by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell

Written by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell, William Mapother 

Starring William Mapother, Amy Smart, Frances Fisher 

Release Date January 13th, 2023 

Published January 6th, 2023 

On Sacred Ground tells a very unique story. Long time character actor William Mapother stars in On Sacred Ground as a reporter with a very specific right wing perspective. He's long been suspicious of environmental terrorists and his reporting on that subject catches the eye of a right wing news outlet. This right wing news outlet, working in league with oil company lobbyists, seeks to hire Mapother's Daniel McKinney to cover the story of an oil pipeline that is the subject of Native American protests. 

The story that news organization and the oil company are pushing is that the Native American activists are violent, eco-terrorists who are disrupting a safe and legal oil pipeline and causing the kind of environmental crisis that they claim to be protesting against. The propaganda has Daniel on the side of the oil company, a perspective furthered when he arrives at the site of the pipeline protest where he witnesses a particularly emotional and physical protest in progress. 

Access to the site is controlled by an oil company representative named Elliott (David Arquette). Elliott claims that the violence of the protests is not coming from the army of mercenaries hired as security by the oil company or the lines of Police Officers also on the side of the oil company. No, according to Elliott the supposedly non-violent, mostly Native American protesters are the ones throwing rocks, threatening Police and Security and doing damage to oil company property. 

What Elliott and Daniel's new newspaper boss, Ricky (Frances Fisher), did not expect was for Daniel to embed himself with the protesters. Thinking he can uncover the violence among the protesters, Daniel goes to their camp and finds himself drafted in as a volunteer in a very well organized and trained group of protesters. The protesters bring Daniel in, show him their training in non-violent protest and place him on the front line of that non-violent protest where he witnesses what has really been happening. 

The story of On Sacred Ground is based on the story of a group of military veterans who joined the ranks of Native American protesters Standing Rock in North Dakota. This group of veterans were brought together by a fellow veteran, Wesley Clark Jr., son of General Wesley Clark, a former Democrat Presidential candidate. He went to Standing Rock at the behest of a friend and found Native American protesters being brutalized by what he called a private army employed by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

Find my full length review at Swamp.Media 

Movie Review New Gods Yang Jian

New Gods Yang Jian (2023) 

 Directed bv Ji Zhou 

Written by Muchuan 

Starring Su Ling Chan, David Chen 

Release Date January 20th, 2023

Published January 19th, 2023

New Gods Yang Jian is a gorgeously animated feature film adventure from China. Directed by Ji Zhou, New Gods Yang Jian soars from one adventurous sequence to the next paying homage to classic Asian cinema of the past while carving its own path. The animation house, Light Chaser Animation has crafted a second film in their New Gods series that is more than the equal of the 2021 original that was a massive box office hit. 

New Gods Yang Jian tells the story of a bounty hunter living at the bottom of the economic ladder. As we join the story, Yang Jian and his crew barely have enough fuel to keep their flying boat in the air. They need to capture a fugitive soon or they are out of business. Yang Jian isn't too worried however, he has mystical powers that will help in finding the man they are currently after. This sequence serves the purpose of introducing us to Yang and his mystical fighting powers that he uses to overcome a sizable demon while capturing his human target and turning him over the authorities. 

With that established, we can get on to the real plot. Back on Yang Jian's flying boat is his next client. Wanluo is searching for someone she claims is her little brother. Chenxiang is a thief and a murderer. We are introduced to him as he uses a group of criminals to cover for him while he steals something mystical from a temple beneath a bank that they other criminals are robbing. It's part of a spree Chenxiang is on to steal the components of an ancient mystical weapon, the Golden Lotus Lamp or The Lamp of Universal Contentment. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Night Moves

Night Moves (1975) 

Directed by Arthur Penn

Written by Alan Sharp 

Starring Gene Hackman, Melanie Griffith 

Release Date July 2nd, 1975

Published ? 

Night Moves is a hidden gem of 1970s neo-noir. The film stars the legendary Gene Hackman as private detective Harry Moseby. Harry is married to Ellen (Susan Clark), a fact that has a surprising prominence despite not having anything to do with the main mystery at hand in Night Moves. Director Arthur Penn cleverly smuggles a domestic drama into a missing person mystery and it's kind of great. Harry Moseby's well-founded trust issues are a significant part of how this movie plays out. 

