Movie Review Friend Request

Friend Request (2017) 

Directed by Simon Verhoeven 

Written by Matthew Ballen, Phillip Koch, Simon Verhoeven 

Starring Alycia Debnam Carey, William Mosely, Connor Paolo, Brit Morgan 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 23rd, 2017 

Friend Request is yet another failed attempt to combine social media and horror. It really shouldn’t be that hard to combine the two when you consider the daily horrors that social media enacts upon us when we simply pick up our phones, but filmmakers have thus far made the combination look impossible. Social media has numerous innate existential horrors that could be exploited by a smart filmmaker, but the question seems to come back to how you can exploit that for a body count and so far, no one has been able to pull that off.

Friend Request stars Alycia Debnam-Carey as Laura, a popular college student with a strong group of close friends. How do we know that Laura is popular? Because we see her Facebook friend number flashed on the screen in scenes where she is not on Facebook. The film very much wants us to know that Laura’s friend count is super important to the plot.

Laura’s life of accepting friend requests from internet strangers is upended when she meets Marina (Liesl Ahlers) an unpopular loner who has no Facebook friends until Laura takes pity on her and accepts her friend request. Marina is of the belief that if you become friends on Facebook then you become friends in real life, but when she is not invited to Laura’s birthday party, her illusions are shattered, and she takes her own life.

Things aren’t over from there, however, as it turns out that Marina was a witch and has used her laptop as a portal into the online world where her magic gives her control over Laura’s Facebook account where she posts a video of her own suicide and causes Laura to lose friends from her friend count. Not kidding, the film pauses to give us a graphic of Laura’s friend count going down.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Jeanne Du Barry

Jeanne Du Barry (2024) 

Directed by Maiwenn 

Written by Maiwenn 

Starring Maiwenn, Johnny Depp 

Release Date May 3rd, 2024 

Published May 2nd, 2024 

Jeanne Du Barry is a vanity project for writer-director-star Maiwenn. She wanted to play the famed courtesan and film on elaborate sets and wear big fancy costumes and, to her credit, she got exactly what she wanted. It's all very elaborate and it showcases Maiwenn as a talented scenarist and a compelling screen presence. I don't find the film to be particularly entertaining, but it's impressive that she was able to accomplish her entire vision. I am genuinely impressed with so much of her work here, but the movie left me just not caring.

Jeanne Du Barry was born an innocent and independent young commoner. When she came of age, she went to Versailles and to support herself, she became a popular courtesan for the elite men of Paris. Her wild reputation eventually caught the attention of King Louis XV (Johnny Depp) who brought her to his court. Having impressed the king with her spirit, intelligence and... other assets, Jeanne becomes the King's companion, his favorite of numerous mistresses at the King's beckoned call. But Jeanne is not content to be merely the favorite, she aims to win the King's heart and his favor. 

The biggest obstacles to Jeanne's ambition, and her safety and security, are the King's daughters. A coterie of young vipers, the King's daughters sneer and jeer Jeanne while desperately envying her position within the King's inner circle. As Jeanne continues to capture the King's fancy, the daughter's plot to keep her from being able to marry or even capitalize on the King's love and affection. Jeanne's position at court hangs in the balance as the future Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, then known as the Dauphine (Pauline Pollman) carries the power to make or break Jeanne's future with just a few whispered words. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) 

Directed by Robert Aldrich 

Written by Lukas Heller 

Starring Bette Davis, Joan Crawford 

Release Date October 31st, 1962 

Published May 1st, 2024 

I did not know what I was getting myself into when I agreed to make What Ever Happened to Baby Jane the classic for our I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. By reputation, the film is a camp classic filled with over the top histrionics on the part of stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, actors who famously hated one another. I especially had an odd cultural perception of Joan Crawford based on her life after being a movie star. Crawford's career is a blind spot for me, I've never felt compelled to look into her film work. This is due to the reputation assigned to her based on Mommy Dearest, the book and movie adaptation that pain Crawford as a maniacal egotist, a bully and a monster. 

Bette Davis on the other hand, I've seen a lot of Bette Davis. I'm a big fan. Davis' can do more with a withering glance, a simple shift in her eyes, than most actors can do with an entire film's worth of screen time. To borrow the parlance of the gay community, she serves C### proudly and unashamedly. I have a huge crush on her, and I may need a therapist to understand why find Bette Davis so attractive. I don't think I have a humiliation kink, but part of me wants to have young Bette Davis to look me up and down and reject me with the kind effortless grace with which she devastated her many, many unworthy co-stars. 

