Movie Review I Do Until I Don't

I Do Until I Don't (2017) 

Directed by Lake Bell 

Written by Lake Bell 

Starring Lake Bell, Ed Helms, Mary Steenburgen, Paul Reiser, Amber Heard, Wyatt Cenac, Chase Crawford 

Release Date September 1st, 2017 

Published August 30th, 2017 

Lake Bell is quickly proving herself as a jack of all trades. She started her career in the role of the slightly less gorgeous best friend in movies before taking a major U-turn from pursuing movie stardom. When her What Happens in Vegas co-star Rob Corddry pitched the idea of the then web series Children's Hospital, it was an unlikely choice, one I’m sure her agent wasn’t exactly excited about. Then the series became a cult hit, earning a place on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup it showed Hollywood that Lake Bell was more than just the pretty face.

But Lake Bell wasn’t finished taking risks. In 2013, instead of making the move back to features or a full-time TV gig, she had plenty of options, Bell decided to cultivate a small budget and make a movie of her own in which she was writer, director, and star. In a World was a charming, delightful and highly original love story about a voice-over artist who dreams of getting that one big gig and become the first woman to utter the phrase that became a cliche of so many sci-fi action movies of the past In a World.

With the small budget, In a World became a solid hit and earned Lake Bell the capital to do more writing, directing and starring. This time her idea, called I Do Until I Don’t, was a bit more of a struggle. Having begun writing the screenplay immediately following the production and release of In a World, Lake began the story as a skeptical exploration of why people get married. The intent then was to deconstruct marriage and ask why this seemingly antiquated ritual was still a thing.

Then Lake met and fell in love with her husband Scott Campbell and they had two kids and the story, throughout this wonderful, if tumultuous time, evolved from a skeptical take to a more nuanced and thoughtful take on why people fall in love and the work it takes to stay in love.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Amazon Women on the Moon

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) 

Directed by Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss 

Written by Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland 

Starring Arsenio Hall, Michelle Pfeiffer, Joe Pantoliano, David Allan Grier, Rosanna Arquette 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 18tth, 2017 

One of the first movies I ever reviewed on my podcast, when it was still called I Hate Critics, now Everyone’s a Critic, was a disconcerting sketch comedy movie called Movie 43. The film was a series of appalling short films strung together with no narrative under a title that one could imagine it having been randomly assigned by a movie studio for storage purposes, not intended for theatrical release. That this series of short films starred such actors as Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Liev Schreiber, and Naomi Watts are the only reason Movie 43 ever saw the light of day.

When I saw Movie 43 I had never even heard of the obscure 1987 comedy Amazon Women on the Moon. I take that back, I did hear of it but I assumed it was some sort of softcore pornographic comedy. I think I may have also confused it with the movie Cannibal Women in the Amazon Jungle of Death, an epically unfunny spoof movie starring Bill Maher, before Politically Incorrect, oddly enough, and Shannon Tweed.

It turns out, Amazon Women on the Moon is everything that Movie 43 wished it could have been, trenchant, hilarious, weird, and just plain fun. Twenty-six years before Movie 43 strung together a random assemblage of movie stars in unfunny short films, writers and directors John Landis, Carl Gottlieb, Robert K. Weiss, and Carl Dante, all born from the Roger Corman school of filmmaking, pulled off the trick Movie 43 so desperately failed at, a ragingly funny sketch comedy movie.

Amazon Women on the Moon consists of 19 short films, some related, some not. The sketches do vary in quality, with Joe Dante really stealing the show in his portions, while Robert K. Weiss struggles a little with the film’s title sketch. Landis and Gottlieb go a far less traditional route with mostly good results, especially Gottlieb’s use of nudity which is wonderfully absurd and genuinely inspired.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Birth of the Dragon

Birth of the Dragon (2017) 

Directed by George Nolfi 

Written by Christopher Wilkinson, Stephen J. Rivele 

Starring Phillip Wan-tung Ng, Xia Yu, Jin Xing, Billy Magnusson 

Release Date August 25th, 2017 

Published August 24th, 2017

Birth of the Dragon has been marketed as the story of Bruce Lee learning to grow and become more disciplined, humble, and dedicated to his craft after being confronted by a famed Shaolin Master named Wong Jack Man. Instead, Birth of the Dragon is a ludicrously misguided combination of faux-history and one of the worst conceived Bruce Lee movies in history. It's as bad as the films that inserted old Bruce Lee footage after his death into different movies that were then marketed as Bruce Lee movies.

Birth of the Dragon was directed by George Nolfi who acquits himself well as a visual stylist but as a writer he fails to understand why this movie should not have been made in the first place. The story is based off an ungodly awful, mostly apocryphal story in a 1980 Kung Fu magazine. The writer of that story brings together three separate accounts of a fight between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man and it is written in a style that is reminiscent of the worst of modern internet writing. Supposed professional writers dedicate themselves to writing about information in other people’s articles, stealing without stealing what others wrote as if by stealing from multiple other sources you’ve somehow written your own article.