Harry Moseby has just been given a tip about a potentially lucrative gig. A former Hollywood actress, B-Movie gal, Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward), is looking to hire someone to find her daughter, Delly (Melanie Griffith), an aspiring young actress. As unusual as Arlene is, Harry takes her money and the job and sets about his search. The trail begins with a movie studio mechanic named Quentin (James Woods). Quentin was believed to have dated Delly despite her being only 16 years old. 

Quentin points Harry in the direction of a man who had beaten him up on the set of a movie, a stunt man named Marv Ellman (Anthony Costello). Through Marv the story travels to Florida where Arlene's ex-husband, Tom Iverson (John Crawford), Delly's stepfather, lives and operates a tourist attraction, taking people out on a glass bottom boat or flying them around the area. Also with Tom is his new girlfriend, Paula (Jennifer Warren). 

Indeed, Delly is there, and she doesn't want to go home. The case appears to be closed; all Harry has to do is take Delly back to Los Angeles. If only it were that simple. Things get complicated when Harry has a brief flirtation with Paula and, while tooling around in the glass bottom boat, Harry, Delly and Paula find a dead body. At the bottom of the ocean, they spot a crashed plane with the corpse of the pilot inside. This finally causes Delly to finally go home but, again, the story doesn't end there. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Out of Exile

Out of Exile (2023) 

Directed by Kyle Kauwika Harris 

Written by Kyle Kauwika Harris 

Starring Adam Hampton, Ryan Merriman, Peter Greene 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published January 19th, 2023 

Out of Exile may not look like much but it's a really solid action movie. Yes, it features a crime story that you've seen before. It's undoubtedly derivative. That said, writer-director Kyle Kauwika Harris infuses the film with a strong personality and perspective. The violence of Out of Exile has a strong purpose. When someone gets shot it means something in this story. A lot of low budget action movies make the mistake of being gratuitous, characters tend to survive gunshot wounds with an almost supernatural level of good luck. That's not so of Out of Exile. 

Out of Exile stars Adam Hampton as Gabriel. Gabriel is fresh out of prison and in need of work. Having come from a long line of criminals, Gabriel's fate is seemingly sealed and a return to crime is almost immediate. With little waiting around, the movie jumps right into a heist that goes wrong very quickly. Gabriel, along with his brother, Wesley (Kyle Jacob Henry), and their partner, Chava (Oliver Rayon), are hitting an armored car. In the midst of the heist the guard carrying the money gets shot and killed. They get away with the money but the killing drives a wedge between the brothers that threatens everything. 

Running parallel to the crime story is the story of Gabriel's estranged daughter, Dawn (Hayley McFarland). Working as a waitress at a diner and not wanting any of her father's money or time, Dawn is attempting to escape an abusive relationship. Naturally, a man of violence such as Gabriel is not going to leave his daughter to such peril. That plot has an important role to play late in Out of Exile and I won't spoil it. Again, it's not something you haven't seen before, it's just well done enough here to make it better than many other, similar movies. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Invaders from Mars

Invaders from Mars (1953)

Directed by William Cameron Menzies 

Written by William Cameron Menzies  

Starring Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz 

Release Date April 9th, 1953 

Published January 20th, 2023 

A young boy awakens the middle of the night to see a bright green flying saucer. It's the kind of thing that has fired the imagination of sci-fi writers and directors for years and it's the opening scene of the 1953 film, Invaders from Mars. Children in movies like this are not to be believed until it is too late. This time, things are a little bit different. Having been shaken by his son's story, George MacLean (Leif Erickson) decides to go and see for himself what his son thinks he saw. When he doesn't return home, George's wife calls the cops. Then the cops disappear. 

The George MacLean that comes back from this brief disappearance is not the same. Gone is the jovial, thoughtful and loving father. Returned is a cruel, abusive, and bitter man. The cops also come back but not the same as they were. They have a conspiratorial conversation with George that unsettles both his wife and his son. Actor Leif Erickson does a wonderful job in this scene of giving us a completely different version of the man we just met. The haunted eyes and desperate shift in nature echoes from his every expression. 