My personal fetishes aside, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane(?) shifted my perceptions of both Crawford and Davis, revealing Crawford's incredible subtlety while underlining Davis's uncanny ability to get under your skin. She can terrify and destroy you with words and or deeds. She's a monster but one whose monstrousness is wielded bluntly and with intensity. Underlying the monster, however, is a desperately broken heart that has become a broken psyche and the fact that Bette Davis is capable of capturing a broadly performed, camp, monster while finding and slowly revealing her vulnerability is yet another trait that sets Davis apart from other actors. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review When Harry Met Sally

When Harry Met Sally (1989) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by Nora Ephron 

Starring Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby

Release Date July 14th, 1989

Published September 20th, 2017

The classic on this week’s Everyone is a Critic podcast is When Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner’s 1989 romantic comedy that arguably set the template for every romantic comedy that came after it. Reiner, whose The Princess Bride turns 30 this weekend and inspired our podcast to focus on Reiner’s work, directed When Harry Met Sally from a script by Nora Ephron who would go on to take the mantel of the leading voice in romantic comedies in Hollywood throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s.

The template is thus, two people who seem ill-suited for each other get repeatedly thrust together by fate before sleeping together, montage together and then break up, montage, and finally have a romantic reunion. These movies could write themselves after a while but in fairness to Reiner, when he conceived of When Harry Met Sally, the template wasn’t quite so set in stone. In fact, in pairing the comic Billy Crystal with the actress Meg Ryan, Reiner found something that still feels very fresh in their unusual chemistry.

Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) met at the University of Chicago in 1978. Sally happened to be headed to New York to take a job as a journalist and Harry headed the same way for work offered to help pay for the trip and share the driving. They immediately don’t get along as Harry launches into his off-putting diatribe about how men and women can’t be friends because sex always gets in the way. Sally, put off by Harry’s blunt talk about how all men want to sleep with her, goes quiet and the two part ways seemingly to never see each other again.

Five years later, on a plane, Harry and Sally reconnect. Sally is in a new relationship while Harry has an even bigger surprise, he’s getting married. That doesn’t stop him from flirting with Sally and even asking her to dinner when they get to their destination. She says no and once again they part. Finally, we cut to another five years later, both Sally and Harry are fresh out of relationships with Harry still stinging from a recent divorce. In a speech that remains remarkable to this day, Harry lays out the scene of the breakup to his pal played by Bruno Kirby. The brutal honesty and dark humor of the story is magnificent, and Crystal demonstrates the kind of acting chops that few other movies have ever allowed him to show. Crystal is a consummate performer and given a brilliant monologue to deliver he becomes a magnetic presence.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal. 

Movie Review Lego Ninjago

Lego Ninjago (2017) 

Directed by Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan 

Written by Bob Logan, Paul Fisher, William Wheeler, Tom Wheeler, Jared Stern, John Whittington

Starring Dave Franco, Michael Pena, Kumail Nanjiani, Abbi Jacobson, Zach Woods, Fred Armisen, Jackie Chan

Release Date September 22nd, 2017

Published September 22nd, 2017

Lego Ninjago has not one single laugh. It has amusing moments but not a single instance of induced laughter. And I am not just speaking for myself here. The audience I watched Lego Ninjago with was really ready to laugh and you could hear some forced attempts at trying to laugh but as the movie went on even those that kept smiling and trying to find what was happening in Lego Ninjago funny weren’t laughing. It was strange; there was no outward disdain for Lego Ninjago but there weren’t any laughs.

Lloyd (Dave Franco) is a teenager who is constantly picked on because his father happens to be an evil ninja who keeps trying to take over his home town of Ninjago. What the people making fun of Lloyd don’t know is that he’s the legendary Green Ninja who, along with his fellow ninjas, have kept Garmadon (Justin Leroux) from actually destroying Ninjago. Naturally, regularly fighting his dad while flying around on a mechanized ninja dragon has led to more than a few daddy issues for Lloyd.

Thankfully, Lloyd has his uncle, Master Wu (Jackie Chan), who has taught him and his friends everything about being Ninjas and making giant mechanized animals that they use to battle Garmadon’s evil Crab army. Well, he has people dressed as crabs and dressed as sharks and dolphins and they make up his evil army; though at one point he does shoot sharks at people from a giant mechanical arm but that part isn’t very clear. I could follow the action well enough but some of the chaos got a little confusing.

