Classic Movie Review Three of Hearts

Three of Hearts (1993) 

Directed by Yurek Bogayevicz 

Writtten by Adam Greenman, Mitch Glazer 

Starring Kelly Lynch, Billy Baldwin, Sherilyn Fenn, Joe Pantoliano 

Release Date April 30th, 1993 

Published June 8th, 2023 

Going into rewatching 1993's Three of Hearts for the new Everyone's a Critic 1993 podcast, I was concerned how a movie about a lesbian trying to gaslight her ex-girlfriend into coming back to her, via a straight, male, sex-worker, might not have aged well three decades later. I need not have worried. Three of Hearts would have to develop a pulse to be offensive. This non-entity of a rom-com is dimwitted, lazy and ill-conceived. Yes, based on the premise, it's a little offensive as well but not memorably or interestingly so. 

Three of Hearts stars Kelly Lynch as heartbroken Dr. Connie Czapski. Lynch's conception of a lesbian is wearing a leather jacket and a doo-rag. That's about as offensive the movie gets, even its stereotypes are lazy. Connie is heartbroken because her college professor girlfriend, Ellen (Sherilyn Fenn) has dumped her and may not, in fact, be gay at all. She says she doesn't regret her relationship with Connie per se, but she confesses to not being the conception of gay that Connie envisions for her. Whatever that means. 

In an effort to win Ellen back, Connie comes up with a bizarre plan. Needing a date to a wedding where she's playing the role of closeted lesbian, she hires a sex worker to be her date. Billy Baldwin co-stars as the sex worker, Joe Casella. Joe's primary business is sleeping with lonely older women, often married women tired of their boring old husbands or wealthy widows living high off of their insurance settlements. Keeping Joe in touch with new clients is his pal, and pimp, Mickey (Joe Pantoliano). 

The date goes well, Joe charms Connie's family and while he can't get Connie into bed, she's still gay, she does like Joe and it inspires a scheme. She will hire Joe, and give him a place to live, if he seduces and destroys her ex-girlfriend. Connie's assumption is that if Ellen gets her heart broken by a handsome guy, she will come running back to her. The plan, of course, backfires. Joe begins to fall in love with Ellen and Connie... well, she disappears for a while as the movie shoehorns a mob story into the plot. 

Joe has, apparently, been seeing the wife of a gangster while said gangster was in prison. The gangster is out of prison now and looking to take revenge on the man who was sleeping with his wife. For a while, Mickey is able to keep the heat off of Joe but when Joe tells Mickey he wants to get out of being a gigolo, Mickey lets the mobster have Joe and Joe is nearly beaten to death, saved only by Connie's quick thinking after she's randomly brought into this plot in the third act. 

Three of Hearts was infamous at the time of its release after co-star Sherilyn Fenn began speaking out about mistreatment on the set. Fenn claimed that director Yurek Bogayevicz was openly angry with her for not wanting to strip down for the part. Fenn was already going to be quite nude in another 1993 release, Boxing Helena and had been topless in a forgettable horror movie called Meridian: Kiss of the Beast and she was worried about being typecast for sexy roles. Her reticence to take off her clothes boiled over on the set and may have contributed to several rewrites of the script during production. 

Beyond that, Three of Hearts is a desperately mundane and oddly crafted rom-com-drama. The movie is never funny but it doesn't have the weight to be dramatic. It just sort of lays there and enacts a plot that never comes to life. As with many movies of the time period, no one seems concerned about the actual ugliness of the plot at hand. A woman attempts to destroy her girlfriend emotionally and trick her to coming back to her. There is a dark streak of homophobia at play there and, in general, it's just an ugly plot all around. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Classic Movie Review Sliver

Sliver (1993) 

Directed by Phillip Noyce 

Written by Joe Esterhas

Starring Sharon Stone, Billy Baldwin, Tom Berenger

Release Date May 21st, 1993 

Published June 8th, 2023 

Why is the movie Sliver called Sliver? I believe it's the name of the building where the movie is set but that is such a tossed off mention that I am genuinely uncertain. I can extrapolate that it is a loose metaphor for the films central relationship between Sharon Stone and Billy Baldwin. By that I mean, he is someone who can painfully get under her skin, like a sliver. Get it? That's not explicit in the text of Sliver, but it's the best that I have been able to come up with. I spent a lot of time thinking about the title, Sliver, while watching the movie Sliver, because thinking about the title was more entertaining. 

Sliver is a softcore thriller with the pretense of being a high minded drama. Director Phillip Noyce and writer Joe Esterhas seem to think they have something to say about voyeurism and sexuality but it is clear where their prurient interests truly lie. They want to watch very attractive people have sex and they've made a movie to cover for their fetish. This was not an uncommon thing among male filmmakers at the time. In fact, movie covering for my fetish could be its very own sub-genre of 1990s cinema. 

Sliver stars Sharon Stone as Carly Norris, a rich book editor living in New York City. She jumps at the chance to move into a new apartment despite the apartment having a haunting past. A woman, who looks a lot like Carly, may or may not have been murdered in this very apartment by having been thrown off of the balcony. Oh well, look at all that natural light. New York real estate, am I right. If New Yorkers rejected every apartment where a murder occurred, there'd be few places to live. 

Carly moves in and it is zero minutes before creeps are breathing down her neck. First up is a famous author of 'erotic' thrillers, Jack Landsford (Tom Berenger). He's a former cop who uses his cases as inspiration for his creepy fantasies. So, he's a fan insert for Noyce and Esterhas. Perhaps its a case of Berenger being the stand in for who they really are while the other love interest, Billy Baldwin, is the fantasy of who the writer and director wish they were, a handsome and smooth talking ladies man who's still a major creep at heart. 

The central portion of Sliver is devoted to figuring out who killed that woman who lived in Carly's apartment. But that doesn't actually matter in the end. There are two major crimes happening and no one in Sliver is free from being implicated, aside from the beautiful, innocent, naive character played by Sharon Stone. You can see the flaws inherent in that right? Sharon Stone's talent is not necessarily playing either innocent or naive. That's no shade to Stone, she's just way too elegant and intelligent for the movie and character she's trapped within. 

