Movie Review No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings (2023) 

Directed by Gene Stupnitsky

Written by Gene Stupnitsky 

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Natalie Morales, Matthew Broderick 

Release Date June 23rd, 2023 

Published June 23rd, 2023 

No Hard Feelings is absolutely hysterical. Starring Jennifer Lawrence as a struggling Uber driver trying to save her home after losing her car to an asset seizure, the film takes raunchy comedy on a ride that never stops being hilariously funny. As Maddie Barker, Lawrence finds herself in danger of losing her home unless she can find a way to get a new car fast. That's when serendipity strikes. A bizarre post online offers hope in a very unexpected way. A rich family is offering an older but still good looking mid-sized Sedan for a strange but reasonable price. 

What makes it strange? The price is dating the family's teenage son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman). And by date, Percy's parents, Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti), mean having sex with him. Helicopter parents to the extreme. As Laird explains, he had an experience when he was Percy's age that changed his life, brought him out of his shell, and led him to become rich, successful, and now happily married. He hopes that his son having a similar experience, even if it is paid for, will have the same effect on him. 

If this premise is a problem for you, then this movie is not for you. No Hard Feelings is uncompromising in the opinion that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Maddie trading sex for a vehicle. She's a grown woman who is in charge of her body and her decisions and she has no problem doing what she needs to do to save her childhood home. We live in a deeply screwed up version of capitalism that leads to this type of situation, one in which the poor have to fight for the scraps of the very, very rich by any means necessary, but this movie isn't about that, at least not directly. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Sleepless in Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle (2023) 

Directed by Nora Ephron 

Written by Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch 

Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Rita Wilson, Victor Garber, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Pullman 

Release Date June 25th, 1993

Published June 26th, 2023 

Losing my mother in 2013 was the hardest thing that I have ever endured. My mom was awesome. She worked three retail jobs, 80 to 90 hours per week, when I was a kid, just to make sure that myself and my sister had food and a good home. All that time, she remained unsinkable in her spirit and love. She was a human teddy bear, soft and comforting. Her worst quality was that when someone she loved was suffering, she would make that suffering her own, as if she could take our pain away by making it her pain. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had a mom who was so loving and empathetic. 

My mom fostered my love of movies. I have a distinct memory from my childhood of my mother swooning over Cary Grant. I'd make fun of her for her reaction to Cary Grant movies and she would lean into it by talking about how handsome and charming he was in effusive terms. I can recall the first time I saw my mom cry was the day she was supposed to go see Cary Grant's one man show in Davenport, Iowa. That show never happened as Grant died the night before the show was to take place. My mom showed me that para-social relationships with celebrity weren't a bad thing, they were a human thing. 

The movie Sleepless in Seattle, which features prominent references to Cary Grant, became a favorite movie for my mom. She would watch it any chance she got. She didn't love Tom Hanks as she did Cary Grant, but her heart leapt seeing him fall for Meg Ryan at the last minute. She felt the same rush of emotion every time she watched the movie, even as she'd seen it a dozen times and was fully aware that the happy ending was coming. She always got teary when Meg Ryan took Tom Hanks' hand at the end of the movie. It showed me that being emotional about movies was not just okay, but something that just happens when you witness something beautiful. 

Sleepless in Seattle is a beautiful film. It's a celebration of magical romance and believing in something beyond yourself, the notion of fate. The characters of Sam Baldwin and Annie Reed were fated to be together. The universe conspires to unite them. Through the audacity and resolute stubbornness of Sam's son, Jonah, and the good luck that he has a best friend, played by Gaby Hoffman, whose parents are travel agents, Sam and Annie are brought dramatically together on the most romantic day of the year in one of the most romantic spots on the planet. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Asteroid City

Asteroid City (2023) 

Directed by Wes Anderson 

Written by Wes Anderson 

Starring Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Wright

Release Date June 23rd, 2023 

Published June 23rd, 2023 

I adore the work of writer-director Wes Anderson. As a film critic with more than 20 years of experience writing about movies, Anderson's work has an unusual appeal for me. I see so many movies that look the same, go for the same goals, demonstrate the same filmmaking technique, and though they can be quite good or not good, the sameness of most of what I see becomes monotonous. Then, along comes a Wes Anderson movie like an alien from another planet. Instead of striving to place his characters in a place we can recognize and identify with them in a typical fashion, Anderson's style creates a surreal reality all its own. 

In his first feature film, Bottle Rocket, the characters were colorful and odd amid a realistic landscape. Since then, The Royal Tenenbaums began a turn for Anderson that led to more and more of a surrealist perspective. Anderson is a fan of artifice, and he brings artifice forward in his cinematography and production design. In his newest, remarkably ingenious work, called Asteroid, the surrealist production design is intended to logically marry the stage and film. It's as if Wes Anderson wanted to adapt a play into a movie but wanted to bring both the play and the movie forward at once. It's an exceptionally silly, funny, brilliant move. 

Trying to describe the plot of Asteroid City is rather pointless. Wes Anderson isn't so much interested in his plot. Rather, it's a Wes Anderson style of comedy, a series of odd, awkward, and often various funny scenes that may or may not be moving forward a plot. On the surface, we are following photographer and family man, Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), as he takes his kids across the country and their car breaks down in the oddball small town of Asteroid City. Luckily, they were on their way here anyway as Augie's oldest son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), is to compete for a science scholarship. 