All of that description sounds funny, right? Especially when you consider the recent history of the Lego franchise, The Lego Movie and Lego Batman. Those movies were laugh a minute spectacle that created an anticipation for future Lego movies. Like Lego Ninjago, those casts were overflowing with some of the funniest voices on the planet and Ninjago has a fair share of very funny people like Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Kumail Nanjiani, all of whom are remarkably funny.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Kingsman The Golden Circle

Kingsman The Golden Circle (2017)

Directed by Matthew Vaughn 

Written by Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn 

Starring Taron Egerton, Julianne Moore, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 21st, 2017 

Kingsman: The Secret Service was a not particularly inventive rehash of Mark Millar’s previously adapted work, Kick-Ass. The derivative spy take on the same tropes of the super-hero send-up bored me endlessly with its nihilistic approach to James Bond minus the strange wit of Kick-Ass, which shared not just creator Millar but also director Matthew Vaughn, who couldn’t help but seem to rip off his own work in a lazy rehash.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle, thankfully, is not Kick-Ass 2. That sequel was a massive letdown that quickly destroyed the goodwill carried over from the inventive original film. Here, with The Golden Circle we have the opposite effect. Considering that they had nowhere to go but up following The Secret Service, Kingsman: The Golden Circle has the wit, charm, and fun that the original was lacking, minus the nihilistic violence that was so out of place in the first film. Don’t get me wrong, there are still gruesome elements but nothing that approaches the overrated church shootout of Kingsman 1.

Eggsy (Taron Edgerton) is still living with the loss of his mentor, Harry (Colin Firth), as we join the story of Kingsman: The Golden Circle. His time to mourn, however, is quickly cut short as the film dives into a spectacular car chase to open The Golden Circle. Though it is showy and rather pointless to the plot, the chase is undeniably spectacular with Edgerton battling it out inside of a cab with a former Kingsman recruit who is now working for the bad guys and is part robot.

The bad guy in Kingsman: The Golden Circle is actually a bad lady played by Julianne Moore. Poppy, Moore’s character, is a drug dealer who hopes to use her illicit products to hold the world hostage. Meanwhile, she’s also found a way to take the Kingsmen out of the game by blowing up all of their headquarters around the globe and killing several of Eggsy’s close friends, while he happens to be out of the country.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy (2024) 

Directed by David Leitch 

Written by Drew Pearce 

Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Winston Duke, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Hannah Waddingham 

Release Date May 3rd, 2024 

Published May 3rd, 2024 

The Fall Guy is so much fun. Ryan Gosling stars as stunt man Colt Seavers, the double for famed movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson). Colt has everything going for him, a great job that he loves doing, a great reputation, and he's just fallen in love with a camera operator on the new movie he's working on. Jody (Emily Blunt) and Colt are making plans and fliting and generally getting along smashingly when a stunt goes wrong. Performing a fall from a few stories up, Colt's rigging fails, and he smashes to the ground. 

Having suffered a devastating back injury, costing him his job and reputation as a stunt man, Colt retreats into a self-imposed isolation. This includes leaving Jody behind as he doesn't want her to see him as less than the man he was. 18 months go by, and Colt is just getting by parking cars when he receives an emergency call. Gail (Hannah Waddingham), Tom Ryder's protector and producer needs Colt to fly to Australia immediately to help out on Tom's new movie, Metal Storm. Tom has gone missing, and Gail needs Colt to stand in for him on the movie and also help find the missing star. 

Tom has apparently fallen in with some dangerous types down under and while Colt feels no obligation to help Tom, he decides to help because if he doesn't the movie will fall apart. Why does this matter? Because the director is Jody. It's her first time directing a major motion picture and if Tom disappears, she could get fired and lose everything. Wanting to reconnect with the woman he loves, Colt sets about trying to find Tom while performing his stunts on the movie, all while Jody finds new ways to punish him for ghosting her after his accident. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Threesome

Threesome (1994) 

Directed by Andrew Fleming 

Written by Andrew Fleming 

Starring Josh Charles, Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin 

Release Date April 8th, 1994 

Published April 30th, 2024 

I'm pretty sure that Threesome is a horror film. I can't prove that definitively, there is nothing that documents that Threesome is a horror film. But! And this is important, it is a movie where Stephen Baldwin is one of three people involved sex act involving two other partner. If that doesn't send a horrified chill down your spine as much as Freddy Krueger's nails on metal does, then you likely don't know who Stephen Baldwin is. Take my word for it, you should shudder at the thought. I am relatively certain that 90s Stephen Baldwin is my sleep paralysis demon. He just sits on my chest and farts and laughs so hard he nearly falls off. 

Threesome stars Josh Charles as Eddy, a closeted and deeply confused young man. While his male friends are pursuing women, Eddy has no interest. Even moving into a dorm with a party animal and sex pest named Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) can't get Eddy interested in pursuing recreational sex. Eddy's development will be rushed along when Eddy and Stuart pick up a third roommate for the private ensuite in their dorm room. Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) is a crazed narcissist who was accidentally assigned to a male dorm room because everyone assumed the name Alex indicates dude. 