That is not exactly the best place to begin an artistic endeavor but then things get so much worse from there. The idea is supposed to be about this legendary 1964 fight between two Kung Fu masters that forever changed how Bruce Lee used Kung Fu, creating his legendary Jeet Kune Do style. However, because the writers, director, producers, and distributors apparently felt that mass audiences wouldn’t take to a story about Asian Americans, even if one of them is portraying BRUCE LEE(!!!!!!) we get an entirely invented character named Steve McKee who is so terribly portrayed by Billy Magnusson that I genuinely felt sorry for the young man that this performance is preserved on screen.

Magnusson is awful because his role is so incredibly stock and was built solely for the purpose of creating a character that dumb white audiences could relate to. This is the kind of quietly insidious racial politicking that we as critics and audiences have been allowing Hollywood to get away with for far too long and frankly, I am done. I recently wrote about a wonderful film called Wind River which shone a different kind of light on this type of casting. That film cast white movie stars because it had an urgent cry of a story to tell and needed to use white movie stars as a megaphone for an important purpose. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review England is Mine

England is Mine (2017) 

Directed by Mark Gill 

Written by Mark Gill 

Starring Jack Lowden, Jessica Brown Findlay, Laurie Kynaston 

Release Date August 4th, 2017 

Published August 3rd, 2017

I have to believe that writer and singer Morrissey is more interesting than the version of him brought to light in the movie England is Mine. I cannot sit here and tell you I know much more about Morrissey than what I read on his Wikipedia page. I can’t name a single Smiths song or Morrissey solo single. That said, I still know who he is. Somehow through some kind of pop cultural osmosis I know who Morrissey is and that is enough to tell me he must be interesting, he has to be more interesting than this mopey, dopey boring version of Morrissey in England is Mine.

England is Mine, which I am told is a lyric from a Smiths song, picks up the story of Steven Patrick Morrissey in his teenage years. Steven is not your standard English teenager. He likes to write lengthy letters to the music magazine NME criticizing the music scene in his corner of England and secretly hoping that someone at NME might read him and give him a job. His other hope is to become part of a band but he seems so crippled by social anxiety that even when an opportunity presents itself he’s too frightened to pursue it.

Morrissey’s life, according to England is Mine, hinges on his chance friendship with artist and singer Linder Sterling (Jessica Brown Sterling). Sterling entered Morrissey’s life after criticizing one of his letters to NME and then arranging to meet him. Linder is everything that Steven is not, outgoing, aspiring, happy. She takes to Steven in the fashion of a muse but not exactly an inspiration. Linder is the gentle prod that finally gets Steven to take himself seriously and become a singer. Linder herself could be the subject of a film as her influence as both an artist and a singer was a significant part of English punk and new wave music and yet you would not know that from England is Mine which doesn't even mention that she had her own band.

One might think that Morrissey taking the stage for the very first time with the band The Nosebleeds in 1978 might be some incredible moment. I would imagine that there are Smiths fans who wish they could have been at that club that night. And yet, England is Mine barely gives the moment any weight. Here is a true pop cultural artifact for the very people England is Mine is attempting to appeal to and the film gives it less weight than scenes where Morrissey is angrily scribbling in a notebook while suffering the mediocrity of a day job in the tax office.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Cupid's Proxy

Cupid's Proxy (2017) 

Directed by Jason Dallas 

Written by Jules Howe 

Starring Jet Jurgensmeyer, Valerie Azlynn, Jackee Harry, Steve Byrne 

Release Date September 12th, 2017 

Published September 11th, 2017 

Cupid’s Proxy imagines a world in which newspapers still employ advice columnists like the Landers’ sisters and paid them well enough to live in toney suburbs. The advice columnist here is Olive aka Cupid (Jackee Harry) whose advice column has grown stale and out of touch, much like the newspaper that still employs an advice columnist. To spice up her column Olive turns to the actual star of Cupid’s Proxy, 12 year old Disney star Jet Jurgensmeyer as 12 year old Justin Murphy.

When Olive asks Justin’s advice about what to write to a young reader, she rips off his reply wholesale and it becomes a viral hit. On the verge of being fired, Olive hires the 12 YEAR OLD BOY to give love advice using the kind of stereotypical Millennial-speak that even Millennials would make fun of, and that’s quite an accomplishment considering they’re the first generation post-sarcasm. The story, such as it is, revolves on Justin giving love advice under the pseudonym Cupid’s Proxy and ending up giving love advice to his music teacher, Stewart (Byrne) about how to romance Justin’s own mother Rebecca (Valerie Azlynn).

I promise that the premise is far less creepy in execution than in my horrifying description. There is genuinely nothing insidious about Cupid’s Proxy, it’s just another obvious, unfunny product, market tested into mediocrity. For the most part, Cupid’s Proxy is harmless; some might even find it cute. I found the film cloying, pushy, pointless, slightly sexist and brainless but again, mostly just a mediocrity.

Jet Jurgensmeyer is not a terrible young actor. He seems to have good timing for a young comic actor and he sparks well with the other characters but he’s not ready for the primetime spotlight of a leading role in a feature film. He has yet to master that thin line between trying and trying too hard to sell a gag or a line. It’s something that might come with time but for now, he’s no match for a leading role, especially one as poorly conceived as the lead role in Cupid’s Proxy.