The murder is just a red herring, a hook to draw you toward what is far more interesting and fetishistic for the writer and director, voyeurism. Billy Baldwin's creep character, Zeke Hawkins, is a secret billionaire who owns the building in which he, Carly and Berenger's creep writer lives. Zeke has installed cameras everywhere in the building, every apartment, every room, especially in the bathrooms. He spends his days sitting in his command center penthouse watching everyone all the time. 

Find my full length review at Filthy.Media 

Classic Movie Review Boiling Point

Boiling Point (1993) 

Directed by James B. Harris 

Written by James B. Harris 

Starring Wesley Snipes, Dennis Hopper, Viggo Mortensen 

Release Date April 16th, 1993

Published June 8th, 1993 

Sometimes the making of a movie is far more interesting than the movie being made. That is unquestionably true of the 1993 crime drama, Boiling Point. The film began life as an independent film character study of a pair of seedy criminals, one striving for a better life, the other a hothead determined to destroy them both. A small part of that story was about the cop searching for both of these criminals as tension reaches a boiling point and they collide in a tragic series of events. 

That's what Boiling Point was meant to be with Dennis Hopper playing a seasoned criminal low life with dreams of getting out alive and making a life for himself. Viggo Mortensen played the doomed hotheaded young criminal whose attraction to violence would be the downfall of both men. Wesley Snipes was to be the cop looking to arrest the two for killing a fellow cop in the midst of a robbery gone terribly, horribly wrong. 

Then, something happened. As the film was being completed, Wesley Snipes became one of the hottest stars in Hollywood. Seeing that they had a chance to turn this cheap independent thriller into a box office bonanza on the back of one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, producers and studio execs demanded rewrites and reshoots to beef up Snipes role from a relatively minor supporting role to a presence they could promote in marketing the film. 

This is all very obvious in the final Frankenstein's monster of a movie that is Boiling Point. Most scenes featuring Wesley Snipes have him interacting with people other than Hopper and Mortensen. Most of Mortensen's performance, including most of the depth of the character, has been excised to make room for more scenes featuring Wesley Snipes. Snipes's reshot scenes are clumsily sewn into the movie and rarely add any depth to the main story which still centers on Hopper's criminal trying and failing to be a better person. 

Rather than the wild-eyed monster that Hopper would play in other villainous roles, his character in Boiling Point is a pathetic, fast-talking sadsack. He's a man who is desperate to escape his circumstances and when he sees a potential payday that could be the key to his happy ever after, he risks everything to get there. It's clear that there was an important subplot involving Hopper and Valerie Perrine who plays his ex-wife. Wanting to win her back, despite a history that includes violent abuse, is a big motivation for Hopper's character. But, as the movie shoved in more about Snipes, we got less of Perrine. 

There are numerous examples of how executives cut up and rejiggered Boiling Point to capitalize on Wesley Snipes. The most glaring example is how Snipes rarely shares a scene with any of the rest of the cast, including Hopper and Mortensen. The only tangible link between Snipes and the rest of the movie comes from a reshot subplot in which Snipes' cop and a sex worker played by Lolita Davidovich, have an affair while she acts as a street informant for Snipes. She's also seeing Hopper's character as a client, but this somehow never becomes important to the plot. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Benny & Joon

Benny & Joon (1993) 

Directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik 

Written by Barry Berman 

Starring Aiden Quinn, Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, Julianne Moore 

Release Date April 23rd, 1993 

Published June 7th, 1993 

When Johnny Depp took on the role of looney romantic hero Sam in Benny & Joon he'd been engaged in a desperate effort to abandon the Teen Beat, leading man personas that Hollywood was attempting to impose upon him. Having become a teen idol on the teen cop show 21 Jumpstreet, Depp found the Hollywood spotlight for too overwhelming and limiting to his talent. Thus he set out to take roles that would defy expectations and reshape his career the way he wanted it. 

This upending of expectations started in 1990 when Depp starred in the wild and wonderful John Waters indie flick, Crybaby. No one in Hollywood wanted one of the biggest heartthrobs in the world to work with John Waters and that's likely part of what drove Depp directly into the embrace of Waters and his wild 50s aesthete and outre humor. That same year, he defied expectations in the mainstream as well with an entirely unglamorous, but slightly more commercial friendly film, Edward Scissorhands. 

Depp took that role specifically because he got to wear a lot of makeup and prosthetics and Hollywood marketers could not market the film based on his looks. This defiance of expectations continued as Depp took 1992 off and rejected high profile roles in blockbuster features. When he did decide to work again, he chose yet another defiantly odd and unconventional role. Despite still being one of the most sought after leading men in Hollywood, Depp accepted a supporting role in Benny & Joon while turning down the leading man role in the eventual blockbuster, Indecent Proposal. 

The gamble paid off as Depp delivers some of his most charming and dynamic work in the role of Sam, even as he's not the leading man. Sam is a wildly unconventional bohemian film lover whose persona is based on silent film heroes such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Depp takes this idea of a character and fills out the character with a mostly silent, terrifically physical performance. It's a role that threatens to be a little too twee, but Depp brings depth to the character by making the most of the few lines of dialogue the character has. 

The Benny & Joon of the title are brother and sister, Benny played by Aiden Quinn, and Joon, played by Mary Stuart Masterson. Benny is the responsible older brother who owns a business and cares for his sister and her unspecified medical condition. Joon is an artist who is prone to manic episodes, depression, and jumble of other mental health afflictions that seem to indicate that she suffers from either Schizophrenia or is merely on the autism spectrum. It's a bit nebulous but the film is delicate about Joon's condition which helps keep it from being overly problematic. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Dave

Dave (1993) 

Directed by Ivan Reitman

Written by Gary Ross

Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, Ben Kingsley 

Release Date May 7th, 1993 

Published June 7th, 2023 

Dave is one of the nicest movies ever made. This is such a good hearted, sweet, sincere movie that it feels entirely anachronistic a mere 30 years after its release. Politics in America has gotten so much uglier, nastier, and mean over the last 3 decades that Dave feels like a throwback to the 1930s rather than the 1990s. In Dave, politics is still filled with pit vipers and vile men with self-interested aims, but good is seemingly on an equal footing with the bad guy and more than capable of defeating the bad. 