Alex is standoffish at first but eventually begins throwing herself at Eddy who maintains confusion regarding Alex's motives well past what is believable. No joke, she's moments away from fully putting her hand on his penis and instead of saying he's not into her, he forces her to let him leave and then wonders to Stuart if Alex wants to be with him. Yeah, that's back to back scenes in this idiot sandwich of a movie. Meanwhile, Stuart desperately wants to bang Alex and she shows no interest in him. Eventually, it will come out that Eddy prefers men but that doesn't stop Alex who vows to change his mind by any sexual means necessary. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Turtles All the Way Down

Turtles All the Way Down (2024) 

Directed by Hannah Marks 

Written by Elizabeth Berger, Isaac Aptaker 

Starring Isabela Merced, Cree Cicchino, Felix Mallard, Judy Reyes 

Release Date May 2nd, 2024

Published 

Turtles All the Way Down is a film adaptation of Hank Green novel. The film stars Isabela Merced as a teenager struggling with OCD and other related mental issues, some of which are related to the death of her father. Merced's Aza gets roped into a true crime story by her best friend, Daisy (Cree Cicchino from Nickelodeon's Game Shakers), after a friend's father goes missing. The friend is a smoking hottie named Davis Pickett (Felix Mallard). Davis and Aza met at a camp for kids who have lost parents. Now, Davis has seemingly lost another parent under very suspicious circumstances and Daisy thinks they can find him and collect a reward. 

It's a more than a little convoluted but, I must say, I completely adore Cree Cicchino as Daisy. She feels exactly like the kind of friend who enjoy getting into trouble with. Granted, trying to solve a missing person case is not your average kind of trouble to find, but nevertheless that's the plot and damned if Cicchino's infectious excitement doesn't make you want to follow her down this rabbit hole. Naturally, this is a Hank Green adaptation so it will be a journey of self-exploration, there is grief, mental illness and teen romance. Aza and Davis are on a collision course and how he takes to finding out that she's trying to get a reward for finding her dad is the pivot point for what drama there is in Turtles All the Way Down. 

At least, that's what you might think. Director Hannah Marks and co-screenwriters Elzabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker upend expectations in a very unpredictable way. I won't spoil it, but how you take to this unusual way of shifting expectations is a strong indicator of whether you enjoy Turtles All the Way Down. How did I feel about it? I didn't mind seeing what I expected completely subverted. That said, it's quite the ask for audiences to believe something like this is possible. It's an outlandish reach for the movie to pull this off and I can't say I am certain it works. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Happy Hunting

Happy Hunting (2017) 

Directed by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson

Written by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson 

Starring Martin Dingle-Wall, Ken Lally, Kenny Wormald 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 20, 2017 

Happy Hunting is one of the better horror movies of 2017. This Most Dangerous Game knock off takes the premise of hunting humans and puts a redneck, Mexican border setting to it and lets loose with a serious amount of blood and guts. The film reminded me a little of 2016’s brilliant horror-thriller Green Room which used a backwoods milieu to similar effect. That film is far better than Happy Hunting but that this film brings that one to mind says something about how good Happy Hunting really is.

Happy Hunting stars Martin Dingle Wall as Warren, a drunk drifter who gets invited to Mexico to pick up what may or may not be his child. The mother of the child has died and claims the child belongs to Warren but the only way for him to know for sure is to drive to Mexico. Broke and drunk, Warren needs cash so he concocts the worst batch of meth he could cook and tries to sell it to some meth-heads nearby. Needless to say, this doesn’t go well.

After narrowly escaping the meth-heads, leaving bodies in his wake, Warren finds himself in a small Texas border town that looks on the brink of death. Holing up in a motel with the meth-heads money, Warren, naturally stays drunk while he waits to be told where in Mexico he needs to go. Unfortunately, the town hunt is just getting underway and the hunters do not take kindly to visitors. While Warren briefly seeks solace at an AA meeting he meets Steve (Ken Lally) who wants to be his sponsor.

Steve, like everyone else in town, has a secret, he’s a hunter and seeing Warren new in town, he’s chosen him as the prize for he and his wife Cheryl (Sherry Leigh) to hunt down. After drugging Warren they drag him to the town square where he and four other men are set to go running off into the desert to run for their lives from an assortment of small town badasses who’ve become quite proficient at hunting human beings over the years.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Shot

Shot (2017) 

Directed by Jeremy Kagan 

Written by Anneke Campbell, William Lamborn 

Starring Noah Wyle, Sharon Leal, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 15th, 2017 

The new-in-theaters drama Shot starring Noah Wyle and Sharon Leal may look like a very special episode of a TV drama but it’s a very effective very special episode of a TV drama. This anti-gun message movie, which does also play like an 87-minute public service announcement at times, nevertheless does have a valuable message. The shooting style may not blow you away but the performances are solid and the message is potent.