Asteroid City is the real star of Asteroid City. At the center of the town, which is made up of, perhaps four locations, is a giant crater where an asteroid landed in 3200 B.C. The town grew up around the asteroid as scientists and military men seek to understand the asteroid. Tilda Swinton is the top scientist and Jeffrey Wright is the military man. Things get crazy when an alien comes to Earth and takes the asteroid. The arrival of an alien causes the town, and all of its visitors, including Augie and his four kids, celebrity actress, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johannson) and her genius daughter, Dina (Grace Edwards). 

Augie begins a tentative flirtation with Midge, their tiny cabins are right next door to each other, and Woodrow starts a budding relationship with Dinah as they work with their fellow genius kids, played by Sophia Lillis and Ethan Josh Lee to study the alien while also making sure the rest of the world knows that the alien exists, much to the chagrin of the military and their parents. The genius kids also work with Tilda Swinton's scientist to try and determine where the alien went and whether or not the alien is dangerous or not. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Nut Job 2 Nutty By Nature

The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature (2017)

Directed by Cal Brunker

Written by Cal Brunker, Scott Bindley, Bob Barlen

Starring Will Arnett, Maya Rudolf, Jackie Chan, Katherine Heigl 

Release Date August 11th, 2017 

To call out The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature for creative bankruptcy would be as futile as calling out Congress for its corruption. Sure, both of those assessments are of equal accuracy but they are also empty facts of life that aren’t going to change simply because we point them out. So, what then do we make of The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature? Now that we’ve accepted the creative bankruptcy what is left for us to ponder?

The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, picks up where 2014’s The Nut Job left off with Surly Squirrel (Will Arnett) and his woodland pals living the high life in their adopted home inside a nut shop. The gravy train of free nuts seems endless but Surly’s gal-pal Andie (Katherine Heigl) remains worried. Andie wants everyone to get out of the nut shop and go forage in the park just in case something ever happens to their gravy train. Her concerns are laughed off until something does happen and the nut shop explodes, thankfully with our characters on the outside.

Left homeless and without a food source, Surly leads his crew back into the park only to find that the town’s corrupt Mayor (Bobby Moynihan), who literally has the phrase EmBzzler as his license plate, is demolishing the park in favor of an amusement park filled with garish, overpriced and highly unsafe rides; because apparently demolishing the park isn’t enough, kids need to know that the Mayor is getting kickbacks for his unsafe choices. Hey, what kid doesn’t love plots about corrupt politicians?

Naturally, the animal pals look to Surly for a plan and he’s got a whopper, a literal war with the machines that are tearing up the park. This leads to an action scene in which the animals battle bulldozers and earth-movers and cause as much damage to the park as the bulldozers and earth-movers were doing without the aid of the animals attempting to destroy them. When our furry friends are thwarted in their efforts they must find a new home or find another way to fight back that doesn’t get them all killed.

In case the plot description didn’t grab you don’t worry because The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature has a brand-new character that is guaranteed to go right for your wallet. Jackie Chan provides the voice of Mr. Feng, a cute little mouse who was once a forest dweller but was driven to the city by the same corrupt Mayor now taking away Surly’s home. Mr. Feng’s schtick is that though he and his fellow mice are adorable they cannot stand being called cute and when they are called cute they react with violence.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle (2017) 

Director Destin Daniel Cretton

Written by Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham, Marti Noxon 

Starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Max Greenfield, Sarah Snook, Naomi Watts

Release Date August 11th, 2017 

When I was an up and coming young radio talk show host, I had the privilege of interviewing author Jeanette Walls about her remarkable memoir The Glass Castle. Normally, in prepping for an interview in talk radio, you don’t have time to read entire books, you’re forced to skim and pick and choose important portions to discuss in the brief time you have with your subject. In the case of The Glass Castle however, I was lucky enough to have a full weekend and in that weekend, I read the entire book because I simply could not stop myself.

The adage has it that you should never meet your heroes because they never live up to your idealized version of them. Jeanette Walls defied that adage in every way in my brief interview. Just as in her book she was charming, erudite, earthy, and fascinating. She had the kind of wit that comes from combining the mountains of West Virginia with the privilege of Park Avenue. In short, she was as delightful in voice, it was a phone interview, as she was in written form.

Given how harrowing that written form was, the human result is that much more remarkable. It is this version of Jeanette Walls that I took with me into the film adaptation of her remarkable memoir The Glass Castle. The film version stars Academy Award Winner Brie Larson and thank heaven for her, she resembled the Jeanette Walls of my brief but exciting memory.

The Glass Castle stars Larson as Jeanette Walls in 1989 when her career as a gossip columnist for New York Magazine has brought her the kind of fame and security she could never have imagined while growing up in poverty on a West Virginia mountainside. This Jeanette Walls is perfectly coiffed, stylishly dressed, and on the arm of a handsome, nebbishy financial adviser, played by New Girl star Max Greenfield, giving her even more of the fiscal security she never knew as a girl.