That feels quaint today where it's nearly impossible to believe in or remotely trust anyone in an elected office. In 1993 director Ivan Reitman and writer Gary Ross were able to get away with making a political movie that never once mentions a party affiliation. The film is about the United States President and yet we never learn if he is a Republican or Democrat. The politics are able to somehow be so fuzzy that it could be either party in charge. This would be considered cowardice in this day and age and Reitman and Ross would be castigated by both sides. 

Dave is perhaps one of the last signposts of a pre-internet era of politics, a time where the lack of a constant need to feed the beast that is social media, allowed for the kind of political crossroads that seem impossible today. In the pre-internet era, parties crossed over party lines to vote what they believed in. Today, party lines are so strict, members are rumored to be leaving their party if they even consider voting against the party line agenda. The politics of Dave are, of course, secondary to the humorous conceit and central romance of the movie but it's still quite a notable indicator of just how far things have changed for the worse in Washington D.C. 

Dave stars Kevin Kline as Dave, the friendliest man in his neighborhood. When he isn't finding a job for everyone he's ever met via his temp business, Dave is opening restaurants and car dealerships portraying the President of the United States, President William Harrison Mitchell (also played by Kline), with whom he shares a striking resemblance. That resemblance is soon noticed by the White House who draft Dave to portray a Presidential double to protect the President as he leaves for a secret meeting. What Dave doesn't know, but we do, is that this meeting is actually an affair with his secretary, played by a young Laura Linney. 

Full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Life With Mikey

Life With Mikey (1993) 

Directed by James Lapine

Written by Marc Lawrence 

Starring Michael J. Fox, Christina Vidal, Nathan Lane, Cyndi Lauper 

Release Date June 4th, 1993 

Published June 6th, 1993 

Michael J. Fox is a movie star. That's both a factual statement and an opinion that I can back up with evidence from his 1993 starring role in Life With Mikey. This is an objectively terrible movie. It has no third act. The film repeats the same comic beats over and over again. It's sloppy and lacking in conflict. And yet, I do not hate this movie. On top of being objectively not good, Life With Mikey is somehow a breezy watch that lands a few big laughs. It's wildly watchable and that is ONLY due to the star presence of Michael J. Fox. Only an actor as charming and likable as Michael J. Fox can make you forget you are watching a terrible movie. 

In Life with Mikey, Michael J. Fox stars as world class failure, Mike Chapman. A former child star, famous for his TV hi-jinks as TV's Mikey, Mike is a lonely bachelor and screw-up whose life is made possible by his past fame and the benevolence of his brother and business partner, Ed, played by Nathan Lane. Together, Ed and Mike run a child talent agency. Well, Ed runs the business, Mike shows up late and nearly costs the business its biggest client, the so-called 'Cereal King,' Barry Corman (David Krumholz). Ed is constantly putting out Mikey's many fires. 

The plot of Life with Mikey, such as it is, kicks off when a 12 year old girl steals Mike's wallet. Angie Vega (Christina Vidal) is a well practiced young pick-up artist capable of turning on the charm or the waterworks when she gets caught picking a pocket. Witnessing Angie try and talk her way out of being caught stealing a wallet, Mike is convinced that Angie would make an incredible actress. After helping her escape with a few wallets in her bag, including Mike's, Mike convinces Angie to give acting a try. She agrees and lands the job at her very first audition. 

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned that there is no conflict in Life with Mikey. She gets the first job she goes for. She is great at being a spokesperson for a cookie company. The company makes money. Things are good. A conflict seems to arise when the cookie company becomes irrationally angry over not knowing that Angie's dad is still alive. She had claimed that her father was dead. Her father, played in a cameo by Ruben Blades, instead of being upset that his daughter is spending time, including staying in the home, of a complete stranger, proceeds to thank Mike for getting his daughter into acting and taking good care of her. 

Yeah, by all evidence, Mike is a decent guy who does nice things for this littler girl. But, she's also a child stranger who does have a family, a deeply unfortunate and dysfunctional family, but a family nevertheless. It's bizarre how normal the movie thinks it is for a child to just start living with a single adult man she barely knows. And then, the movie has her father, a recovering addict, take this information in stride and thank this stranger for caring for his daughter. Yeah, this plot is just nothing but red flags that the makers of Life with Mikey present with zero comment or observation. 

Problematic barely begins to cover this plot. And yet, I willfully pushed past this very obvious problem with this movie because Michael J. Fox is so charming. He's Michael J. Fox, he's so warm and likable. He's playing a slob and a smoker in Life with Mikey and I didn't buy him as either a smoker or a slob but it didn't matter, I just really enjoy watching Michael J. Fox banter with a street smart little kid. It's adorable and their chemistry is terrific. They have conflicting personalities and their clashes in style are really the only tension in this mostly tension free comedy. 

Full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review The Boogeyman (1980)

The Boogeyman (1980) 

Directed by Ullli Lommel 

Written by Ulli Lommel 

Starring Suzanna Love, Nicholas Love, John Carradine

Release Date November 14th, 1980 

Published June 6th, 2023 

I often find myself fascinated by the rudimentary elements of filmmaking. There are very basic things that a director must be able to accomplish in order to achieve a level of professionalism and competence. Director Ulli Lommel demonstrates a level of professionalism and competence in The Boogeyman, at least in the first to scenes in the film, the best scenes in the film. Beyond that, he's a crazy person who crafted a bizarre screenplay, much of which feels as if he was whipping it up on set as the film were being made in a slapdash attempt to meet some arbitrary filming deadline. 

The Boogeyman opens on a visually striking set piece. An older woman is lying on a couch and calling for her lover. He approaches and she proceeds to place her stocking over his head. At this point, we glimpse two children outside the window of the home. Through visual and context clues, it's clear that these two children belong to this woman, and she has left them outside of the home specifically so that she can be alone with this man. Seeing the children through the window infuriates the man and he proceeds to punish the older brother. 