That said, Jurgensmeyer could learn a little something from his young co-star Carolyn Dodd. Dodd plays Nat, a neighbor girl with a crush on Justin. Nat has a bad habit of talking way too fast and way too much and it’s this tick that steals a few scenes and earns a few of the film’s minor chuckles. Dodd has little experience but she’s quite adorable in Cupid’s Proxy, even amid the mediocrity around her.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Wind River

Wind River (2017) 

Directed by Taylor Sheridan 

Written by Taylor Sheridan 

Starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olson, Graham Green, Gil Birmingham, Q'Orianka Kilcher  

Release Date September 8th, 2017 

Published September 8th, 2017 

Wind River is one of the most emotional experiences I have had at the movies in 2017. The modern western from writer-director Taylor Sheridan is a cold and harsh drama about a cold and harsh place where these characters don’t merely live, they survive. The film also shines a devastating light on the plight of Native Americans and the criminal lack of care we give to their living conditions and well-being. That it takes a white writer-director and two white movie stars to get this story told says nearly as much as the movie itself.

Wind River begins terrifyingly with a young Native American woman running through a barren, snow covered valley. You can feel the cold simply from her manner and the way Sheridan films her running at a distance. Upon closer look your fear for her amps up as it is revealed that she is not wearing shoes or gloves. She collapses and tries to get up and keep going, she’s bleeding. The scene fades to black with her running toward a forest on a mountainside.

The body of the young girl, Natalie, is found a day later by Corey (Jeremy Renner), a hunter employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Administration as he is tracking mountain lions that have been attacking livestock. Corey knows the young girl and her family, they live on the reservation where he met his now ex-wife (Q’Orianka Kilcher). The dead girl was a friend of Corey’s late daughter.

Since the death happened on an Indian Reservation, the jurisdiction is murky, somewhere between County Sheriff’s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI. The FBI is represented by Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olson), an inexperienced agent from Las Vegas who is ill-prepared for the frozen conditions of Utah; she is somehow the closest available agent for the job despite being stationed nearly 400 miles away.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Leap

Leap (2017) 

Directed by Eric Summer, Eric Wann 

Written by Eric Summer, Laurent Zeitoun, Carole Noble 

Starring Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, Maddie Ziegler, Carly Rae Jepsen

Release Date February 24th, 2017 

Published February 25th, 2017 

It’s bizarre to me at times the things we feel are alright simply because they are animated. Take for instance the new animated family movie Leap which, while it tells a lovely story of an aspiring ballerina, spends a portion of its third act following a crazy woman as she attempts to murder two orphan children. Now, I get it, they’re animated but the choice made here is so incredibly forced and horrible that it doesn’t feel like Elmer Fudd’s failed attempts to murder Bug Bunny but something far more grim, ugly and worst of all, unnecessary.

Leap tells the story of Felicie (voiced by Elle Fanning) and her friend Victor (voiced by Nat Wolff) who escape from an orphanage on the outskirts of France and head to Paris to achieve their dreams. While Victor dreams inventing a way to fly, Felicie dreams of being a dancer and her dream is what drives the plot as she quite literally stumbles her way into the most prestigious dance company in Paris. There she meets Odette (voiced by Carly Rae Jepsen) who becomes her mentor and mother figure.

After Felicie nabs an invitation to attend the famed dance company from a talented but bratty rival (voiced by Maddie Ziegler) she begins attending classes while Odette begins to train her in secret. Odette used to be a dancer herself and in one of the film’s many abandoned plot strands, her background as a famed dancer is barely mentioned before it is pushed aside. Eventually, Felicie’s ruse is uncovered by the evil mother of her bratty rival (voiced in typically over the top manner by SNL star Kate McKinnon), and Felicie must fight for her chance to remain in class and in competition for the lead role in a major production or end up being sent back to the orphanage.

There are lovely moments in Leap but for each lovely moment there is a head-scratchingly awful moment such as a montage of Victor regaling Felicie with his own Paris adventure which he describes as triumph while we suffer/watch footage of him stumbling, falling and at one point lighting farts. Yes, this lovely movie about a young girl dreaming of life in the ballet contains a scene where a young boy lights his fart. Because, apparently, Hollywood hates your children

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon (1973) 

Directed by Robert Clouse 

Written by Michael Allin 

Starring Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly 

Release Date August 19th, 1973 

Published August 19th, 1973 

This week’s classic on the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast is Enter the Dragon, the final film in the all too short career of the legendary Bruce Lee. I have had little exposure to kung fu movies in my nearly 20 years as a film critic. Aside from some 80s cheese like The Last Dragon or the work of Jackie Chan, I have mostly ignored the genre having written it off based mostly on the stereotypes built from years of Bruce Lee knock-offs and cash-ins that soured more than just me on the idea of kung fu movies as anything other than the sad side of the B-movie genre.

Watching Enter the Dragon for the first time sadly is no revelation for me. While I came away with a great deal of respect for why fans took so much to Bruce Lee as a performer, I found the film not all that special. Lee’s magnetism goes a long way to making the otherwise predictable, bordering on silly story worth watching but the screen time spent waiting for Lee to start kicking butt is quite tedious and I found myself drifting.

In Enter the Dragon Bruce Lee stars as a martial arts master, also named Lee, who is recruited by a shady intelligence organization to attend a martial arts tournament run by the kind of super-villain that only exists in martial arts movies, Mr. Han played by former Drunken Master star Shih Kien. Mr. Han owns his own island in the Pacific and despite the best efforts of this intelligence agency they aren’t sure if he is amassing weapons or not.