Rather ingeniously given when the movie is made, Invaders from Mars communicates its sci-fi horror story using a very simple visual device, sand. Behind the home of our main character, David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt), is a sandy beach where the aliens he saw have landed and buried their ship. Through visual cues we know that the aliens have made the sand into a trap. The sand captures anyone who gets too close. When they come out of the sand, they are not the same. They have a mark on the back of their necks, a bloody X shape. 

The sparse sets and stock footage and photos of Invaders from Mars are exceptionally well integrated. It's quite clear that writer-director William Cameron Menzie cared about making a good movie despite the limitations of his budget. It's exciting to watch, so many directors of similar 1950s science fiction didn't take nearly as much care in their integration of such things. Shaggy backdrops, shoddy early forms of green screen, and other such things are cheesy hallmarks of the era, charming in their way. That said, it's nice to see a director take such great care in one of these B-pictures. 

The repeated motifs of Invaders from Mars include blank walls in every interior scene, spotlights, everywhere operated by army men, and stock footage, lots of military stock footage. It's all exceptionally well-integrated however, giving the film a strong verisimilitude for something so seemingly cheap. I adore this. :Lengthy shots of rolling tanks are matched with sound design that make you believe those tanks are in the same viciniy as our main characters. It's so good. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Missing

Missing (2023) 

Directed by Nick Johnson, Will Merrick 

Written by Sev Ohanian, Aneesh Chaganty 

Starring Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published January 23rd, 2023 

Missing captures our modern true crime obsession in a way that few films ever had. Every true crime fan dreams of doing what the main character of Missing does, diving down a rabbit hole of information on your way to solving a mystery. Of course, the main character of Missing has more motivation than your average true crime fan, but that doesn't change the nature of our excitement, all true crime fans want to investigate leads and follow threads to answers in the way that June (Storm Reid) does in missing, whether it's our family member that is missing or some stranger. 

In Missing, June is a typically self-involved teenager who is constantly mortified by how uncool her mother, Grace (Nia Long), is. Mom is always asking her Siri to make calls for her, even while she's already on a call. Mom and June's relationship is strained as Grace is a working single mom juggling her daughter, work, and a new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), while planning a vacation to Columbia. June is of little help, she's only thinking of the partying she's going to do while Mom and Kevin are out of town. 

Over the course of five days, Mom checks in rarely, which is unusual, while June parties. Then, when it's time for June to meet Mom and Kevin at the airport, she's left standing there for hours. Mom doesn't come home. Returning to her house, June calls the authorities and falls down a rabbit hole while investigating her mother's whereabouts. In the course of investigating her mother's disappearance from afar, she connects with a man named Javi (Joachim De Almeida), who lives in Columbia and who agrees to investigate on her behalf for a mere $8.00 per request. 

Meanwhile, at home, Grace breaks into Kevin's email and begins to discover things about his past, his criminal record, and the many, many, women in Kevin's past who claim that he's stolen money from them. There's also a woman, referred to only as 'babycakes,' who has recently gone missing after trading messages with Kevin. This can't be a coincidence but the movie has a few more twists and turns in play when it comes to Kevin, some you won't be able to predict so easily. 

Missing doesn't quite have the skillful presentation of its predecessor, Searching. That film used the medium of internet based sleuthing in service of a much better story. The story of Missing isn't bad but it's far more deeply convoluted than that of Searching. Where that movie had a relative clarity to its logical storytelling, Missing falls short. If you start pulling threads on Missing the story frays with far too much ease. The main plot is rather silly with characters making choices that don't make a lot of sense. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Hexed

Hexed (1993) 

Directed by Alan Taylor 

Written by Alan Taylor

Starring Arye Gross, Adrienne Shelly, Claudia Christian 

Release Date January 22nd, 1993

Published January 23rd, 2023 

Hexed is among the strangest and most disjointed films I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of movies in my more than 23 years of writing about movies. Hexed stars Arye Gross as a hotel worker who lies constantly and everyone hates him. Everyone except for the one woman that the script requires to tolerate how awful he is. A cruel and unforgiving universe required in 1993 that a brilliant actress, writer and director attempt to do the impossible and try to make Gross seem likable. Sadly, even the prodigious talent of the much loved late Adrienne Shelly can't work such impossible magic. 