He ties the boy to a bed, and this leads to a terrific series of horror visuals. The little sister, all of three years old, goes to the kitchen and finds a very large knife on the counter. The knife catches the moonlight and the incongruousness of a small girl, and a large knife provides a terrific horror movie shock. From there, we see the knife again as the little girl stands in her brother's doorway. For a moment, we wonder if she's about to murder him. Instead, she cuts her brother loose and hands over the knife to him. This leads to a sequence where the camera takes the position of the boy as he walks down the hallway. 

We see his arm as if it were our own. He walks down the hall to his mother's bedroom where she and the man, still wearing a stocking on his head, are about to make love. The boy proceeds to murder this man, stabbing him repeatedly in the back. I believe that this is a terrific sequence. It's followed by another basic and formal bit of visual storytelling. The story leaps ahead in time. We know this because the visual style, the cinematography is brighter and more modern. Our main clue however to this shift in time is a very simple pan across a crowd inside a church. 

Immediately following the murder, we are thrust to a new location, a cemetery. The camera flashes across several gravestones before coming to rest on a church where the sound of the scene is coming from. We jump cut inside and listen to the Priest delivering a sermon. The camera watches the Priest briefly before beginning a slow pan over the crowd at the church. This is a well done and yet incredibly basic bit of film language. As a trained audience member, we know that when the camera stops, it will stop on the protagonists of the film. It's something we all know instinctively and is rarely thought of or pondered. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Horror in the 90s Arachnophobia

Arachnophobia (1990) 

Directed by Frank Marshall

Written by Don Jakoby, Wesley Strick 

Starring Jeff Daniels, Harley Jane Kozak, Julian Sands, John Goodman 

Release Date July 18th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $53.2 million 

Arachnophobia exists in two popular horror sub-genre: Man vs Nature and the Monster Movie. A new breed of spider is located by an arrogant scientist who believes he can control this uncontrollable element of nature that he hubristically believes that he has mastered. The monster movie then comes into play when the scientists creation gets away from him and begins to wreak havoc in a small time while working to perpetuate its species to take over the planet, essentially, the Americas at the very least. 

If you are skeptical that spiders could be considered monsters in a monster movie, you underestimate the talent of director Frank Marshall and his cast. Indeed, Arachnophobia functions as a movie that could induce a lifelong phobia of spiders, arachnophobia of the title. It's so effective at making spiders a horror movie monster that I honestly would not recommend showing this movie to children. I would especially not recommend this movie for anyone who already harbors a fear of spiders as this movie will only exacerbate that condition. 

Arachnophobia stars Jeff Daniels as a doctor who has moved his family, including his wife, played by Harley Jane Kozak, and their two kids, to a small town in California. Dr. Ross Jennings (Daniels) has been promised the role of the only doctor in this small town but things do not go as planned from the start. The elderly doctor he was supposed to replace has now refused to retire and Dr. Jennings' new home in the country is a money pit with termites and a crumbling infrastructure. 

Unbeknownst to everyone in this otherwise idyllic small town, a dangerously poisonous Brazilian spider has hitched a ride with a corpse to the local funeral home. Having killed a photographer working with Dr. James Atherton (Julian Sands) in Brazil, the spider, that Dr. Atherton had assured us was dead, arrives in this small town and finds its way to the barn owned by Dr. Jennings where it cross-breeds with a local spider and begins to create a mutated version of itself that is so deadly its population could wipe out North America in a period of months. 

Thus it falls to Dr. Jennings to first discover that we are indeed dealing with a killer Spider and then, in the final act, to have a face to face fight with the Spider Queen over the massive egg sack the Queen has laid in Dr. Jennings' new wine cellar. Did you know that wine is not flammable? Neither did this movie which seems to think Wine is an accelerant. Anyway, that aside, Arachnophobia has some silly elements but one thing the film gets right is the staging of spider attacks that kill character actors. 

Characters actors James Handy, Kathy Kinney, Henry Jones and Mary Carver each appear in remarkably well-staged scenes where they are menaced by little spiders. These scenes are filled with genuine tension via simple, classic, filmic technique. Good choices in the editing bay and in the staging of each scene create a genuine tension while the familiar and kind faces of these character actors, people you've seen even if you don't recognize their name, add tension because we don't want to see them be killed by spiders. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Boogeyman

The Boogeyman (2023) 

Directed by Rob Savage 

Written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman

Starring Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivian Lyra Blair, David Dastmalchian 

Release Date June 2nd, 2023 

Published June 5th, 2023 

As I write this, I saw the new horror film, The Boogeyman, two days ago and I am struggling to remember anything about it. This could, perhaps, be a mental breakdown on my part, but my working theory is that The Boogeyman is such a boring movie that my mind didn't bother to find anything worth remembering about it. There is not a single original moment in the entirety of The Boogeyman. There is not a single memorable sequence that could make this movie worth remembering after you see it. The Boogeyman is so bland and generic it could be retitled as Nightmare Man and re-released to theaters and few people would notice or care. 

The Boogeyman stars a lovely young actress named Sophie Thatcher as Sadie Harper. Sadie and her little sister, Sawyer (Vivian Lyra Brown), are grieving the very recent loss of their mother. Chris Messina plays their distant and equally grieving father, Will. Will is terrified of being a single dad to two frightened and traumatized young girls so he throws himself back into his work as a psychiatrist while avoiding any kind of serious conversation with his children, especially Sadie who tries and fails to get him to open up. 