The agency needs Lee to participate in a deadly martial arts tournament hosted by Han on his island and find out if there are indeed illegal weapons that would allow international military to attack the island. Lee agrees to the mission and then finds out that the mission has a personal component for him. We meet Lee’s father and he informs Lee and us that Lee’s sister was murdered by Han’s thugs in a seemingly random killing.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Logan Lucky

Logan Lucky (2017) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written by Rebecca Blunt 

Starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Katie Holmes, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston, Sebastian Stan 

Release Date August 18th, 2017 

Published August 17th, 2017 

Being a fan of the American history podcast The Dollop allows me to watch a movie like Logan Lucky and never for a moment find the story implausible. Take a listen to them tell the remarkable true story titled Jet-Pack Madness and you will find within it a story every bit as brilliant as a Coen Brothers comedy. Everything in Logan Lucky feels completely plausible when you compare it to such historic silliness as what transpired with the Jet-Pack or the L.A Freeway Shootout or The Human Taco.

The Dollop has nothing to do with Logan Lucky but I could not help thinking of how Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds would tell this story if it were true. I imagine it would be just as good as the movie Steven Soderbergh has made, a crazy story of crime, family, pride, NASCAR, and the South. That Logan Lucky is also a heist movie is nearly incidental, as if these characters existing as they do might make for a good enough story but that they happen to pulling off a multi-million dollar NASCAR-themed heist certainly makes things even more colorful.

The Logan family is cursed or at least that is what little brother Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) believes and he would be happy to regale you with his tragic family background while he pours beer at a West Virginia bar called Duck-Tape. Older brother Jimmy (Channing Tatum) doesn’t buy into the curse, though Clyde’s point is understandable, he’s just back from losing an arm in Iraq while Jimmy lost a scholarship to play Quarterback at LSU when he blew out his knee and just as we meet him, Jimmy is fired from his job working construction underneath the famed Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Nevertheless, Jimmy doesn’t buy into Clyde’s curse talk, especially since he’s decided to pull off a multi-million-dollar vault heist and doesn't need the bad juju on his mind right now. Having been fired from his job where he operated an earth mover beneath the famed North Carolina race track, Jimmy has found out where all the money from the stadium concessions goes and how it gets there. The only thing standing in his way is the vault but Jimmy happens to know a guy who can help, if they can get him out of prison.\

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Hitman's Bodyguard

The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017) 

Directed by Patrick Hughes 

Written by Tom O'Connor 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Salma Hayek, Gary Oldman, Richard E. Grant 

Release Date August 18th, 2017 

Published August 17th, 2017

The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a very divisive film. Not because it has any challenging themes but rather because it is both a laugh riot and quite a bad movie. At once, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is very, quite intentionally, funny and quite poorly directed. I call the film divisive not because audiences will either love or loathe the film in equal measure but rather because I am divided personally by the fact that I repeatedly laughed quite loud during the film and by the fact that the film’s green screen effects, storytelling, and casting are so shoddy that at times I physically wretched.

Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson co-star in The Hitman’s Bodyguard, with Jackson as the hitman and Reynolds as the bodyguard (the too clever by half poster parodies the Whitney Houston-Kevin Costner movie). Jackson is the world’s most wanted hitman, Darius Kincaid. He’s been captured by Interpol after they arrested his wife, Sonia (Salma Hayek) and threatened to hold her in prison until he turned himself and testified against world renowned terrorist and Belarussian dictator Vladislav Dukovich (Gary Oldman, so bored of this role he can barely keep his terrible makeup job from falling off from his obvious, repeated eye-rolling).

When Interpol is compromised by the single most obvious mole in history, played by Joachim De Almeida, who might as well walk around with TRAITOR tattooed to his forehead, Agent Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung) calls in her ex-boyfriend, Michael Bryce (Reynolds) to take Darius to court. Naturally, this court happens to be all the way across Europe and the two mismatched pals must road trip through Vlad’s terrorist gang to get to their destination.

Yeah, this plot is terrible, ludicrously, painfully obvious and extremely played out. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is forced, clichéd, and predictable to the point of torture for anyone who’s seen more than one movie in their lifetime. Director Patrick Hughes then makes matters worse by topping his bad plot with even worse direction, including special effects that make the rear-projection in Saturday Night Live skits look great by comparison.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review The Big Easy

The Big Easy (1987) 

Directed by Jim McBride 

Written by Daniel Petrie Jr. 

Starring Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, Ned Beatty 

Release Date August 21st, 1987 

Published August 21st, 2017 

This week in 1987 The Big Easy starring Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin and directed by Jim McBride was released nationwide following a brief run on the awards circuit in late 1986. The film tells the story of a corrupt New Orleans Police Detective named Remy McSwain, played by Quaid, who’s about to learn that corruption doesn’t really pay. Ellen Barkin is a District Attorney tasked with investigating Remy’s corruption and that of his fellow New Orleans brothers in Blue.