Things are not going great for Mark Newman (Wyle) on this Friday afternoon. He’s just been told that he has 36 hours to finish five days’ worth of work he’s doing as a sound editor on a movie followed by a lunch date with his soon to be ex-wife Phoebe (Sharon Leal). This portion of his rotten day, however, is about to get worse as not far from where he and Phoebe are finishing another argument a teenager named Miguel (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) has just been handed a gun which he immediately fumbles and fires, sending a bullet into Mark’s chest.

Here’s when the film supposedly gets clever as it turns into a real-time drama from the moment Mark is shot, about 7 minutes into the movie, and the next hour or so as Mark lies on the sidewalk, is rushed to the hospital and undergoes an examination by an E.R. doctor played by the wonderful character actor Xander Berkley. These scenes have an exceptional authenticity to them, especially if you’ve ever been in an emergency medical situation.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride (2017) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by William Goldman 

Starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Robin Wright, Andre the Giant, Billy Crystal Carole Kane

Release Date September 25th, 1987 

Published September 20th, 2017 

The Princess Bride is one of the most rewatchable movies in history. This rich, robust, and homey comedy never ages and never falters. Rob Reiner’s direction, aside from a truly terrible film score, is unassailable in every comedy beat. Then there is the absolutely perfect casting. Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, and each of the supporting players, from Chris Sarandon as the evil Prince, Christopher Guest as the evil six-fingered henchman, and Billy Crystal’s cameo as Miracle Max, could not be better.

This weekend, September 25, The Princess Bride turns 30 years old and I am happy to tell you that I have probably seen this movie more than 30 times in that 30 years. The film feels like home to me with these wonderfully erudite characters, their supreme code of conduct, and the wonderfully generous laughs. I can’t call The Princess Bride a perfect movie, once again I will mention that terrible film score, but it’s damn near perfection.

Westley (Cary Elwes) is a young farm boy in the employ of the family of Buttercup (Robin Wright). Though Buttercup attempts to annoy her farm boy with one silly task after another we are told in Peter Falk’s wonderful voiceover that Westley’s constant refrain, "as you wish," to each of her requests is his way of confessing his love for her. Eventually, Buttercup realizes that she’s been annoying him because she’s been trying to hide her feelings for him and the two fall madly in love just as Westley is about to leave.

Westley is to take to the seas to seek his fortune so that he may soon return and give Buttercup the life she richly deserves. Unfortunately, it’s reported that Westley’s ship was attacked by a pirate legend known as the Dread Pirate Roberts and he does not take prisoners. With Westley thought dead, Buttercup becomes distant and lonely and when the Prince (Chris Sarandon) arrives at her door wanting to make the most beautiful girl in the kingdom his future Queen she accepts knowing that she is only giving her body to the task but not her heart.

What Buttercup doesn’t know is that the Prince is merely using her and plans to kill her with his first plan to have her kidnapped and killed in the fields of the rival kingdom of Gilder. The princess’s captors are a wonderful comic mixture with the leader Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) claiming to be the smartest person in the world, while his henchmen, Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) and Fezzik (pro wrestling super-legend Andre the Giant) are the greatest swordsman and the biggest brut in the kingdom respectively.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review American Assassin

American Assassin (2017) 

Directed by Michael Cuesta

Written by Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz 

Starring Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Taylor Kitsch 

Release Date September 15th, 2017 

Published September 16th, 2017 

American Assassin stars Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a normal college age kid who we meet while he is vacationing in Ibiza with his beautiful girlfriend. Just after she has accepted his marriage proposal, terrorists sweep over the beach, killing dozens of people in an all too plausible scenario that calls to mind the Paris nightclub attack. Among the dead is Mitch’s new fiancée while he is wounded in the leg and shoulder but narrowly survives.

Cut to 18 months later, a dejected Mitch is now sporting a full beard and a whole set of new muscles on his thin frame. We watch as he corresponds with Muslim terrorists via a private chat network. Mitch is getting himself recruited to become a terrorist with the goal of getting all the way to the man who organized the attack on the beach that killed his girlfriend. What Mitch doesn’t know is that the CIA, specifically deputy director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan), is in on his private messages and are set to spoil his chance at vengeance.