We also meet that young, insecure version of Jeanette, played by a pair of young actresses, Chandler Head and Ella Anderson, whose brilliant but damaged father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and scatterbrained artist mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) shuttle her from one place to the next always outrunning some bill collector or agent of law enforcement. When she was very young, alongside her three siblings, these changes in scenery seemed like an adventure with her father as part ringmaster and part wizard. As Jeanette comes of age however, the magic begins to wear off and the stench of her father’s alcoholism and emotional abuse becomes unbearable.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Annabelle Creation

Annabelle Creation (2017) 

Directed by David F. Sandberg 

Written by Gary Dauberman 

Starring Stephanie Stigman, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson, Anthony La Paglia, Miranda Otto

Release Date August 11th, 2023 

I tried, I really did. I tried to give Annabelle: Creation the benefit of the doubt. I tried to go with the idiot premise that demons possess dolls and small children and are capable of massive amounts of destruction and horror but are constantly thwarted by locked, wooden doors. I gave this movie the chance to explain where the Annabelle doll that has been passed down from the equally silly The Conjuring movies came from and how it came to be a cursed item. I tried, but nothing in the movie convinced me why it was frightening, suspenseful or even mildly discomforting.

Annabelle Creation is intended as the origin story for the doll that we’ve seen locked away in the home Ed and Lorraine Warren, the heroes/real-life con-artists, from The Conjuring movies. Indeed, Annabelle is creepy looking but not in a menacing way — more of a, "Why did anyone think this would be attractive to anyone?" sort of way. Seriously, what child would ever want to own a two and a half foot tall, bug-eyed, pig-tailed, proto-dummy like Annabelle? If you’re thinking that Annabelle: Creation might answer that question you are sorely mistaken.

After we are introduced to the tragic backstory of the man who created the Annabelle doll, played dutifully by a disinterested Anthony La Paglia, we are thrust several years into the future where La Paglia and his now bed-ridden wife, played by a slumming-for-a-paycheck Miranda Otto, have taken in half a dozen orphans and their Nun caretaker, Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman). We already know this is a terrible idea because we know what movie we are seeing; the girls meanwhile are about to go through the motions of the plot and try to convince us we haven’t seen all of this before.

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Short Term 12

Short Term 12 (2013) 

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton 

Written by Destin Daniel Cretton 

Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Lakeith Stanfield, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Melora Waters 

Release Date August 23rd, 2013 

With the release of The Glass Castle on August 12, director Destin Daniel Cretton is stepping into his first major Hollywood feature. Will he be ready for the pressure that comes with bigger budgets, bigger stars, studio involvement, and the inherent issues that come from attempting to adapt a vaunted best-selling memoir to the big screen? That question will only be answered in a review of The Glass Castle. What we do know is, if The Glass Castle is half the movie that Cretton’s breakthrough feature Short Term 12 is it will be worth the price of a ticket.

Short Term 12 tells the story of counselors working at a short-term home for troubled kids. Grace, played by Brie Larson, is the lead counselor at the home who feels as if she’s seen it all from the children in her care. Naturally, she’s in for a surprise with the arrival of Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who reflects so much of Grace’s own troubled childhood back at her that it throws the normally well put together Grace into a minor tailspin.

The key to the storytelling in Short Term 12 is intimacy. Director Cretton’s style is up close and personal with tight two person shots that enhance the moments of incredible, realistic intimacy as confessions are made, moments are had, and especially when tragedy strikes. Cretton does a wonderful job of capturing extraordinary moments while also remaining aware of the bigger picture story he’s telling.

The director is aided by a standout cast led by Larson whose big, beautiful beating heart comes through in every scene. Grace may have troubles of her own, but she never loses track of her empathy. Empathy is both Grace’s greatest strength and her biggest weakness as having too much to give leaves one vulnerable, and Grace’s vulnerabilities are a big part of the story being told in Short Term 12.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Can't Buy Me Love

Can't Buy Me Love (1987) 

Directed by Steve Rash 

Written by Michael Swerdlick

Starring Amanda Peterson, Patrick Dempsey, Courtney Gains, Dennis Dugan 

Release Date August 14th, 1987

Can’t Buy Me Love is bankrupt at its core. The 1987 teen comedy starring Patrick Dempsey and the late Amanda Peterson has the trappings of a sweet 80s teen comedy about nerds and popular kids but lacks something in its heart. There is a cynicism at the center of Can’t Buy Me Love that the makers attempt to paper over by rushing to a climax that never feels right or especially earned.

Ronald Miller is our typical high school movie geek, stringy, shy, poorly dressed and into science. His crush is the most popular girl in school, Cindy, a cheerleader with a boyfriend who is now in college and is neglecting her affection. While Ronald pines from the seat of his lawnmower (he mows her lawn to the point he’s saved up $1000 while seeming to have only ever mowed Cindy’s lawn), Cindy is putting on a brave face about her absent boyfriend.

