Classic Movie Review Muriel's Wedding

Muriel’s Wedding 

Directed by P.J Hogan 

Written by P.J Hogan 

Starring Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths

Release Date March 10th, 1995 

Published March 11th, 2025

Muriel’s Wedding stars Toni Collette in a debut performance that blows the doors off. It can come as no surprise that Collette has gone on to be one of our most reliable, beloved, and extraordinary leading ladies after she absolutely smashed this comic debut. Colette’s Muriel is a complicated mess of a character, a tangle of depression, bad decisions, low self esteem, and an agonizing longing for a different life. When she finally sparks the courage to search for a new life, the journey is incredibly funny, rewarding and heartbreaking. And all of this is playing through Collette’s extraordinary performance as framed by P.J Hogan’s deft direction.

Muriel is a mousy, wedding loving, dreamer. Her life centers on two things, loving the music of Abba, her pop culture comfort food, and dreaming about getting married. Muriel may, in fact, prefer the wedding to the actual marriage and companionship. Wedding dresses, bouquets, and the pageantry of a wedding procession are her true passion, even as she rarely outright says this. The film implies Muriel’s obsession while Muriel herself just tries to remain unnoticed. This is easy among her family where she’s one of several adult children with no job and few prospects.

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media.

Classic Movie Review Rear Window

Rear Window 

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 

Written by John Michael Hayes

Starring Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr

Released September 1st, 1954

Published March 12th, 2025 

Alfred Hitchcock’s genius, for me, boils down to two elements: juxtaposition and perversion. Hitch takes a thing or a person associated with a specific characteristic and places that person or thing in a different context, one opposite to how we perceive it. The Birds (1963) is a great example. Before The Birds, no one associated birds with anything remotely dangerous. Hitchcock takes Birds and turns them into horror movie villains, convincing us through the use of storytelling and the tools of cinema that even the most innocuous animal can be used as a symbol of a battle between man and nature. 

He enjoys this kind of juxtaposition in his actors as well. Take, for instance, Cary Grant in North by Northwest. Here, Hitchcock takes this bastion of handsomeness, charm, and good manners and repeatedly renders him helpless, hapless, and narrowly avoiding dangerous schemes not by his unending charm or good looks but by sheer chance and good luck. This flies in the face of our collective, cultural memory of Cary Grant as a debonair, accented charmer, a man constantly one step ahead of anyone he’s in a scene with. He is certainly the hero of North by Northwest but he does not drive the action, action happens to him. A leading man is supposed to be the catalyst of a story, Hitchcock takes the ultimate leading man of his time and robs him of his agency, forcing him to be subject to a plot rather than driving it. It's a juxtaposition of our expectations, of Grant's persona, and of the concept a leading man in a movie.

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Ice Princess

Ice Princess 

Directed by Tim Fywell

Written by Hadley Davis 

Starring Michelle Trachtenberg, Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall, Hayden Panettiere 

Release Date March 18th, 2005 

Published March 13th, 2025

If not for the far too young passing of actress Michelle Trachtenberg, the 20th anniversary  of the movie Ice Princess likely would have passed unnoticed. Though this is a quite good for what it is sports movie, it's not exactly a top of mid movie for anyone outside a few nostalgic millennials with failed dreams of winning Olympic gold in Figure Skating. In 2005 and thereafter, more than a few young girls lived vicariously through Trachtenberg's overachieving academic with Harvard in her future who develops a sudden interest in figure skating through the use of math. 

Casey (Trachtenberg) has been on her way to Harvard University from the womb. Her mother, Joan (Joan Cusack), isn't a maniac intent on forcing her daughter to go to Harvard, just very supportive of the idea and proud of her accomplishments. Thus, it is to Joan's dismay that Casey decides to get back into figure skating. Joan sees it as a distraction from her stated academic goals. Casey meanwhile, posits figure skating as a physics experiment, developing an algorithm that not only helps her become an incredible skater in mere weeks, it also helps the other girls building their figure skating dreams including Gen (Hayden Panettiere), an early rival and soon friend of Casey. 

Through Gen, Casey meets Gen's brother, Teddy (Trevor Blumas), and begins a tentative romance. Add this to Casey's summer job, and you an understand why Joan starts freaking out over Casey having little time to focus on her studies. A boyfriend, a job, figure skating practice and competitions pile up alongside Casey's Harvard project and everything seems to suffer, save for figure skating. Indeed, Casey has gotten so good that when it appears she may qualify for an advanced tournament ahead of Gen, Gen's mother and their coach, Tina (Kim Cattrall), sabotages Casey to assure that Gen gets to move on to the big tournament. 