Matt Welsh is such an awful, disgusting, gross human being that when he's bullied by someone ostensibly more obnoxious than him, you kind of feel like he deserves it. That Matt is our designated protagonist is a cruel taunt. The poster has promised comedy but the movie we are trapped inside once we've committed ourselves to watching it, is distinctly unfunny and borders on incomprehensible as it ping pongs this ungodly protagonist from one unfunny bit to the next. 

The plot, such as it is, has ubiquitous supermodel known as Hexina coming to stay at the hotel where Matt is one of the desk clerks. This is a problem for Matt as he has claimed to have not only known Hexina, but dated her. When she arrives and doesn't know who he is, Matt is surely to be humiliated and belittled once more. Matt needs to concoct a plan to save himself and he gets one when a man calls to speak to Hexina and Matt intercepts the phone call. 

As luck would have it, Hexina is set to meet this man who she has never seen before. Matt figures, if he impersonates the unseen man, he can go on a date with Hexina and everyone at the hotel will think that Matt really does know her. His plan works as he's able to steal a car from a hotel patron and pick up the supermodel in full view of his most bitter detractor, Simon (Michael E. Knight). Meanwhile, as awful as Matt is, Hexina is only worse because she is a crazed murderer. 

Hexina has only come to this backwater hotel because someone is blackmailing her. This person wants to trade their blackmail item for sex and Hexina thinks that Matt is this person. After, indeed, having a terrifyingly unfortunate and problematic sex scene with Matt, Hexina tries to kill him. After he explains how he had sex with her under false pretenses, and highly questionable consent, Hexina makes him take her to the man she was intended to meet. Once there, Hexina shoots the man in the head and drafts Matt to be her co-conspirator. 

All of this is intended to be funny. Hexed is a comedy. It's a 'dark comedy,' allegedly, but that is no excuse for all of the ugly, nasty, gross, unfunny nonsense that makes up Hexed. Hexed is a bizarre example of just how weird the early 1990s truly were. The early 1990s were bursting with bizarre sexual politics and a fetishistic dedication to presenting the most masturbatory of male fantasies as movie plotlines. That was the case with Body of Evidence, which released one week prior to Hexed, and that is also the case with Hexed. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Come Find Me

Come Find Me (2023) 

Directed by Daniel Poliner 

Written by Daniel Poliner 

Starring Victoria Cartagena, Sol Miranda, Tovah Feldshuh 

Release Date January 10th, 2023 

Published January 3rd, 2023 

Come Find Me is based off of a short film that writer-director Daniel Poliner had made a few years back. That film starred Sol Miranda, beloved character actress from The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, among other shows, as a principal at a struggling New York City middle school. Wanting to give Miranda a larger platform to show off her skills, Poliner expanded the original short film by adding in the story of the daughter of his original main character, here played by Victoria Cartegena. 

It's a lovely motivation to want to do something to showcase a talent you respect but the result is a deeply confounding drama that shifts in time and space so often as to completely lose the point and purpose of the story. The characters seem to know what's going but they don't do very well to let those of us in the audience in on what is happening. Come Find Me is filled with what appears to be ideas about mothers and daughters, domestic abuse, confronting death, and other such ideas but none of the ideas make much sense as the movie descends into a series of repeated scenes that I think were shifting in time, maybe? 

Come Find Me opens on Christina (Victoria Cartegena), a lawyer on the verge of making partner but questioning her future. Christina is back home in New York City for a big case involving a bank. Meanwhile, she's also plagued by something happening back in California where a pro-bono client is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend and has just found out that she's pregnant. Victoria is also pregnant and is rather ambivalent about that fact. She's in a new relationship with a fellow lawyer back in California and worried about what being pregnant might do to this new relationship and her future as a lawyer. 

Also, while Victoria is in New York, she's avoiding her mother, Gloria (Miranda). Gloria is a very involved mom, a long-time teacher and now principal who gets very involved in the lives of her students. This, in the past, caused a rift between mother and daughter after Gloria had Christina attend private school instead of the struggling middle school where she worked. Christina would have preferred to be close to her mom during this time. 