The plot kicks in when Cindy borrows an expensive outfit from her mother’s closet and ruins it. She desperately needs $1000 to replace the outfit and through plot contrivance, Ronald and his cold hard cash happen to be at the same mall attempting to buy a telescope, another 80s nerd signifier. Ronald offers his cash for Cindy to buy and replace her mom’s outfit in exchange for Cindy to go out with him and help him break into the cool clique at school.

The plan works as Cindy’s popularity rubs off on Ronald almost immediately. The two even begin to confide in one another and get close until Ronald misses his cue to kiss her for real and the two end up in a staged break up where Ronald compounds his blunders with cruel words he thinks are part of the act. Cindy is hurt and Ronald gets what he wants but not without a warning from her that being popular is harder than it looks. That’s what the makers of Can’t Buy Me Love don’t understand; while it goes through the motions of a lame redemption story for Ronald, the real story and the heart of the story belongs to Cindy whose struggle to maintain an image of perfection is harming her very soul.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Detroit

Detroit (2017) 

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Written by Mark Boal

Starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Lattimore, Kaitlyn Dever

Release Date July 28th, 2017 

Recently I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s incredible podcast Revisionist History and in the very first episode he discussed a fascinating sociological concept called Moral Licensing. Moral Licensing is in essence doing something that is right and then using that right action, essentially a good deed, to justify bad behavior. Gladwell’s example was a painter in 19th Century England, Elizabeth Thompson, whose painting, titled Roll Call, became the first by a female artist to take a respected placement in the Royal Academy of Art. Unfortunately, the good deed by the male dominated Royal Academy of featuring the remarkable painting gave them, in their minds, the bona fides to justify not electing Thompson to become a member of the Royal Academy. They’d done their good deed and had nothing, in their minds left to prove.

I thought a great deal about Moral Licensing as I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s remarkable new film Detroit. This story about the riots that raged in Detroit, Michigan in 1967 and more specifically about an incident of police brutality that resulted in the deaths of three innocent black men, at the Algiers Hotel, led me to wonder if just becoming a police officer—a peace officer, someone whose job in the world is to protect people—gives some lesser officers the notion that they have moral license to do as they please. They’ve proven their bona fides as a good person by offering to protect the innocent, thus how they do their jobs is justified by virtue of having accepted the position.

I am not generalizing here; I respect police officers and the remarkable difficulty of their job. Scientifically and psychologically, however, there is a kernel of truth here. It could happen to anyone in such a position: a doctor, a politician, even a film critic who uses his position as a writer to espouse a point of view and then, if his point of view is well-viewed, he or she can take license to go further and espouse further and potentially do harm because they feel they have a moral high ground that doesn’t really exist.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Stakeout

Stakeout (1987) 

Directed by John Badham 

Written by Jim Kouf

Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, Aiden Quinn, Madeleine Stowe 

Release Date August August 5th, 1987 

Stakeout exists in a bizarre space in our popular memory. The action-comedy starring Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez opened the first weekend of August, 1987 at the top of the box office. The film went on to rank in the top 10 highest grossing films of the year and earned mostly positive reviews from critics. Then, it simply faded from memory. Sure, 6 years after the release of Stakeout they got around to making a bad sequel, shoulder shruggingly titled Another Stakeout, that did the original film no favors, but why did this successful movie mostly disappear from popular memory?

Dreyfuss and Estevez play Chris and Bill, Seattle Police detectives who are tasked with what they think is a punishment gig. After screwing up a bust, they get put on stakeout duty, watching the ex-girlfriend of an escaped convict in case he might come visiting. Aiden Quinn is the convict, nicknamed Stick, while Madeleine Stowe plays the ex-girlfriend who also becomes Chris’s love interest, something that is highly fraught as Chris must pretend he’s not a police officer to not blow his and Bill’s cover.

Dreyfuss and Stowe have a terrific chemistry, despite Stowe’s bizarre Spanish-Irish combo accent and Dreyfuss’s remarkable creepiness in watching her undress when he first goes on stakeout duty and then breaks into her home and ends up watching her shower. Despite how much I enjoy Richard Dreyfuss, there is no escaping how pervy and unfunny these scenes are. The sexual dynamic of Stakeout has not aged well and likely plays into why the film is so well forgotten.

The dynamic between Dreyfuss and Estevez is equally as charming as the dynamic between Stowe and Dreyfuss. Estevez was a mere 25 years old in Stakeout but with the aid of a remarkable mustache, he ages up just enough to be convincing as a detective. I loved the playful interplay between Estevez and Dreyfuss which is far less broad than your typical 80s action-comedy and feels more realistic and genuine than similar cop comedies; the two seem like genuine friends and partners instead of the more popular mismatched partners of so many similar films.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Swing Kids

Swing Kids (1993) 

Directed by Thomas Carter

Written by Jonathan Marc Feldman 

Starring Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard, Frank Whaley, Barbara Hershey 

Release Date March 5th, 1993 

Published June 21st, 1993 

Swing Kids is an obnoxious movie about obnoxious characters being obnoxious amid the rising tensions and hatred of pre-World War 2 Germany. The story follows a group of young men, led by best friends, Peter (Leonard) and Thomas (Bale). All these boys want to do is dance, listen to records, and meet girls but their idyllic dance-floor utopia is interrupted by the rise of the Third Reich. The demand for conformity and discipline eventually takes hold of Thomas, who becomes a member of the Hitler Youth, straining not only his friendship to Peter but his loyalty to their bohemian, dancing music loving circle. 