Once Mitch is the hands of the CIA, he is turned over to a secret training organization headed up by a badass former Navy Seal and spy named Hurley (Michael Keaton). Hurley doesn’t think Mitch is emotionally stable enough for the kinds of missions he trains people for but soon enough Mitch proves to be one of only two recruits with the capability to keep up with Hurley and with a major mission coming up to stop a nuclear bomb from being built, there is no time to waste on whether or not Mitch is ready or not.

American Assassin moves at a brisk pace. Director Michael Cuesta may not have a great ear for dialogue based off the leaden, exposition-laden jargon of American Assassin, but he has a terrific eye for action. The opening assault on the beach in Ibiza is frighteningly real and graphic. Some will consider the scene exploitation but I feel it accurately reflects where the story is heading without being disrespectful to real-life tragedies. This is the kind of attack that we’ve seen before and the way Cuesta captures it is intense and jarring.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Lipstick Under My Burkha

Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017) 

Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava 

Written by Alankrita Shrivastava 

Starring Ratna Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Aahana Kumra 

Release Date July 21st, 2017 

Published July 19th 2017 

“You know what our problem is? We dream too much?”

That quote is devastating. It comes from the movie Lipstick Under My Burkha from writer director Alankrita Shrivastava. It’s a remarkable film about four wonderful characters staring into the face of oppression and still trying to live their dreams. Lipstick is only Shrivastava’s second directorial feature and yet she directs with the surety and beauty of a veteran filmmaker. Her eye and ear are perfectly in tune to her characters, who each have big beautiful beating hearts.

Auntie (Ratna Pathak) is at the center of the story, a brilliant, well-respected elder in her community. Yet, she is only 55 years old and a widow and her desires have not cooled with age. Auntie has been Auntie for so long that just trying to say her own name is a challenge. Reclaiming her name is the start of admitting she still has the desires she’s been nursing via a romance novel that she reads as the film’s narration with the story acting as a not too blatant Greek chorus to the story of the movie.

Auntie’s desires come to the fore when she meets a much younger swim instructor whose muscled torso fires the dreams she has of the male character in her book. Pushing her desires ever further she begins to carry on a secret phone relationship with the young man and dreams of perhaps finding the courage to tell him who she really is and how he stirs her soul and so much more. Ratna Pathak could not be better cast in the role of Auntie, still a beauty at 55 with tender eyes and an inner strength radiates to the very end.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Mauvais Sang

Mauvais Sang (1987) 

Directed by Leos Carax

Written by Leos Carax 

Starring Michel Piccoli, Juliette Binoche, Denis Levant 

Release Date September 9th, 1987 

Published September 10th 2017 

Mauvais Sang or Bad Blood, the English title, stars Dennis Levant as Alex, a small time criminal about to break into the criminal big time. After the death of his father, Alex is sought by his father’s former associates, Marc (Michel Piccoli) and Hans (Hans Meyer) to be part of a heist that will require his quick hands. The heist involves stealing the cultures of a dangerous virus that is ravaging France, a plague that affects those who make love without being in love.

The esoteric virus is a relatively minor player in the drama of Mauvais Sang which is far more interested in the love triangle of Alex, Marc and Marc’s much younger love Anna (Juliette Binoche). Though she is very young, Anna makes it clear that Marc is the only love she has ever known until Alex comes along and upsets their insular little world. Marc has recently become distant following the death of Alex’s father as he believes his rival, an old woman only referred to as The American, was behind the death and is plotting his murder as well if he can’t pull off the virus heist.

Marc’s growing emotional distance and Alex’s insistent romancing are the forces at war for much of the film’s second act which features a 30 minute scene in which Alex and Anna talk and bond and flirt and warn each other of the potential downfalls of a relationship between them. Anna maintains that she loves Marc, despite his age and growing coldness toward her. Alex meanwhile is insistent on his feelings and the scene culminates with a glorious expression of Alex’s newfound love, a street dance/run set to David Bowie’s Modern Love.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby (1968) 

Directed by Roman Polanski 

Written by Roman Polanski 

Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Ralph Bellamy

Release Date June 12th, 1968 

Published September 10th, 2017 

Rosemary’s Baby is one of the most sneakily ingenious psycho-dramas ever made. Director Roman Polanski, a quite correctly demonized figure today, was a masterful director in his day. In Rosemary’s Baby, arguably his finest film, Polanski uses film technique and his unique sensibilities to take seemingly normal and mundane things and use our perceptions of those things against us. The most obvious and blatant of these mundane things is using the elderly as the film’s villains, especially the grandmotherly Ruth Gordon.