As Christina is struggling through a case that could make her career, she's also dealing with her mother's finances, much to her mother's disdain. It's all very dramatic and weighing on Christina's conscience as she's also waiting for word on what is happening with her pregnancy. This all comes to a head at the end of the first act of Come Find Me which then abruptly shifts to two years in the future and becomes a movie about Gloria and not Christina. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Documentary Review Lost Angel The Genius of Judee Sill

Lost Angel The Genius of Judee Sill 

Directed  by Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Judy Sill, David Crosby, Linda Ronstadt. 

Judee Sill is one of the great lost legends of music history. Hers is a story of tragedy, overcoming tragedy and returning to tragedy. Is it a typical rock n'roll rise and fall? Certainly not. The new documentary, Lost Angel The Genius of Judee Sill proves that Judee Sill's rise and fall was anything but typical. It's an incredible story of a young woman who fell to drugs and sex work to support her habit. Who then fought her way through to become a beloved and respected writer and musician before tragedy brought her back to Earth. 

The opening moments of Lost Angel The Genius of Judee Sill find the band Fleet Foxes performing Sill's song, The Kiss, in a full stadium of enrapt fans. The lead singer, Robin Pecknold, tells the fans that the band are huge fans of Judee Sill and they can hear why as they perform the song beautifully. As they play we begin to edit toward Judee herself, alone at a piano performing the song, even more lovely and extraordinary. 

It's quite a start to a powerful story and helps to underline the legacy and influence that Judee has had among musicians. Judee Sill's immortality is secured by the way musicians found her, brought her songs forward, played them live and shared them with fans. She only had two records, and one unfinished EP, but her music is simply too lovely and thoughtful to be forgotten. The documentary captures this influence beautifully while continuing to tell a mostly linear story of Judee's life. 

At an early age she lost her loving father and her struggles with her mother and a likely abusive step-father, led to Judee leaving home at 16 where she got into crime. Judee actually made headlines in the mid 1960s as part of a band of teenage thieves. This criminal path led, eventually, to drugs, heroin specifically, and a near death experience. Judee became a sex worker in her late teens and her story could have ended as thousands of others had, had it not been for music. 

Judee Sill had an innate talent for poetry and latent ability to play a number of instruments. In a mostly unlikely development, given her skinny frame and thin fingers, Judee played stand up bass before taking up an acoustic guitar and the piano. She was a fast learner at writing music, starting with turning her poetry into lyrics. The people around her said however, that it was her ambition to be a star that truly drove Judee. 

The narrative developed though not openly discussed in the documentary, is one of a person who wanted to show the world. Judee Sill grew up feeling unloved and unappreciated and wanted the love, the adulation, and the validation that being a recording star could bring. And  her ambition helped her to find success with relative quickness. By 1970, not long after having survived drugs and sex work, Judee Sill was on stage at the famed Troubadour in Los Angeles. 

Soon after she was recording with The Turtles, J.D Souther, and Linda Ronstadt. There was a love triangle with Judee and Souther and Linda Ronstadt that is touched on briefly in the movie. More on that later. She landed a record deal with then rising star executive, David Geffen and joined his roster at Asylum Records that included Souther, Ronstadt, and Jackson Browne among its impressive lineup. Sadly, success on the charts was elusive even as critics and fellow artists adored Judee Sill. 

Find my full length review at Beat.Media 

Movie Review Megan is Missing

Megan is Missing (2011) 

Directed by Michael Goi 

Written by Michael Goi 

Starring Amber Perkins, Rachel Quinn, Dean Waite 

Release Date May 3rd, 2011 

In 2020 the execrable horror movie, Megan is Missing became a viral sensation when people on Tik Tok began uploading reactions to the movie. The fame didn't last and the movie dropped back into a very deserved obscurity. People were rightly disgusted by the content of Megan is Missing, even just the brief snippets they watched on social media. I was among the disgusted as the viral clip from the film is gross, degenerate and needlessly gratuitous. It's a revolting movie. 

That's not fair of me though, right? I should see a film in whole if I am going to claim to be revolted by it. So, now I can officially call Megan is Missing revolting. Written and directed by a no-talent hack named Michael Goi, Megan is Missing is a poorly made found footage movie that has all the quality of a Tommy Wiseau directed snuff film. Part Eli Roth at his most woman-hating and part marketing pitch , Megan is Missing is an ugly, misogynistic, and deeply gross movie that reflects poorly on everyone involved in its creation. 