It's not a bad premise for a movie but as executed by Thomas Carter, it captures mostly the obnoxious side of being a wild-eyed, horny teenager and the way those who may not have strong family lives, are more susceptible to seemingly charismatic cult leaders. Thomas falls in with the Hitler Youth because he is distant from his rich father, he craves the chance to belong to something, and he's in conflict with everyone else in his life, including Peter who refuses to fall in line with the S.S, and wants Thomas to remember that a member of their friend group, Arvid (Frank Whaley), is Jewish and thus very vulnerable at this point in time. 

Whaley delivers the most interesting and compelling performance in Swing Kids as a Jazz loving, Jazz guitarist who refuses to compromise his Jewish background or his dedicated bohemian, communist morals. Though he is often framed by the film as being unreasonable in how he appears perfectly willing to die in order to defy the Nazis, Whaley gives the performance depth and weight beyond the box that the script and the direction place him in. Whaley's is a performance of deep conviction and sincerity, a counterpoint to Leonard's wishy-washy, non-committal approach and Bale's obnoxious embrace of all things Nazi. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Enys Men

Enys Men (2023) 

Directed by Mark Jenkin

Written by Mark Jenkin 

Starring Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe 

Release Date January 13th, 2023 

Published June 21st, 2023 

Enys Men, pronounced, N-is Main, is Cornish for Stone Island. That's the setting for the story unfolding patiently and disquietingly in Mark Jenkin's unsettling atmospheric drama. Mary Woodvine stars as a character only known as 'The Volunteer.' The Volunteer has taken on the job of chronicling the unexpected growth of new plant life on Enys Men, a place that hasn't seen new growth in some time. Each day, The Volunteer treks forth from her cottage to an oceanside cliff where she monitors the temperature surrounding the growth of this plant life. 

She then treks back home to document the minute, often unchanging data. This goes on day after day after day, without a deviation from her pattern. It's a pattern that also includes a stop at an ancient well where she tests the height of the water by dropping a rock and tracking the seconds it takes to make contact with the bottom of the well. This too is unchanging until one day, it changes. Even this doesn't seem to shake The Volunteer from her routine. She makes note of it and goes on with her assignment. Occasionally, The Volunteer will share an awkward and rushed C.B conversation with a long time friend. Beyond that, The Volunteer appears to be alone. Until she isn't. 

The disquieting nature of the narrative begins to truly take hold as The Volunteer begins hearing things on the roof of her cottage. It's a little girl, her own little girl, it would seem. Is this child here with her? There has been no evidence until this point that The Volunteer wasn't alone. The strange nature of the child first appearing on top of the cabin and then being a sort of ghostly presence inside the cabin, one that is only mildly commented upon, lends a further air of discomfort to what is unfolding. The Volunteer barely bats an eye over the sudden appearance of her apparent child. It's as if she's not at all surprised. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review Army of Darkness

Army of Darkness (1993) 

Directed by Sam Raimi 

Written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi 

Starring Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz 

Release Date February 19th, 1993 

Published June 20th, 2023 

Army of Darkness is a direct sequel to Evil Dead 2 but, in the tradition of Evil Dead 1, continuity between the two is not necessary. The basic elements are enough to marry one film to the other. Ash (Bruce Campbell), survived a fight against the Deadites, zombie demons from another dimension, only to find himself sucked into another dimension. In this dimension there are Kings and servants, warring clans, and an ancient evil that Ash happens to have some experience in defeating. After demonstrating god-like powers in surviving against a Deadite at the bottom of a well, Ash is welcomed into this bizarre world. 

In classically Ash fashion, he immediately flirts with and gets the girl, Sheila (Davidtz), who is then subsequently stolen away and corrupted by the Deadites. In order to free this cursed land from the evil of the Deadites, Ash must go on a quest to retrieve the Book of the Dead, the very book that got him into this mess in Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. The book was sucked through this dimensional portal along with Ash and has now fallen into the hands of the Deadites who've placed it in a cursed cemetery. The Arthurian touches in Army of Darkness are inspired gags. 

The key to Army of Darkness however, is a spirit of anarchic invention. Director Sam Raimi and his star, Bruce Campbell show off a childlike glee as they workout different bits and gags they can do with the larger budget and platform they were given following the modest but notable success of Evil Dead 2. If you ask Raimi, he would say that he didn't need the budget that was given to him but he also then felt obligated to spend it since he had it. With that, we get both improved special effects and the kinds of practical effects that Raimi developed a remarkable talent for in the Evil Dead movies. 

The combinations of Harryhausen inspired practicality, music, and slightly more expensive effects, are used to create a low budget atmosphere on a relatively large budget. Raimi's homemade aesthetic somehow survives the move to a big studio feature and there is a wonderful charm to how Army of Darkness combines big effects with the kind of inventive, chaotic, weirdness that drove Raimi in his early career as a filmmaker. The delight Raimi and his collaborators take in creating comic gore, and paying tribute to low budget effects movies of the past is wonderfully infectious. 