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

Movie Review The Monkey

The Monkey 

Directed by Osgood Perkins 

Written by Osgood Perkins 

Starring Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery 

Release Date February 21st, 2025 

Published February 21st, 2025 

The Monkey stars Theo James as a pair of characters, twin brothers, Hal and Bill Schelburn. Despite being twins, the brothers have never been close. Bill is a bully and Hal is meek and mild. The two share a loving and attentive mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), and a father that neither got to know very well. Petey Shelburn (Adam Scott) was a pilot who disappeared quite often, always returning with odd gifts for his sons that he would store in a closet with nebulous plans to actually give these gifts one day, until Petey simply never came home. 

While cleaning out dad’s closet, the boys find one of his many gifts, a mechanical monkey with crazy eyes and a drum. Turning the key in the back of the monkey is the start of a horrifying curse. The monkey is some kind of evil entity and when the key is turned, someone dies... horribly. The monkey also cannot be destroyed. In a pre-credits sequence we watch as the monkey is destroyed by flamethrower only to show up a few minutes later, fully intact and in the hands of Hal and Bill.

Click here for my full length review. 

Classic Movie Review Millions

Millions (2005) 

Directed by Danny Boyle

Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce 

Starring Alex Etel, Lewis Owen McGibbon, James Nesbitt 

Release Date March 2005 

Published February 22nd, 2025 

After films like Trainspotting and 28 Days Later the last thing you would expect from director Danny Boyle would be a heartfelt family movie. That is, however, exactly what Mr. Boyle delivers with Millions, a wonderfully imaginative and elegant family film about a good-hearted kid and the circumstances, both good and bad, that accompany trying to do what you feel is right.

Damian (Alex Etel) is not your average 8 year-old. Sure, most kids develop imaginary friends, but I'm sure that for most kids those imaginary friends aren't Saints, literally Catholic saints. Damian has spent much of his life, since the death of his mother, memorizing the miracles of the saints as well as their dates of birth and death.

Click here for my full length review. 

Documentary Review Sorry/Not Sorry

Sorry/Not Sorry (2024)

Directed by Caroline Suh, Cara Mones

Written by Documentary 

Starring Jen Kirkman, Abby Schachner, Megan Koester, Andy Kindler, Michael Ian Black, Michael Schur

Release Date July 12th, 2023

Published February 1st, 2025 

I have a pet peeve. Every time I hear some boomer a****** talk about how such and such behavior was okay 'at the time, I get seriously annoyed. NO IT F****** WASN'T! There was never a time in recorded history where sexual assault was okay. There was never a time in human history when a man could pull out his penis in front of other people and begin masturbating and it was okay. There has never been a time when inflicting your sexual perversion on other people without their consent was okay. Racism, sexism, homophobia, Transphobia, these things were never okay. They should never have been treated as if they were okay. 

The documentary, Sorry/Not Sorry is about what Louis C.K did to a series of women. Using his position as a powerful star in the industry, he would invite his fellow professional comics, who happened to be women, to his dressing room, where he would proceed to masturbate in front of them. He has not denied doing this. And yet, his fans and enablers can't stop whining about 'cancel culture.' How about we forget about cancel culture and focus on the fact that what Louis C.K did was creepy, weird, and above all, wrong. It was wrong. I was under the impression for many years that we all agreed that this behavior was criminal. Somehow, just because Louis C.K makes some people laugh, we're supposed to look the other way.

lick here for my full length review. 

Movie Review Companion

Companion 

Directed by Drew Hancock

Written by Drew Hancock 

Starring Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid 

Release Date January 31st, 2025 

Published February 2nd, 2025

Companion stars Sophie Thatcher as Iris, the girlfriend of Josh, played by Jack Quaid. The two met while grocery shopping when goofy Josh attempted to flirt with Iris only to dump oranges all over the grocery store. Classic meet-cute stuff. Iris found Josh’s awkwardness sweet and his dorky smile adorable. They’ve been together ever since. If this meet-cute sounds all too perfect, you’re right, it is. 

This memory is related to us by Iris as she remembers it from a dream she was having. She and Josh are in the car driving to a weekend getaway with some of Josh’s friends and Iris dozed off. So the dream explains the gauzy, too perfect, quality of the meet-cute right? Nope, not really. There is still something a little off. It’s in the manner that Josh addresses Iris, his language is a little overbearing. He seems to be giving her orders rather than empathetically relating to the anxiety she feels about being around his friends. He's not rude or mean, per se, just specific and a little insensitive.