Director Jim McBride is best remembered for his 1982 remake of Jean Luc Godard’s iconic Breathless, with Richard Gere in the Jean Paul Belmondo role, Valerie Kaprisky in the Jean Seberg role and Las Vegas standing in for Paris. McBride, it seems, had a longstanding fascination with the French New Wave as not only did he remake Breathless, but in The Big Easy he tells the kind of American crime story that directors like Godard, Truffaut and Melville cite as their earliest influences.

Does that make The Big Easy good? Eh, it gives it a perspective, I guess. The problem with The Big Easy isn’t necessarily the movie, it’s time. Time has not been kind to movies in the crime genre. In the last 30 years’ dozens of films have trod upon similar ground, enough to make The Big Easy feel like just another copycat. That McBride may have been attempting an homage to his French New Wave influences is nice, but the only thing French about The Big Easy is its locational relation to the French Quarter.

Mr. McBride directs The Big Easy not like the dispassionate French crime stories but rather exactly like the old 40’s Hollywood pictures that the New Wave ate up. When the New Wave remade those pictures their French-ness made the stories feel fresh and innovative. In 1987 when McBride crafted his crime movie homage his only innovation was R-Rated sex and violence. Nothing about The Big Easy feels fresh anymore as a zillion other pictures have come along and were better at portraying corruption, sex, and violence.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Bob Le Flambeur

Bob Le Flambeur (1956) 

Directed by Jean Pierre Melville 

Written by Jean Pierre Melville, August Le Breton 

Starring Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Guy Decombie 

Release Date August 24th, 1956 

The classic on this week’s Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast is, arguably, the very first film of the French New Wave, Bob Le Flambeur, translated as Bob the Gambler. Bob Le Flambeur is a classic American style heist film seen through the lens of a French admirer of American movies, Jean Pierre Melville. It is Melville’s French sensibility, the way he focuses not on the heist but on the atmosphere of a heist that separates Bob Le Flambeur from American heist movies which had and have turned safe-cracking and men smoking in back rooms leaning over complex drawings into classic film tropes.

Bob Le Flambeur stars Roger Duchesne as the calm, cool and collected, Bob Mantagne. Bob is a well-known and respected former gangster turned well-known and slightly less respected gambler. I shouldn’t put gambler second on Bob’s résumé, as betting seems to Bob as breathing is to the rest of us. As he recounts in the story, Bob was born with an Ace in his palm. Gambling is Bob’s only skill after he lost several years of his life behind bars after blowing a bank heist that killed a friend.

That friend’s son, Paolo (Daniel Cauchy), is now like an apprentice to Bob; a young hustler soaking up Bob’s aura while Bob works to keep the kid from making the mistakes that got his father killed. One of those mistakes would be teaming up with Marc, a pimp with an eye toward building a gangster portfolio by pulling one high-end job. Paolo is narrowly rescued from being at Marc’s side when he’s arrested for beating one of his working girls. Here the film shifts focus from Bob to impart important plot information that I will leave unmentioned here.

The scene is also a further introduction to Inspector Ledru (Guy Decomble) who happens to consider Bob a good friend despite his gangster past. Ledru is the key figure in the dramatic structure of Bob Le Flambeur and the most notably filmic character, a rarity in what is otherwise a less than straight-forward adaptation of the American style gangster movie. Ledru is a requirement of the plot and his arc is significant to the emotional underpinnings of what is otherwise an exercise in cool, French homage.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Challengers

Challengers (2024) 

Directed by Luca Guadagnino 

Written by Justin Kuritzkes 

Starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O'Connor 

Release Date April 26th, 2024

Published April 26th, 2024 

Sexuality is non-binary. Full stop. Sexuality is a spectrum on which we all exist. The notion of straight or gay as a binary dynamic of sexuality is outdated to the point of being silly. That's not to say that people's desires, what turns them on, can't be just one thing that happens to adhere to the notion of straight or gay, it's merely an acknowledgment that sexuality for anyone can be a fluid concept depending on circumstance. This opening paragraph is triggering a lot of straight men, I can feel the discomfort as they click away in anger. 

Challengers is a rare film that explores the idea of sexuality as a spectrum. The three protagonists of Challengers, two men and a woman, have a brief, exploratory experience that gets at the heart of how circumstantial sexual preference can be. The film also reframes what sex can be in an orgasmic final showdown that reveals these three characters true desires in a fast paced, eye-catching, and breathtaking final few minutes. Director Luca Guadagnino appears to be making the case that anything can be sex its if the circumstances align. 

Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a tennis prodigy caught up in a love triangle with a pair of fellow prodigies. Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor) have been friends since their early teen years spent at a tennis academy. Both are gifted players in very different ways. Art is methodical and well practiced, Patrick gets by on brut strength and determination, along with an unusual serve. The two young men compliment each other and when each falls for Tashi, it becomes not unlike a tennis match filled with strategic points and breaks. 

But Tashi is no mere ball at play among these two players. She's their coach, teaching them both the game. Literally, she becomes Art's Coach as his career advances while Patrick seeks her as a Coach later in his career. The film shifts through time effortlessly layering in the story to build toward that remarkable final act tennis match where Art and Patrick are playing the game of their lives with Tashi acting as mastermind and the prize for the winner while losing herself in the excitement of tennis. 