The plot kicks in when a deeply haunted and disturbed patient forces his way into Will's office. The patient is Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), a man who is believed by many to have murdered his two children. Billings however, claims that a monster killed his kids. This monster attacks your children while you aren't paying attention. It also feeds on vulnerable children, kids who have, perhaps, suffered a very recent and painful trauma. You can see where this is headed. The curse that this haunted man carries attaches itself to Sadie and Sawyer and it will be up to Sadie to save her sister from this monster that comes to be known as The Boogeyman. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) 

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson 

Written by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, David Callahan 

Starring Shameik Moore, Bryan Tyree Henry, Jake Johnson, Oscar Isaac, Hailee Steinfeld 

Release Date June 2nd, 2023 

Published June 2nd, 2023 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a gorgeous piece of animation. It's a visionary work in the feature animation realm, a treat for the eyes. The innovative style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse evolves here into brilliant new combinations of art styles and storytelling adventure. It's exciting to watch as the artists behind Spidey press the boundaries of what we can expect from an animated feature. That alone would be worth the price of admission but thanks to the work of writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callahan, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is far more than just gorgeous to look at. 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens on Spider-Girl, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld). She misses the friends she made when portals opened between worlds in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Worse however, is the fate of her best friend, Peter Parker, who, Gwen's world was a picked on pipsqueak who tried to change his lot in life through science. Peter dies in an accident at prom after his transformative medicine turns him into a monster and Gwen/Spider-Girl is forced to fight him to protect their classmates. His death happens just as Gwen's cop-dad arrives and sees Spider-Girl standing over Peter's fallen body. He assumes that she killed him. 

This scene is soon followed by the attack of a new and desperately out of place villain, a version of The Vulture, but not one from this universe. Someone or something is tearing new holes in the fabric of the universe and villains are bungling their way through to unfamiliar universes. Unbeknownst to Gwen, Spider-people from other universes are being brought together to try and repair the multiverse and via Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), and the leader of this group, Miguel (Oscar Isaac), Gwen is recruited to help save the multiverse. 

This is Gwen's chance to reconnect with her friend, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). Miles has grown a few inches since the last time they saw each other but other than that, he's the same awkward, sweet, kind and strong young man she first met. Miles is dealing with school and his parents and a new villain who may be the key to why the multiverse is in grave danger. A villain calling himself The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is found by Miles while attempting to steal an ATM from a bodega. The Spot has the ability to open tiny portals that he can climb through and arrive at different locations. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Champions

Champions (2023) 

Directed by Bobby Farrelly 

Written by Mark Rizzo 

Starring Woody Harrelson, Kaitlin Olson, Ernie Hudson 

Release Date March 10th, 2023 

Published March 5th, 2023 

It's a tricky thing, representation in modern media. On the one hand, you want that representation to be sensitive and compassionate. On the other hand, you need to draw in some flaws that make your characters more human being than saints of proper representation. The new movie Champions brings forward strong representation of a community of intellectually disabled people while still making them human and flawed. Director Bobby Farelly takes great care not to let these characters be simplistic, safe representations of their community, but rather well rounded, unique and quite charming individuals. 

Champions stars Woody Harrelson as disgraced basketball coach, Marcus Marakovich, Marcus managed to destroy his entire career in a single night, though those who know him well, like his boss, Phil (Ernie Hudson), know this has been coming on for some time. Nevertheless, in this one night, Marcus manages to shove Phil on the court in front of a large crowd and many cameras before getting thrown out of the building. Then Marcus gets drunk, drives, and smashes into the back of a cop car. He's officially fired the following day. 

In court, Marcus narrowly avoids a prison sentence by accepting a community service assignment. Marcus will be the Coach of the Des Moines, Iowa Friends, a basketball team for the intellectually disabled. In classic movie fashion, it's a ragtag bunch for whom basketball is fun but mostly an excuse to spend time together. Marcus' notion of teaching fundamentals or plays such as the Pick & Roll, are lofty goals to say the least. Marcus can't even get one of his players to stop shooting the ball by throwing it backwards over his head. 

There is nothing special about Marcus' character arc. Marcus is here to go from being a guy who doesn't connect with the members of his team on a human level to someone who loves his players as people more than just players. There is also a typical sports movie plot unfolding with the Friends getting so good under Marcus' leadership that they earn their way to the Special Olympics basketball championship. These are tried and true tropes, relatively predictable. Thankfully, as a veteran filmmaker, and quite a good one, Bobby Farrelly knows he needs to color in the margins of this plot to make something more of it. 

Thus Farrelly includes a very not typical romance between Harrelson's Marcus and the sister of one of his new players, Alex, played by Kaitlin Olson. Farrelly subverts convention, ever so slightly, by having Marcus and Alex meet before the story begins. The film opens with Marcus and Alex finishing a rather forgettable Tinder hook up with him trying to get her to leave and her eagerly trying to leave. Olson's Alex is not the kind of character that typically comes back in a movie like this. Usually, this character is a functional character, one to demonstrate the lack of character in our main character, a lesson they need to learn about being a better, more thoughtful or caring person. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review The Jesus Revolution

The Jesus Revolution (2023) 

Directed by Jon Erwin, Brent McCorkle 

Written by Jon Gunn, Jon Erwin 

Starring Kelsey Grammer, Joel Courtney, Anna Grace Barlow, Jonathan Roumie 

Release Date February 24th, 2023 

Published February 19th, 2023 

The Jesus Revolution is a violently mediocre movie. Based loosely on a true story about hippies who found religion in California in the late 1960s, The Jesus Revolution positions, of all people, Kelsey Grammer, as the open armed preacher who welcomes hippies to his church. To say that's not who Kelsey Grammer is publicly is a bit of an understatement, a hippie loving, all-inclusive, kind of guy is not who Kelsey Grammer is and he doesn't really have the range to make you buy in on this persona. 

The Jesus Revolution stars Kelsey Grammer as Pastor Chuck Smith. Pastor Chuck's parish is nearly empty. There appear to be about 10 people in his church before Chuck meets the man who will change all of that. After an argument with his daughter, Chuck is introduced to Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a free-spirited hippie preacher that Chuck's daughter brings home to stay. Lonnie surprises Chuck with his grasp of biblical scripture and the depth of his belief in Jesus so much that Chuck invites Lonnie to speak at his church and invite some fellow hippies to come in. 

Lonnie is a hit and his recruitment of more hippies to the church starts to bring in major crowds. Among the new believers is Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), a former military school student turned hippie. Greg left school to chase a girl, Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow), and through her, he ends up at Calvary Church. Falling under the spell of Lonnie, Greg himself will become a Preacher and he and Chuck eventually form a partnership that will grow the so-called Jesus Revolution beyond what either of them would have imagined. 