Bruce Campbell however, is perhaps the best special effect in the movie. Campbell's ability for physical comedy, his willingness to put his body on the line for a gag, and his more than willingness to be silly, is an incredible asset to the charm of Army of Darkness. His Ash may talk like a cross between the tough guy banter of Bogart and the suave charm of Errol Flynn, but Campbell has a comic quality that neither of those legendary performers has. It's a sly ability to ride the razors edge between silly camp and action movie star that is a one of a kind combination. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Last Action Hero

Last Action Hero (1993) 

Directed by John McTiernan 

Written by Shane Black, David Arnott 

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dylan O'Brien, Charles Dance, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl, Tom Noonan 

Release Date June 18th, 1993  

Published June 19th 2023 

In the history of Hollywood debacles, Last Action Hero has quite a reputation. With massive budget overruns and egotistical executives pushing for an extremely misguided schedule and release date, Last Action Hero was a doomed production. Having began life as a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger style action movies, the film had to be radically retrofitted when Schwarzenegger chose to star in the film. No longer could the star be the subject of the jokes, he was now the one making the jokes. With Schwarzenegger aboard, the original screenwriters were booted in favor of Shane Black and David Arnott who were tasked with solving a tricky tone of meta-humor and action movie tropes. 

That a movie vaguely watchable came out of the mishmash or rewrites and revisions, that included something like 7 writers, including rewrites by William Goldman and Carrie Fisher, on top of the original duo of Zak Penn and Adam Leff. Both the director and star each offered insight on the script and well, you know what they say about Too Many Cooks? Yeah, way too many cooks took their turn in trying to boil up a workable version of Last Action Hero and the result is a bland, tasteless, pile of gruel, a little salty thanks to Schwarzenegger's star power, but mostly a forgettable and moderately distasteful meal. 

The concept is really the only thing anyone seemed to like about Last Action Hero. In the plot, a 12 year old boy named Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), receives a magical movie ticket as a gift from his friend, Nick the Projectionist (Robert Prosky), who has gifted Danny a preview showing of the new Jack Slater movie, Jack Slater 5. Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is an action movie hero in an action movie universe where he's an indestructible action machine who kills bad guys and cuts mad quips at their expense, all while rock music plays on a loop. 

It's everything an adrenalin fueled 12 year old could want, bullets, babes, bad guys, and our hero always wins in the end. This Jack Slater adventure however, is going to be a little different. Thanks to Danny's magic ticket, Danny is transported inside the movie. After dynamite seemingly blows up the movie theater, Danny wakes up in the back of Jack Slater's car, mid-car chase and shootout. Slater is as surprised as Danny to find a young boy in his back set, but that doesn't stop him from finishing off the bad guys and finishing the action scene. 

From there we explore the world of Jack Slater with Danny as our audience surrogate. All the while, Danny tries to convince Jack that they are in a movie in a series of jokes that diminish in comic returns each time. When Danny starts telling Jack that he saw the bad guys set up Jack's favorite second cousin Frank (Art Carney), Jack starts to take Danny seriously, a little bit. Things ramp up when the baddies realize Danny is on to them and the evil Mr. Benedict comes into possession of Danny's magic movie ticket and takes the chance to escape into the real world. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Blackening

The Blackening (2023) 

Directed by Tim Story 

Written by Tracy Oliver, Dewayne Perkins 

Starring Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Sinqua Walls 

Release Date June 16th, 2023 

Published June 19th, 2023 

The Blackening is a very funny and refreshing take on horror comedy. From the clever mind of director Tim Story and star/co-screenwriter Dewayne Perks and Tracy Oliver, The Blackening takes on numerous horror tropes and puts a new, exciting and often very funny twist on them. This is more than just because the cast is black, it's because the treatment of those well-worn tropes is inventive and really funny. The characters are unique and yet familiar, falling in line with classic horror tropes while upending the tropes with smart dialogue and clever sequences. 

The Blackening opens on a cabin the woods. Morgan (Yvonne Orji), and her boyfriend, Shawn (Jay Pharoah), engage in a series of meta-jokes as they come face to face with a bizarre and deeply problematic board game called The Blackening. Forced to play the game by some unseen bystander, the couple engage in the game and fail almost immediately when neither can name a black character who survived a well-known horror movie. The meta of the moment comes when Orji theorizes that Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett were killed off first in Scream 2 because they were big names that the production could not afford. Orji and Pharoah being, arguably, the best-known members of this cast, deliver this dialogue with a terrific comic knowingness. 

The rest of their party arrives soon after, though Morgan and Shawn are nowhere to be found. Arriving first are the threesome of Allison (Grace Byers), Lisa (Antoinette Robinson), and Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins). They have come for what is supposed to be a weekend of drugs, alcohol and college debauchery in honor of a 10-year college reunion. Lisa, however, has a secret motive. She's reconnected with her college boyfriend, Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), much to the aggravation of Dewayne who recalls the number of times that Nnamdi cheated on his best friend. 