For Tashi, life is tennis. Her relationship with Patrick falls apart when he refuses to talk about tennis while the two are becoming intimate. Her relationship and eventual marriage to Art is tethered in part to his success on the tennis court and she's not afraid to tell him that if he can't maintain his high standard of play, she will lose interest and leave him. This constant pressure from Tashi has made Art one of the most successful players in tennis, a grand slam winner, and a favorite for the upcoming U.S Open. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) 

Directed by Guy Ritchie 

Written by Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel, Guy Ritchie 

Starring Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Eiza Gonzalez 

Release Date April 19th, 2024 

Published April 23rd, 2024 

It's the flippancy of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare that rubs me the wrong way. I feel like we've grown so used to minimizing the dangers of war and the real risk of life and limb, that we risk removing the human element from war entirely. The new Guy Ritchie movie, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare plays a role in this dehumanization by taking a mostly true story and rendering it something akin to the Quentin Tarentino fantasy of Inglorious Basterds, minus the artistry. Tarentino side steps the flippant reimaging of World War 2 because he's not working from a 'based on a true story' archetype. The soldiers of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare were very real and really risked everything for their country. 

To take their story and render it like some action movie fantasy feels like a disservice that denigrates the genuine bravery and hardship of these real life heroes. These men, and one woman, didn't do what they did to be cool, they did it because it needed to be done. Rendering them as shallow action movie stock characters removes their complexity and humanity. This is the kind of needless revisionism that is obscuring real history far too often and despite my appreciation for the actors and the mostly solid direction of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, I can't fully enjoy or appreciate the film because the real story is way more interesting to me than the action movie tropes of the movie. 

Henry Cavill portrays Gus March-Phillips, a wild eyed Englishman with a taste for the finer things and a willingness to get his hands dirty. As we meet him, Gus has been in jail for repeated instances of insubordination. He's a menace to commanding officers and politicians alike. He's perfect for the job to be assigned to him, one that cannot be directly overseen by anyone. Gus' mission involves crippling the Nazi supply chain for U-Boats and thus opening the ocean for the Americans to enter the war. It's an entirely off the books mission as Winston Churchill's top military brass don't believe such a mission is possible, it violates the code of an ethical war. 

Thus, Gus and his team are assembled in secret by General Gubbins (Cary Elwes) who advises Gus that if he is caught by the Nazis, they will die and if they are caught by the English Navy, they will be arrested. Now, about Gus' team. Anders Larsson (Alan Ritschson) is a brutish Swedish man whose pasttime is killing Nazis. Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is the son of a very good friend of Gus's from back in the day. He keeps Hayes close to keep an eye on but he's also a whiz with guns and explosives. Speaking of explosives, Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding) knows everything when it comes to blowing things up. He's been in and out of prisons across Europe for blowing things up for fun and profit. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Horror of Dracula

Horror of Dracula (1958) 

Directed by Terence Fisher 

Written by Jimmy Sangster 

Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough 

Release Date May 7th 1958 

Published April 25th, 2024 

If you're going to talk about Dracula and sexuality, you're not going to start with Bela Lugosi. Lugosi's monster may have sexual overtones, Dracula has always been a metaphor for sex, often a symbol of non-consensual sex or used as a fetish figure who represents male sexual dominance or merely a figure representing the seductive nature of taking power over others. But, Bela Lugosi isn't hot. He's not a bad looking dude, per se, but there are few if any people who look at Bela Lugosi and are overcome with a form of erotomania. 

On the other hand, Christopher Lee has that going on. Though he is unconventionally attractive, he has a towering, powerful presence. Lee's eyes appear to be devouring those he's looking at. His every action, every look on his face is filled with a confident, overbearing sense of his own sexual prowess. In the most crass and basic sense, Lee's Count Dracula is a Dracula who F***s. Lugosi's approach was more asexual, leaning on his desire for power over others to be his driving dramatic force. For Lee, and even more prominently, Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the driving force is eroticism, it's metaphoric sex. The desire for blood is both for sustaining life comfortably and about a forceful sexuality barely concealed. 

1958's Horror of Dracula is a showcase for Christopher Lee's overwhelming presence. It's about those eyes that bore into yours. It's about him looking down at his victims and them looking up at him to subtly and not-so-subtly underline the power fantasy and dynamic at play in Lee's take on the character. Where Max Schreck's Nosferatu is like an incel take on Vampire lore, Lee's Dracula is like a proto-Andrew Tate or one of those pick up artist guys constantly touting their power over women, and sometimes men. Lee's Dracula isn't about murder, he doesn't actually kill the women he covets, he turns them. His intent is keep them and use them against their will for his pleasure, that's his kink. 

Making a woman do something she doesn't want to do. That's the driving force of Lee's Dracula and it's bizarre how that parallels with our modern culture of Alpha Males. The Alpha Males often talk about the power they wish to wield over women. It's about bending a woman to that will, getting them to submit to what the man wants in a relationship, it's their fetish, just as it is Dracula's fetish in Horror of Dracula and as portrayed by Christopher Lee. It's not about blood or murder, it's kink. It's a power fantasy and an appealing one for the Alpha Male types as they could never achieve this kind of control over women, but they can live vicariously through Lee's Dracula. 