As for Lonnie, he proves to be a troubled figure. Whether he was on drugs or suffering from mental instability, Lonnie begins to believe that God is acting through him. He starts believing he can heal people and takes on the persona of a cult leader rather than a preacher. This will lead to a falling out between Lonnie and Chuck that threatens the future of Chuck's newly successful church. That sounds far more dramatic and interesting than anything actually in The Jesus Revolution. Sadly, the movie delivers the falling out between Chuck and Lonnie in the least dramatic or interesting fashion. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review The Burial

The Burial (2023) 

Directed by Michael Escalante 

Written by Michael Escalante 

Starring Faith Kearns, Spencer Wetzel, Aaron Pyle 

Release Date March 3rd, 2023

Published February 28th, 2023 

A man sits in the woods crying. In the foreground is a shotgun. That's the intriguing start of the horror flick, The Burial. The scene hard cuts to a suburban apartment where an adorable couple is having an adorable conversation and being adorable when the phone rings. The man in the woods, is Keith (Spencer Wetzel) and the man he has called is his brother, Brian (Vernon Taylor). Brian can hear the desperation in his brother's voice and agrees to go and see him at a cabin in the woods, near where the movie began. Brian's girlfriend, Molly (Faith Kearns), insists on going along despite Brian's warning that his brother is... troubled. 

The film establishes this point of intrigue, why is this man crying, why was the shotgun in the foreground as he cried? How are these things related? We will come to find out exactly what happened but first the movie settles us into who these people are before we set the plot mechanics in motion. Keith has shot a man and this man may or may not be dead. The supposedly dead man is Lenny (Aaron Pyle) and he haunts Keith's every moment. The choice of what to do about this dead or perhaps not dead man makes up the plot of The Burial. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Essay: The Body Horror of Videodrome

Videodrome is director David Cronenberg’s philosophical deconstruction of American culture, circa 1983. Yet, it remains relevant today as a commentary on the way in which American style violence infects the world. The story of shock television programmer, Max Renn, played by James Woods, Videodrome is not so much about Max as it is about how the American culture of violence is like an infectious disease spreading across borders. 

Max Renn is a carnival barker in the guise of a television executive. As the proprietor of Channel 83, Canada’s least watched yet most controversial cable network, Max specializes in blood and guts from around the globe. His programming features pornography and violence and even pornographic violence. Anything to get attention and sell advertising is okay by Max. But beyond his anything goes style of programming lingers and emptiness, a soullessness that makes Max the perfect test subject for Videodrome. 

What is Videodrome? For max, it’s the next big thing in sex and violence. Via his expert engineer and satellite pirate, Harlan (Peter Dvorkin), Max has stolen Videodrome with the intent of airing it on Channel 83. All that Videodrome appears to be, from what we are shown, is an hour of excruciating BDSM. A nude woman, never named, is brutally whipped for nearly an hour. There is no plot, no characters, just sexual violence. 

Max is convinced that he has a hit on his hands. 

What Max doesn’t realize, not immediately anyway, is that Videodrome isn’t a TV show. Videodrome was not filmed on a soundstage in Malaysia or Pittsburgh. No, the Videodrome is real… sort of. With the aid of a long dead Professor, Dr Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), Max discovers that Videodrome is the creation of a shadowy American, political cabal. It was created to take over vulnerable minds, like Max’s, and use violent imagery to compel the vulnerable toward violence. 

Max was chosen because he was a soulless hack, a man with no moral center, a man who lacks character. Max is an empty vessel that Videodrome, and the cabal, behind it can manipulate to do their bidding. Max represents the world consumer, the viewer, the audience drawn toward the twisted thrill of blood and sex and violence. Videodrome is the hypnotic drug of sex and violence that once made up so much of American culture and spread around the globe by television and movies via VHS or Betamax. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review John Wick Chapter 4

John Wick Chapter 4 (2023) 

Directed by Chad Stahelski 

Written by Shay Hatten, Michael Finch 

Starring Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Donnie Yen, Laurence Fishburne, Bill Skarsgard 

Release Date March 24th, 2023 

Published March 24th, 2023 

John Wick Chapter 4 wastes no time in getting our favorite killing machine into action. After a brief introduction to where John's been hiding since we last saw him, action shifts to the Middle East where John Wick, in full black suit in the desert, is killing people while riding on horseback. The scene is key first for getting John Wick into action mode and for giving him a key piece of information. As John executes a nameless baddie, he's informed that the only peace he shall ever have will come in death. This sets up the plot of the movie: Will John Wick live or die? 

The plot is driven by John Wick's continuing desire to be allowed to live a normal life. He just wants a dog and a house and a muscle car for a quiet retirement. Unfortunately, the many, many people John Wick has killed since he took vengeance over the murder of his beloved dog, means that John may never stop being pursued by killers eager to grab a 20 plus million dollar bounty on his head. That bounty comes courtesy of a mysterious cabal known collectively as 'The Table.' You can assume that the table is much like the one in Godfather 2 where the heads of families sit and carve up portions of the world. 

Thus, John Wick's task, though seemingly impossible, is to kill his way through the table. Thankfully, his efforts thus far have led the leaders of the group to consolidate power inside one man, The Marquis (Bill Skarsgard). Kill the Marquis and John Wick will earn his freedom from the table. Naturally, this task is more complex than simply killing one man. Standing in John Wick's way is an old friend, a man chosen by The Marquis as his proxy in any direct combat with John Wick. That man is Caine, the blind master, played by Donnie Yen. John Wick and Caine have been friends for years but with the life of Caine's daughter hanging in the balance, the blind master has no compunction about killing his longtime friend. 