Megan is Missing stars Amber Perkins as unpopular High School girl, Amy Herman. Amy's life would be non-stop torment at school if she weren't friends with the most popular girl in school, Megan (Rachel Quinn). The two girls have been friends most of their lives despite their very different paths through life. Amy is portrayed as a goody two shoes that everyone hates for not drinking, smoking and sexing at all times like the rest of them. Megan, on the other hand, seems to find all the time in the world for bad decisions. 

Apparently, whenever Megan isn't with Amy, she's having sex, drinking and using drugs. Oh, and the two girls are supposedly 14 years old. The plot kicks in, after an interminable amount of time spent watching adults try and figure out how the kids of the early 2000s talk, and failing, when Megan meets a man named Josh through an online chat. Josh claims to be a kid from another nearby High School and that his webcam doesn't work, hence why Megan can't see him. The two begin a flirtation that ends when he invites Megan to meet him behind a local diner. She's never seen again. 

Heartbroken by the disappearance of her closest, only, friend, Amy begins talking to Josh in an attempt to find Megan. At first, he's trying to flirt with her before he becomes confrontational and then threatening. She cuts off contact but, while she's out recording her personal video diary, we see someone, we assume 'Josh,' stalking her. Then, Amy is taken and the final act of Megan is Missing is us watching a canonically 14 year old girl be tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered by suffocation after being buried alive. SPOILER ALERT. 

Megan is Missing doesn't have any discretion about its storytelling so it doesn't deserve my discretion in my plot description. Why did anyone think this was ever okay to put on film? Of course, sexual assault, rape, it's brutally violent and it can happen to anyone. We all know that, we don't need a horror movie to show us that even a seemingly average 14 year old girl can be the victim of a sex crime. Making a movie of this sex crime is just exploitation, nothing more. 

Megan is Missing is not a cautionary tale, it's a product intended to be sold. It's a product that includes the worst crimes imaginable as a marketing hook. Director, and I use that term loosely, he's not talented enough to be a real 'director, but it's what we have to work with here, Michael Goi is a creepy pervert who hides behind the idea that he's done a service to society by showing us how young girls can be targeted online by strangers, assaulted and murdered. As if that's something that is unknown. 

Michael Goi acts if he's doing us a favor with Megan is Missing. The reality is, he's just some pervert who's put his particularly disturbing imagination on the big screen. Michael Goi isn't a director, he's a guy who shouldn't be allowed within 100 yards of a school. The sexual assault and murder of 14 year old girls is not the subject for your sick fantasies and financial gain Michael. Michael Goi and whatever studio backed this god-awful movie should be ashamed of themselves. 

The moment of Megan is Missing that went viral was a moment in the movie referred to as Photo #1. It's a photo of the kidnapped Megan in her underwear, her hands and head suspended in a board. On her head is a device that holds her eyes and mouth open. It's a shocking visual, there's no doubt about that, but why was it created? What does this add to your movie? If it's just for shock value then you have proved my point about how truly ugly and disturbed this movie is. 

Megan is Missing is the only feature film that Michael Goi has directed in his career and there is a good reason for that, it's terrible. It's not just morally indefensible as an exploitation of teen girls, it's just simply not well crafted. The acting is stilted and false, not merely for coming from amateur, non-actors but for coming from a director who doesn't appear to know how to properly direct actors. Much of the dialogue appears improvised, poorly, and shots appear composed haphazardly to evoke other, similar, found footage movies. 

The lasting memory of Megan is Missing is knowing that people dedicated time and effort to letting Michael Goi explore his ugly fetishes disguised as a feature film. That Goi has been a successful television director for many years might appear to defy my notion of him as a filmmaker but, realistically, television is a far more controlled environment than low budget filmmaking. Layers of people have to approve of something before it appears on a television project. Goi had only a handful of people to answer to on Megan is Missing and you can see the result. There's a reason he's no longer a feature filmmaker, Megan is Missing is a thesis statement on why he needs the oversight of a heavy handed television production.