Later arriving is King (Melvin Gregg), a former thug, according to the dialogue, not my interpretation, King is now a man of peace and zen who makes a point of mentioning that he's married to a white woman. That will become kind of important in one of the film's standout comic horror moments. The final guests arriving are Shanika (X May0), the absolute scene stealer of The Blackening, and Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), someone who may or may not have actually been invited to this reunion. He claims he was invited by Morgan but since she's MIA, there is no way to prove that. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review The Crush

The Crush (1993) 

Directed by Alan Shapiro 

Written by Alan Shapiro 

Starring Alicia Silverstone, Cary Elwes, Jennifer Rubin, Kurtwood Smith

Release Date April 2nd 1993 

Published June 17th, 2023 

According to writer-director Alan Shapiro, The Crush, is based on a real life experience he had in which a teenage girl developed a fixation on him that became obsessive. This was an exaggeration to say the least. The original film, as shot and scripted by Shapiro even used the real name of the teenager, he claimed inspired the film. Naturally, because she is portrayed as a murderous nutjob in the movie, the real-life teenager sued Shapiro for Defamation of Character. The studio responded by clumsily changing the name of the main character via a comically bad piece of over-dubbing. 

It's doubtful that Shapiro's story actually happened as he characterized it. The reality appears to be that creepy studio executives were eager to make a thriller based on sexualizing a teenage girl and found Shapiro's very silly, self-aggrandizing script in a pile and saw potential dollar signs from the always lucrative creep market. The production of the film seems to back up that assertion as Silverstone had to dodge the attempts by executives to get her to do nude scenes and sexual scenes beyond what is in the final film. 

So insistent on a nude scene was one particular executive that a compromise was made. A body double stripped down for a scene showing off her backside in place of Silverstone's. Bear in mind, Silverstone was 16 at the time she made The Crush and the character in the movie is slightly younger than that. A mere 30 years ago, a Hollywood executive felt comfortable enough to ask a teenage actress to do a nude scene in a movie and became so insistent on the baring of teenage flesh in the movie that they had to compromise with an adult body double. That's just some of the super creepy backstory of 1993's The Crush. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Horror in the 90s The Guardian

The Guardian (1990)

Directed by William Friedkin

Written by Stephen Volk, William Friedkin

Starring Dwier Brown, Carey Lowell, Jenny Seagrove

Release Date April 27th, 1990

Box Office $17,000,000

The Guardian stars Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell as Phil and Kate Sterling. Phil and Kate have just moved to Los Angeles and have just found out they are having their first baby. Exciting times continue as their two jobs afford them a lovely suburban home and the ability to hire a nanny to care for their baby. The nanny they end up with is Camilla, played by Jenny Seagrove. Camilla got the job after the woman they initially wanted disappeared.

We know that that woman, played in a cameo by the wonderful Teresa Randle, has been badly injured, or possibly killed in a bike accident. We see this but it’s never clear if Phil and Kate are aware of what happened. Regardless, they appear quite pleased with hiring Camilla who appears to be warm and caring and has good references that they choose not to look into because she appears so sweet and sincere. What Phil and Kate don’t know however, is that a baby Camilla cared for in her last job, went missing under suspicious circumstances.

This sounds vaguely like the plot of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, doesn’t it. Indeed, The Guardian, at one point, was envisioned as a thriller along that line, one taking advantage of the fears of young parents. Then, at another point, The Guardian was envisioned as a broad horror comedy to be directed by Sam Raimi about a mystical being that cares for an ancient tree by providing the tree with the blood of babies. When Raimi left the project and was replaced by directing legend William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist apparently decided to mash these two disparate premises together.

Thus we have The Guardian a horror-thriller about an evil enchanted tree protector who steals babies from unsuspecting couples to feed her evil enchanted tree. This sounds comic but it is not intended to be funny in any way. It is however, just as sloppy, slipshod, and silly, as such a mash-up of movies would inevitably be. Friedkin choosing to keep both movies that The Guardian used to be and trying to awkwardly weld them together ends up delivering a desperately confused and unintentionally funny horror mess.

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Movie Review Kidnap

Kidnap (2017) 

Directed by Luis Prieto

Written by Knate Lee 

Starring Halle Berry, Lew Temple

Release Date August 4th, 2017

Halle Berry has been on an astonishing losing streak at the box office since she won the Academy Award for her starring role in Monster’s Ball. Ever since the night she won people’s hearts with her teary and historic Oscar acceptance speech, Berry has made one wrong turn after another whether making bad big budget comic book movies, all X-Men sequels or spinoffs, or bad low budget thrillers, Perfect Stranger, Gothika, The Call, or head-scratching, defiantly awful fare such as Movie 43, Cloud Atlas and Catwoman, Berry seemed bent on full career sabotage.

This brings us to Kidnap which by default, Things We Lost in the Fire wasn’t bad, may be the best movie Berry has made in well over a decade. The story of a mother attempting to retrieve her stolen child, Kidnap may be a super low budget, cheapie thriller, but Berry gives the role all she’s got, even if she is occasionally out shined by her magical car-chase minivan.

In Kidnap Berry portrays Karla Dyson, a waitress who somehow can afford a brand-new Ford minivan on a salary of tips and minimum wage. Karla is amid a divorce and a custody battle when she takes her son Frankie (Sage Correa) to a carnival at a local park. When her divorce attorney calls, Karla takes her eye off her son for a moment and doesn’t see him again until she spies a large woman wrestling the boy into a beat up old Mustang.