Rosemary’s Baby is set in New York in 1965. Rosemary is an aspiring housewife to Guy (John Cassavetes), an actor looking for a big break on Broadway while making a living as an actor in commercials. Rosemary and Guy have just landed a beautiful new apartment in a venerated old building with a very creepy history. According to a friend, the building was the home to several disturbing deaths and rumors of occult activities.

This, however, does not put off Rosemary, at least not until she meets the neighbors. Minnie (Gordon) and her husband Roman (Sidney Blackmer) seem like the doting grandparent types by the look of them but when they begin to force their way further and further into the lives of Rosemary and Guy we completely understand why Rosemary feels as uncomfortable as she is. Roman, by some luck, is a producer and when Guy begins spending more time with him his career begins to turn around.

Meanwhile, the couple is trying to get pregnant and here is where Polanski pulls off a really neat and disturbing trick. In what seems as if it could be a dream, Rosemary finds herself slowly beginning to pass out and dream that she is on a yacht with friendly people having a nice time. However, the edges of her dream seem to be tearing away and a bizarre sort of reality is seeping into the fantasy, a dark disturbing reality that finds a nude Rosemary tied to a bed in a room full of nude old people and her freaked out husband. She is then raped by the Devil himself, a cloven hooved demon who climbs on top of her while the old folks chant creepily.

Find my full length review in the Horror Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Mother

Mother (2017) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Darren Aronofsky 

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer 

Release Date September 15, 2017 

Published September 14th, 2017 

I can’t decide if Mother(!) is Darren Aronofsky’s way of pleasuring himself on screen or if it is a legitimate work of art simply out of the grasp of my pea brain. The film has some seemingly obvious metaphors but they are metaphors that are so blatant that your brain fights the idea that they could be so simple to untangle. At least we can all agree that Mother(!) is a pretentious as all get out work of an egotist artist who’s either far too oblique for his own good or a complete troll.

Mother(!) is the title character played by Jennifer Lawrence who opens the film completely engulfed in flames before waking up in bed. Was it a dream? Stick around, the movie has a little something for you on that later. Mother and her writer husband, played by Javier Bardem, are living in an idyllic old home that has been recovered from a fire. This unique home sits in the middle of a field or perhaps a ‘garden,’ one might call it Eden-like.

The idyll of their country home is upended by the arrival of a snake-like gentleman, played by a skinny, leathery, Ed Harris, who claims to be one of the Husband’s biggest fans. Considering there is no place to stay for miles around they allow the man to spend the night. Then the next day his wife arrives played by Michelle Pfeiffer followed by their warring children played by Domnhall and Brian Gleeson who set about acting out a version of Cane and Abel inside these strangers’ home.

This portion of the film ends with a funeral and a finale in which Mother accuses her husband of not wanting to have sex with her to which he replies with what begins as attempted rape and then becomes a brief sex scene leading to a bizarre reveal and an even more bizarre final act of the film that I will leave you to discover on your own. The portentousness of the reveal is kind of fun and exciting but that pay off was a deal breaker for me, I was pretty much done with Mother(!) at this point and there was still a whole act of full on madness to come.

The lead up to the sex scene in Mother(!) basically states that a woman who is angry or unhappy with her husband to the point where she’s ready to leave him can be satisfied with a good sexing. This, to me, is such a gross and simplistic notion, so remarkably, ludicrously sexist that it seems like a provocation just to get that accusation. Unfortunately, Mother (!) doesn’t offer any rebuttal to this idea. Lawrence’s Mother is ready to leave her husband for not loving her, he attempts to take her by force, she eventually acquiesces because his forcefulness is a turn-on and the movie moves on. There is no attempt to satirize this notion, it is merely presented and that, for me, knocked me out of the movie.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction (1987) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne 

Written by James Dearden 

Starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 17th, 2017 

Fatal Attraction stars Michael Douglas as a seemingly happy husband to Ann Archer and father to an adorable 6-year-old daughter. So why, if he’s so happy, does he decide to cheat on his wife? This questions comes to consume the mind of Alex (Glenn Close), the woman Douglas’ Dan decides to sleep with one night while his wife and daughter are away visiting family in the suburbs. Alex can’t understand why Dan would choose to sleep with her and then retreat back to his marriage.

That Alex is also mentally unbalanced does not help matters. Moments after Dan attempts to leave Alex for good and return to his normal upper middle-class life, Alex attempts to kill herself and Dan, not wanting anyone to find out about his fling, decides he needs to stay the night again to make sure Alex doesn’t die and thus potentially reveal his infidelity in the process. This is a decision he will come to regret as saving Alex’s life only furthers her obsession with him.