The proof of my thesis about Alpha Males and their kink, their fetish for power, comes in an unlikely form, a woman named Pearl. Every now and then, a podcaster named Pearl goes viral for something she said or something that someone said about her. Pearl is often called a 'Pick Me,' a woman who is eager to submit to a male dominated hierarchy. Pearl has talked many times about how women have too many rights and claims that women are happier when they simply submit to the desires of a man. You might assume that the Alpha Males applaud Pearl and are eager to find a woman just like her, but that's not the case. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review Clifford

Clifford (1994) 

Directed by Paul Flaherty 

Written by Jay Dee Rock, Steven Kampman 

Starring Martin Short, Charles Grodin, Mary Steenburgen, Dabney Coleman 

Release Date April 1st, 1994

Published April 1st, 2024 

There has been a minor reassessment of the movie Clifford in recent years. Famously, actor Nicolas Cage spoke about being a fan of the film in relating a story about meeting Martin Short. The idea that Nicolas Cage fan-girled at meeting Martin Short and peppered him with praise for Clifford is a better and funnier story than anything in Clifford. I think there are people who adopted Clifford as their movie simply to be different from the rest of the world which roundly rejected this bizarre failure. Other than Nicolas Cage, who is seemingly incapable of irony, no one actually likes Clifford, they like being the person who says that they like Clifford. 

Clifford stars Martin Short as the title character, Clifford, a deeply spoiled and entitled 10 year old boy. On a trip to Hawaii, Clifford manages to nearly crash a plane in hopes of landing in Los Angeles where he hopes to take a trip to Dinosaur World. Clifford's parents, desperate to get away from their child, drop Clifford with his Uncle Martin (Charles Grodin). The timing is fortuitous for Martin who needs to convince his girlfriend, Sarah (Mary Steenburgen) that he likes kids and has a special relationship with his nephew. 

Unfortunately for Martin, he is not aware that his nephew is a 10 year old sociopath. Clifford's single minded desire to go to Dinosaur World leads him to destroy every aspect of his Uncle's life including breaking up Martin and Sarah, getting Martin fired from his job, and getting Martin arrested for planning to bomb City Hall. All of this is revenge for Martin failing to take Clifford to see Dinosaur World. All the while, Clifford plays the innocent child when Sarah or anyone else is around while turning malevolent when it's just he and his Uncle Martin. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

 

Movie Review Asphalt City

Asphalt City (2024) 

Directed by Jean Stephane Sauvaire 

Written by Ryan King, Ben Mac Brown

Starring Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, Mike Tyson, Kali Reis, Michael Pitt 

Release Date March 29th, 2024 

Published March 28th, 2024 

Asphalt City is the kind movie that mistakes wallowing in misery for drama. The film about a rookie EMT in New York City wallows in the bleak misery of suffering that, I am sure, will feel like gritty drama to some but felt punishing for this critic. I don't mind a good wallow, I was a big fan of Scorsese's similarly themed Bringing Out the Dead years ago, but I have my limits and Asphalt City pushed well past my limit for desolation that borders on post-apocalyptic. I realize New York City can be an angry and dark place but this borders on pornographic in terms of misery. 

Asphalt City stars Tye Sheridan as Ollie Cross a wide-eyed medical student whose paying his way through med-school by working as an EMT in New York City. Struggling with a terrible partner who hates rookies, Cross's spirits are buoyed when he's reassigned to work with an aging veteran, Gene 'Rut' Rutkovsky. Rut takes pity on the kid and sets about teaching him the job instead of just screaming orders at him. Where his previous partner, played by Michael Pitt, appeared intent on running Cross out of the job, Rut seems to take to being a mentor. 

This doesn't however, give the movie a boost in terms of the pitch black ugliness at play. Even as Rut proves to be kind, the runs they make in their ambulance are unendingly grim. EMT's deal with a lot of horrors but Asphalt City makes the job appear like the seventh circle of hell at all times. It's to the point that I just can't believe anyone would be able to do this job and since we have EMT's currently working in New York City, I can only imagine that they have found some way to preserve their mental health. This movie makes being an EMT akin to trying to survive Cormac McCarthy's The Road. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review In the Land of Saints and Sinners

In the Land of Saints and Sinners (2024) 

Directed by Robert Lorenz

Written by Mark Michael McNally, Terry Loane

Starring Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon, Colm Meaney, Ciaran Hinds

Release Date March 29th, 2024

Published March 27th, 2024

The opening moments of the Irish thriller, In the Land of Sinners and Saints is a breathtaking piece of suspense. Members of the I.RA have just planted a bomb outside of a pub. But, just as they are about to make their escape, a family, with very young children pauses in front of the pub so that one of the children can tie their shoe. One of the bombers screams in an attempt to get the family to move but they appear confused by the screaming one and stay rooted in place. The bomb goes off and it's clear that this family has been killed. 

It's a principal laid out by Alfred Hitchcock, the explosion isn't nearly as exciting as the ticking bomb itself. The tension isn't the damage that the bomb will do, it's heated seconds until the bomb does what we know a bomb can do that matters in a movie. We don't see this family get murdered and we don't need to, the horror is greater in our mind by implication than it would be if we saw blood and body parts splattered on pavement. 