After attempting to wrestle the Mustang to a stop with her momma bear determination, Karla loads into her minivan to give chase and Kidnap becomes an almost non-stop car chase thriller. I will say this for director Luis Prieto, he keeps up a quick pace. Kidnap comes and goes in just over 80 minutes and there is very little fat on the narrative. The film’s camera work and editing can be a tad too chaotic but that’s likely a function of the setting, a New Orleans highway system, and the film’s very tight budget.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower (2017) 

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel

Starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Jackie Earl Haley

Release Date August 4th, 2017 

To whomever said that Stephen King’s epic novel The Dark Tower was un-adaptable to the big screen, we owe you a Coke. The supremely silly movie sequel to King’s dense Dark Tower book series is an embarrassment to all involved from King to director Nicolaj Arcel to Academy Award winning star Matthew McConaughey and Academy Award nominated producer Ron Howard, who for some reason passed on directing The Dark Tower himself; golly, I can’t imagine why?

The work of the prolific Mr. King seems to resist adaptation in the same way a country might resist an invading army. Don’t misunderstand, some have managed to pull off the trick; Stanley Kubrick made The Shining, though Stephen King hated his adaptation; Frank Darabont did okay with The Green Mile but again, King hated that one as well and even The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t beloved by the creator even as audiences loved it. Of the 50 or so King properties made into television or feature films, only a handful have turned out watchable and The Dark Tower is not one of those movies.

Idris Elba is the star of The Dark Tower as Roland the Eld, a Gunslinger living on a Middle Earth where everything has been lost to some sort of apocalypse started by the evil Walter (Matthew McConaughey), a sorcerer(?) bent on destroying the Dark Tower which stands in the middle of a dozen or so galaxies and protects from the ultimate evil beyond the stars. Standing alongside Roland is teenager Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) whose visionary nightmares brought him to this middle earth, not the Lord of the Rings one, a Stephen King one, where he hopes to prevent the apocalypse on his version of Earth(?). (The movie is such a mess it's impossible to say whether Walter is a sorcerer or what Jake's motivations truly are, hence all the question marks.)

The Dark Tower was director by Nicolaj Arcel who seems entirely over-matched by this material. Arcel’s previous effort was the studious period piece A Royal Affair and it showed he could wrangle a sweet period piece romance but I am not sure what producer Ron Howard saw in that film that led them to believe Arcel could marshal the silliness of The Dark Tower into anything other than another abominable Stephen King adaptation.

Poor Matthew McConaughey takes it on the chin for the cast of The Dark Tower. While Taylor has youth as an excuse and while Elba can fall back on the cool Gunslinger persona, McConaughey is adrift as the ultimate evil, Walter. Sure, he’s also referred to as The Man in Black but even then, his costume includes a long coat with shoulder pads that make him look more 80s Dynasty diva than ultimate evil. Why they decided that the ultimate evil, worse than the Devil, Roland claims, should be called Walter is one of several bizarre decisions made by the creators of The Dark Tower. Sure, that could be something from King's book but even then, they could have written that part out of the movie considering how this is a follow-up to the books and not a straight adaptation.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe (1987) 

Directed by Gary Goddard

Written by David Odell 

Starring Dolph Lundgren, Courtney Cox, Frank Langella

Release Date August 7th, 1987 

The legendary John Waters once defined camp, on an episode of The Simpsons, as “The tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic.” The 1987 movie Masters of the Universe pre-dates that definition of camp by more than a decade but nevertheless defines it perfectly. Masters of the Universe is a tragically ludicrous idea undermined by greed, hubris and the outright silly notion that just because something catches on with child audiences it can be translated to film in anything other than a pathetic attempt at pandering.

There are several famous Hollywood stories from the behind the scenes creation of Masters of the Universe but few capture the essence of this horrible idea for a movie in the way that this one does. One day, Dolph Lundgren’s Rocky 4 co-star Sylvester Stallone visited the set of Masters of the Universe and seeing his former co-star exchanging dialogue with co-star Courtney Cox, Stallone expressed his apoplexy by asking an executive on set “You gave that guy dialogue?”

Indeed, Dolph Lundgren is given dialogue and through his remarkably thick accent even the simple catchphrase “I HAVE THE POWER” comes off like The Simpsons' hilarious Schwarzenegger parody, Rainier Wolfcastle, attempting a similar line from that shows' movie within a show about the fake comic book hero Radioactive Man. Undoubtedly, The Simpsons writers must have been huge ironic fans of Masters of the Universe.

Masters of the Universe was a compromised product from its very conception but that could not be clearer to fans of He-Man than in the film’s first scenes. The very first thing that happens in Masters of the Universe is that the villain Skeletor (Frank Langella, poor, misguided Frank Langella), has accomplished his long-time cartoon goal of taking over the fictional planet of Eternia. Fans can be forgiven for being floored by this as the cartoon series had been built around the battle to protect Castle Greyskull and its universe conquering powers from Skeletor and he’s just accomplished his greatest goal off-screen.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media