I love the lore of John Wick. I love how the universe maintains a very specific and yet uncomplicated logic. In this universe, there are suits that are made of Kevlar, these suits have an almost magical quality. They make the wearer impervious to most weapon attacks. Getting thrown off a roof, shot, or tossed down some stairs are things that can slow someone down. But, if you are wearing a Kevlar suit, you are protected from serious impacts, meaning bones won't break, and bullets may collect on the surface but not penetrate. A sword or a knife may still be an issue. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves (2023) 

Directed by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley 

Written by Michael Gillo, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley 

Starring Chris Pine, Sophia Lillis, Justice Smith, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant 

Release Date March 31st, 2023 

Published March 31st, 2023 

Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves probably won't hold up to much scrutiny when it comes to plot, logic, and other such concerns. But what the film lacks in detailed filmmaking, it more than makes up for in fun. This is a really fun movie populated by a cast that appears to be having an absolute blast making this movie. The cast makes Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves a delight to sit through. Chris Pine leads this incredibly fun group of outcasts and weirdos with strange powers that always seem to come in handy at just the moment they are needed. 

Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) was once a heroic member of the Harpers, a group of selfless heroes battling evil to protect their small villages. However, when once his good guy mask slipped and revealed a thief, Darvis lost everything. A group of wizards, whom Darvis stole from, found his home while he wasn't there, and murdered his wife. Thankfully, Darvis's baby daughter was hidden away by her mother and father and daughter were able to stay together

Not cut out for the life of a single parent, a drunken Darvis is rescued by a mercenary, Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), who becomes his best friend, mostly because she has no friends and really likes his baby. She helps Davis raise the baby, Kira (Chloe Coleman), as the trio work together as a gang of thieves. Their criminal outfit grows to include an amateur sorcerer named Simon (Justice Smith), and a con-artist named Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), who brings a talent for finding big scores. 

The group is successful together for only a short time. Then, they meet their end when they go to work for a powerful witch, Sofina (Daisy Head), who promises unimaginable riches if they help her steal an ancient artifact. Leaving Kira at home, Edgin and Holga are betrayed by Forge and Sofina and are captured and imprisoned. Simon managed a narrow escape. The next two years are spent behind bars in a frozen wasteland until the opportunity to escape arrives. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review A Good Person

A Good Person (2023) 

Directed by Zach Braff

Written by Zach Braff 

Starring Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman, Molly Shannon, Zoe Lister-Jones, Chinaza Uche 

Release Date March 31st, 2023 

Published April 4th, 2023 

You can only numb emotional pain for so long before the numbness becomes the desired effect. Life becomes stagnant, the outside world is a place of judgment, a place to fear. Being numb and at home is the desired space in the world. But, to quote a terrific song called Sideways by Citizen Cope and Santana, lyrics that have never left me since I heard them on an episode of Scrubs, 'These feelings won't go away.' Until you actually confront your emotional damage, it will not heal, it will only fester. 

Allison (Florence Pugh), the protagonist of the new drama, A Good Person, is in the midst of learning this lyrical lesson in A Good Person. Following an accident that killed her soon to be sister and brother in-laws, Allison turned to Oxycontin, first as a way of dealing with physical pain and then as a way to numb the emotional pain of guilt that she felt every time she looked into the eyes of her fiancé, Nathan (Chinaza Uche). These feelings of guilt linger and fester within her, even after she abandoned Nathan for the comfort of moving home to her mother, Diane (Molly Shannon) who proves to be an unwilling enabler of her daughter's addiction. 

Eventually, this unhealed wound drives Allison to depths that even she recognizes as wrong and she seeks help. There, with much unexpected irony, she meets Daniel (Morgan Freeman), her former future father-in-law and father of the woman who died in the accident Allison caused by carelessly looking at her phone while driving. You might expect Daniel to lash out but, to Allison's great surprise, the elderly father reaches out a hand and invites her to stay and get help as part of the AA/NA Meeting at their shared local church. 

The tentative friendship between Allison and Daniel that develops via their attending these meetings, drives the action of the second act of A Good Person as Allison is introduced to the teenage daughter that was left orphaned in the care of her grandfather. Ryan (Celeste O'Connor), at first, is shocked and mortified that Daniel would bring Allison into their lives, considering the circumstances, but eventually, she begins to befriend Allison. The friendship is fraught, quite obviously, but when Ryan tries to reunite Allison with Nathan, things go beyond fraught to a place a deep despair. 

One thing that Zach Braff does well as a writer and director is explore complicated emotions and give those emotions room to breathe. Garden State was anchored by an exploration of grief and the healing power of falling in love with someone who understands you. He explored a remarkably similar theme in the equally effective, Wish I Was Here. And, once again, in A Good Person, Braff is back to exploring grief from yet another perspective and once again he allows room for this complicated emotion to be lived in, explored, and for it to begin to heal. 

His themes may be similar but Braff is at his best when he stops and lets the anguish that his characters are feeling be fully expressed. The catharsis of big emotions can be a tad manipulative in a film drama b but in Braff's conception, and in the performances of actors such as Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman, it never feels pushy. Pugh's performance in particular is so charismatic that it leaves an indelible, unforgettable impression. Say what you will about the sameness of Zach Braff's direction, in the hands of great actors, it barely registers. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review A Thousand and One (2023)

A Thousand and One (2023) 

Directed by A.V Rockwell 

Written by A.V Rockwell

Starring Teyana Taylor, Robert Catlett, Josiah Cross 

Release Date March 31st, 2023 

Published April 3rd, 2023 

Nature or Nurture? How do we become who we are? The new drama, A Thousand and One isn't so much out to answer that question but it raises that question in a most compelling and beautiful way. The story of a fiercely protective mother and the baby she thought she'd lost to the system years earlier, A Thousand and One begs the question of identity while also revealing a pair of characters whose bond is tested and affirmed numerous times in ways most can never begin to imagine. 

Fresh out of a stay in prison, Inez (Teyana Taylor) simply wants to get on with her life. A talented hairdresser, she'd be content finding a chair in a salon somewhere where she could rebuild her life. Unfortunately, things are rarely that easy, especially for someone emerging from a prison stay. Instead of a salon space, Inez finds herself begging people to let her do their hair while papering all of Harlem with offers to do hair that fall on the deaf ears of indifferent passersby. 