Will Dan get up the courage to tell his wife what he has done? Will he do it before Alex’s unhinged behavior becomes dangerous to Dan’s entire family? These are the questions of a very minor, very forgettable sub-genre of thrillers. And yet, somehow Fatal Attraction became a massive hit in 1987 and remains part of the cultural zeitgeist 30 years later. Actress Glenn Close as recently as the 25th Anniversary of the film’s release was still being told that she’d terrified men who saw the film.

Why? Why this movie? Why Fatal Attraction? What is it about this sleazy genre thriller that has lasted this long? What is it that keeps this film in our pop culture memory? It baffles me because I have seen knock off after knock off after knock off of the Fatal Attraction formula and none of them are any good. Certainly there is something to be said for being an original but shouldn’t the movie be better than this to last this long?

Fatal Attraction is a cheap, sleazy, silly thriller with over the top performances and capable but not outstanding direction. Adrian Lyne is a director obsessed with sexual politics but he doesn’t have much depth to his obsession. Lyne’s style is to ask big questions but not give the questions much weight beyond the plot in progress. The big question of Fatal Attraction is ‘What would you do if you were Dan?’ That’s not a very interesting question. Everything that happens to Dan is his own fault and while Lyne seems to want us to sympathize with him as Alex goes on the attack, it’s almost comical how unsympathetic Dan is.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal. 

Movie Review The Wilde Wedding

The Wilde Wedding (2017)

Directed by Damian Harris 

Written by Damian Harris 

Starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Patrick Stewart, Minnie Driver, Jack Davenport 

Release Date September 15th, 2017 

Published September 13th, 2017 

The Wilde Wedding has the chance to be a pretty great movie but lacks the courage to pull it off. The film brings together the talents of Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Patrick Stewart for a wedding comedy and the charm factor would be off the charts except that writer-director Damian Harris can’t resist mucking up the works by having the younger cast too often crowd out the more interesting veterans.

The Wilde Wedding casts Glenn Close as world famous movie star Eve Wilde. Eve is on the verge of her 4th marriage; this time to a novelist named Harold Alcott (Stewart) who could not be less suited for her. We meet Harold as he is arriving for the weekend wedding with his two daughters and a friend and appears to be cramming for a test on Eve’s IMDB page. He can’t seem to remember the names of Eve’s most famous movies and seems to be of the belief that if he can’t remember them he won’t be able to get married.

Joining the wedding party is Laurence, Eve’s first ex-husband played by Malkovich. Pompous but charming, it was Laurence who’d gotten Eve her first role in Hollywood, one that very quickly eclipsed his own Hollywood start and eventually led to trouble in their marriage. Laurence and Eve have three sons, played by Noah Emmerich, Rob Langeder and Peter Fascinelli who are each given one trait to portray based off the simplistic notions of the emotional trauma of having been children of divorce.

They are joined by various girlfriends, assistants, friends or children, all very limited in their screen time and none of much particular interest. Minnie Driver plays one of the son’s rock star ex-wife who sings a pretty terrible cover of Billy Idol’s White Wedding as a supposed wedding gift while Grace Van Patten is the requisite millennial who is on hand to film everything for a documentary as her gift to her grandmother. Van Patten is saddled with an attraction to her cousin whom she insists is a first cousin once removed because that’s somehow less creepy or necessary to the story?

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review The Pick Up Artist

The Pick Up Artist (1987) 

Directed by James Toback

Written by James Toback 

Starring Molly Ringwald, Robert Downey Jr. 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 19th, 2017 

The Pick Up Artist is a bizarrely bad movie of the kind only James Toback seems capable of. This mess of a romantic comedy and a gangster movie attempts to be both conventional and unconventional. Toback’s thing has always been arthouse style talky existentialism with a healthy dose of New York. Watching him try to cram that unusual sensibility into a mainstream movie would be unwatchable were it not for Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald who, at the very least, remain likable even as they struggle against a director lost in his attempt to serve the commercial and the arty.

Jack Jericho is a pick up artist. He practices his terrible pick up lines in his bathroom mirror before he leaves to run the streets like a dog chasing every squirrel in his field of vision. That Jack plies his trade in the morning before he goes to work as a grade school gym teacher, odd, inexplicable choice of profession aside, makes his aims seem strange from the very beginning. Is Jack looking for dates or sex or both? Writer-Director Toback doesn’t seem to know or very much care.

The comedy for Toback is in Jack’s failing, silly attempts at meeting women. He seems fascinated by Downey chatting up chicks and dedicates much of the first portion of the movie to just listening to Jack try and stay in front of the various women he accosts on the street. In fact, the movie pretty much derails from the very beginning because Toback is more interested in the pick up lines and Downey’s charm than he is in setting up the ludicrous gangster story that is shoehorned into this 82 minute movie.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.