Don't get me wrong, gore and bloodshed has its place and, in the right hands, it has been effective, but that's a different genre of film altogether than what In the Land of Sinners and Saints is going for. This is a cerebral thriller that builds its emotional tension underneath, allowing it to simmer and grow into a boil before exploding. As directed by Robert Lorenz, that simmering is compelling and the boil is riveting. Then, we wait with our breath caught and our hearts pounding as we anticipate the explosion to come. 

Liam Neeson stars in In the Land of Saints and Sinners as Finbar, a hitman who comforts himself with the notion that he only kills bad people for money. Finbar has killed a lot of people, hiding their bodies under freshly planted trees in a forest near his small cottage. Finbar has reached a point where he'd like to retire, give up killing, and take up a hobby like gardening. He also has his eye on a neighbor at a nearby cottage who is soon to be a widow. The pair have a sad chemistry that could become love. 

But, this is a world of consequence and the consequences of Finbar's choices are that happily ever after is highly unlikely for him. His potential happily ever after is soon threatened by the arrival of four newcomers in his village. Remember the terrorists from the opening sequence, they are hiding out in a nearby farmhouse. One of them has taken to abusing and harassing a young girl whose mother runs Finbar's favorite pub. Seeing that the girl is afraid to go home at night, Finbar intervenes. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Child's Play 3

Child's Play 3 (1991) 

Directed by Jack Bender

Written by Don Mancini 

Starring Brad Dourif, Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers 

Release Date August 30th, 1991 

Box Office $20.5 million 

The first 15 minutes of Child's Play 3 is a brief meditation on corporate greed. After nearly a decade away from making their Good Guy dolls, the Play Pals company have re-opened the factory and inadvertently, rebuilt Chucky, the malevolent doll body inhabited by the spirit of serial murderer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif). We watch as corporate titan, Mr. Sullivan (Peter Haskell), ignores the warnings from his underlings about re-starting the Good Guys line. Sullivan's greed will be his downfall. 

As Sullivan is alone in his office, after the rest of the staff have called it a day, he's attacked by Chucky and brutally murdered. Though his death at the plastic hands of Charles Lee Ray is based more in Ray's single-minded obsession with killing Andy (Justin Whalin) and taking Andy's youthful body for his own, the underlying anti-capitalist message is clear. Without the dedicated greed of Sullivan and his corporate lackeys, the Good Guy doll would have languished, perhaps have been destroyed, and with it, the final vestiges of Charles lee Ray. But, because of their greed, evil flourishes and shows no mercy, even when confronting the evil that gave it back its life. 

That is perhaps, far too deep a reading of Child's Play 3, but it's a satisfying read. The idea of Chucky as the anti-hero of the socialist set is kind of fun. The notion that a corporately owned and crafted vehicle like Child's Play 3, itself a product of greed and avarice would, even accidentally, call out and punish unchecked corporate greed, is part of the naive charm of Child's Play 3. It's a vague sort of self-awareness that makes the movie just a little more interesting than the average third sequel to an ATM style franchise intended on mining nostalgia for profits. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media  

Movie Review Late Night with the Devil

Late Night with the Devil (2024) 

Directed by Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes 

Written by Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes 

Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss 

Release Date March 22nd, 2024 

Published March 21st, 2024 

Late Night with the Devil stars David Dastmalchian, forever an actor out of time, as 1970's talk show legend, Jack Delroy. In 1971, Jack Delroy left the world of morning radio for the chance to compete next to Johnny Carson in the realm of late night TV as the show of Night Owls with Jack Delroy. For a time, it appeared that Jack might just eclipse the King of Late Night, Carson, but by 1976, things were no longer going Jack's way. Jack's beloved wife, played by Georgina Haig, died of cancer, not long after he had her appear on the show to share their struggle for ratings. 

After taking a month away to recover from the loss of his wife, Jack returned to the stage to try and salvage his show and his career. It's Halloween night and Jack has an idea that he hopes can get him back on top. Jack has booked a pair of guests with supposedly supernatural talents. Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) is a mentalist with a talent for speaking to the dead. He will demonstrate this talent on the show and then face off with a skeptic, a former magician turned debunker, Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss). Carmichael is based off of real life magician turned debunker, and 70s celebrity, The Amazing Randi. 

Christou may or may not be a charlatan, one that Carmichael can debunk with relative ease, but a greater challenge to the skeptic and the talk show host is booked next. Author and para-psychiatrist, Dr. June Ross Mitchell is bringing her patient, Lily (Ingrid Torrelli) on the show. Lily was the only survivor of a death cult that worshiped a Devil adjacent demon known as Abraxas. Dr. Ross-Mitchell has written a book about Lily's demonic possession by a demon that Lily calls "Mr. Wriggles." On tonight's show, Dr. Ross-Mitchell is set to place Lily in a trance and bring the demon out of her in front of the world and prove that demonic possession is real. 

What we know, and these characters do not, is that what we are seeing is recovered footage thought lost forever. The concept behind Late Night with the Devil is that this is footage of the most controversial live television broadcast in history, a test footage that was thought lost forever. The entirety of the story of Late Night with the Devil, aside from an opening prologue introducing us to the host, Jack Delroy, is portrayed a recovered recording directly from 1976 and being played back for the first time since it was broadcast. The look of the movie is a near perfect recreation of a 1970's television broadcast, right down to the grainy quality indicative of a live to tape broadcast from nearly 50 years ago. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media