While seeking work, Inez is struck by the sight of a small child. Terry or T, as Inez calls him, is certainly familiar with Inez and the way she speaks to him matter of factly seems to confirm their relationship. T is Inez's son, separated from her when she went to jail. Now out of jail, she sees him and though she seems to understand that she's in no place to try and take him back, she's eager to keep tabs. When Inez hears from one of T's friends that he was hurt, she goes to the hospital and their she makes a fateful choice. 

An unknown amount of time passes as Inez and T couch-surf between extended family and friends until Inez gives up her salon dream, for now, to take a job working as a maid in a nursing home over an hour away by train. It's hard and long work but it's enough to find a place for her and T to live. That's when Inez reconnects with a man who may or may not be T's father. Lucky and Inez have a complicated history. He may or may not have been part of the reason she ended up in prison. He's also the only man Inez ever loved. 

The push-pull of Inez and Lucky's relationship is deeply fraught, especially after Lucky bonds with T and becomes the closest thing he will ever know to a father. Lucky will bounce in and out of their lives even after the couple get married. Settling down doesn't suit him and the tension boils over on several occasions before. Well, you should see that for yourself. Lucky is a deeply complicated, flawed but loving character, loving in a way that he understands love, a love complicated by his own strange and fraught upbringing. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Documentary Review Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)

Squaring the Circle (The Story of of Hipgnosis) (2023) 

Directed by Anton Corbijn 

Written by Trish D. Chetty 

Starring Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Robert Plant, Paul McCartney

Release Date June 7th, 2023  

Published June June 1st, 2023 

For many, the idea of art, what art could be, it's transformative properties, the way it can shape your perception, sprang from seeing a striking image on the cover of an album. I can distinctly recall seeing the cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here in a friend's record collection when I was 10 years old and being fascinated by the image of a man on fire shaking hands with another man who was not on fire. It's an image both striking and yet simple, the notion that the record industry can burn an artist with a handshake and a smile. 

Regardless of what this image says about the band or the music on the record, that cover, and so many more esoteric, bizarre, and compelling images, helped to shape many young minds. That particular image that dazzled my young mind was created by the most prolific and influential graphic designers in the history of the music business, Hip-gnosis, the team of Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson. Starting at University in the mid-1960s, Storm and Po were an inseparable team. Each taught each other different aspects of design and their ideas blossomed from a shared love of turning reality and sense on their heads. 

Director Anton Corbijn is among many who can count Hipgnosis as a major influence on their work. A music video director, Corbijn is uniquely qualified to document the history and fascination surrounding the legendary art pioneers at Hipgnosis. He does just that with the remarkable, exhaustive and terrific new documentary Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis). Through exclusive interviews with Storm and Po and the giants of the music industry who employed them, we get to learn the fascinating stories behind the most talked about, remembered, and beloved album covers in the history of music. 

From the late 1960s through the early 80s, Hipgnosis was the go-to team for creating album art so good that it could sell records on its own merit. If you're a fan of Pink Floyd, then you can thank Hipgnosis for creating the images you've always associated with Pink Floyd. The cover of Dark Side of the Moon? That was Hipgnosis. That wonderful photo of a cow on the cover of Atom Heart Mother? That was Hipgnosis. That tripped out cover for 1968's A Saucerful of Secrets, Hipgnosis. I could go on and on but you should just see Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) for yourself. 

Storm Thorgerson emerges as a fascinating character, a cantankerous, unpredictable and often rude man who earned the love, loyalty and enmity of the biggest rock stars in the world with his blunt assessment of their artistic desires. He had a habit of walking off Hipgnosis projects if he felt the artist wasn't listening to him or exerting too much control over the idea. He loved working with the band 10 CC, a rare band that let Storm loose to make his weirdest and often most expensive ideas come to life. 

Find my full length review at Beat.Media 

Movie Review Padre Pio

Padre Pio (2023) 

Directed by Abel Ferrara 

Written by Abel Ferrara 

Starring Shia LeBeouf 

Release Date June 2nd 

Published May 27th, 2023 

Padre Pio is a strange movie. Ostensibly, the film stars Shia LeBeouf as a troubled Priest who many claim as a Saint who suffered the stigmata, the wounds of Christ appearing on the hands and feet. He was claimed as a Prophet by some and a madman by others. Mostly, the man who came to be known as Padre Pio is known for becoming the biggest champion of confession. He had many passionate tenets to his preaching but Pio was quite adamant about the importance of confession and that appears to be the legacy that the Catholic Church celebrates, far more than his stigmata claim. 

So, why is a movie about this man so strange? Well, it's directed by Abel Ferrara for one. The odd and controversial director has taken his legacy in an odd direction late in his career. Having always leaned heavily into Catholic imagery and themes, he's been working in Italy the last few years and on incredibly low budgets. Budgets so low that his last film, Zeroes and Ones, starring Ethan Hawke, is nearly unwatchable. That film looks as if it had been filmed through a green plastic bag. 

Padre Pio is slightly better looking than Zeroes and Ones but the low budget is still very much Omni-present. The opening scene has an almost embarrassing level of amateur cinematography as Shia LeBeouf's Padre Pio arrives at an Italian Abbey riding a donkey. You can sense right away that this will be one of those performances by LeBeouf, intense to the point of parody. The passion that LeBeouf brings to his craft is admirable but, in the wrong movie, it can be embarrassingly, uncomfortably and unnecessarily intense. 

And then LeBeouf just sort of fades into the background for a while. The film is set in the immediate aftermath of World War 1. Italians are returning home and are aching for change to a society where the rich dominate and the poor are impoverished to a ludicrous degree. It's a moment ripe for a socialist revolution and that's what begins to happen in this small town. Agitators begin holding public meetings calling for improved working conditions and the rich employ thugs to hold on to their tenuous political power. 

Helping the elite of the city is the church. We see Priests praying over the weapons of the thuggish authorities of the town and holding hushed meetings with the rich elites. This would appear to place someone like Padre Pio in opposition to his own church, a genuine conflict. But no, this never comes into play with Padre Pio's storyline in any way. This is the set up for a scene in which a group of socialists are gunned down while attempting to vote in their local election. This plot never intersects with Padre Pio. 

My full length review is at Geeks.Media