Click here for my full length review. 

Documentary Review The Killing of America

The Killing of America 

Directed by Sheldon Renan, Leonard Schader

Written by Leonard Schrader, Chieko Schrader

Starring American Violence 

Release Date September 5th, 1981

Published February 3rd, 2025 

The inspiration for this article is a video I tripped over while researching movies of the 1980s with a friend. We saw that in 1981 there was a documentary about America’s culture of violence and how violence had only begun to take such a hold in America in the wake of the J.F.K assassination. Interesting thesis, I wanted to know more about it. That’s when I learned that The Killing of America, a 1981 documentary created by filmmakers Sheldon Renan and Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader’s brother, was available to watch for free on YouTube. 

The Killing of America is among the most mind-blowing, shocking, stirring and horrific documentaries to ever exist. The film is boldly uncensored and demonstrates its thesis statement regarding the growth of American gun culture and the culture of violent death that accompanied it, by using uncensored footage of people being killed, footage of morgues full of bodies in the midst of autopsy, and crime scene photos of a kind that haven’t been seen in American media in decades. But it’s so much more than just shock footage. The Killing of America features real instances of American violence that have been forgotten or censored out of existence.

Click here for my full length review. 

Documentary Review My Husband, The Cyborg

My Husband, The Cyborg 

Directed by Susanna Cappellaro

Written by Susanna Cappellaro

Starring Susanna Cappellaro, Scott Cohen

Release Date February 3rd, 2025 

Published February 4th, 2025

My Husband, The Cyborg is a terrific documentary in that it is so very inviting. By that I mean, the film invites you into a conversation with it. Your mind can’t help but argue or challenge the movie, unless you agree with what’s happening, but then you are probably thinking of the possibilities it demonstrates for your own life, in a different conversation with the film. For me, it was a running argument with the protagonist of My Husband, The Cyborg, Scott Cohen, a frustrating human being who, though he is probably a fine person in general, drove me up a wall. 

My Husband, The Cyborg proceeds on the premise of filmmaker, Susanna Cappellaro documenting her husband Scott’s transformation into a ‘Cyborg.’ Scott is starting the process of enhancing his body for the future. The first step is getting a series of bolts in his chest, essentially piercings, which will be in place to hold a small microchip. This microchip has one function, it vibrates when Scott is facing magnetic north. It’s a vibrating compass. That’s it. According to Scott, he will now always know when he’s facing north, which I am sure is valuable information… somehow.

Click here for my full length review. 

Classic Movie Review A.I Artificial Intelligence

A.I Artificial Intelligence 

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Brian Aldis, Ian Watson, Steven Spielberg 

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Frances O’Connor, Jude Law, William Hurt 

Release Date June 29th, 2001

Published February 5th, 2025 

Movies don’t change, you do. A few years back I wrote about the 30th anniversary of Dirty Dancing. I had always been dismissive of Dirty Dancing, foolishly viewing it as a movie for girls who wanted to ogle Patrick Swayze’s swiveling hips. Today, I understand how shallow that reading is, while also being old enough and mature enough to understand that there is nothing wrong with having feelings about an attractive person’s swiveling hips and ripply muscles. The erotic appeal of Dirty Dancing is an asset, not a liability. But that's a topic for another Dirty Dancing essay that I should write. 

The sweaty, sexy, heavy breathing aspects of Dirty Dancing are the inviting surface covering the simmering politics and polemical deconstruction of 80s era America, stealthily hiding in the heart of Dirty Dancing. Director Emile Ardolino uses pop culture signifiers to deconstruct the myth of Reagan’s notion of America, one of repression and a pining for the good old days of the 1950s when women and minorities had fewer rights and weren’t trying to forcefully change the patriarchal society. It’s all there in the detailed and ingenious subtext of Dirty Dancing. And it took me 30 years to see it.

Click here for my full length review. 

Movie Review Clone Cops

Clone Cops 

Directed by Danny Dones

Written by Phillip Cordell, Danny Dones

Starring Quinnlan Ashe, Ravi Patel, Steve Byrne, Laura Holloway, Henry Haggard 

Release Date January 31st, 2025

Published February 6th, 2025 

Clone Cops is a deeply confused movie. On one hand, the film is a broad violent comedy satire of gaming culture. On the other hand, the film features an earnest portrayal of a group of people fighting for their lives and not finding this situation remotely funny. The tonal disconnect is, I assume, intended to create a dark comic vibe but the performances never match up. Some characters are in a broad dark comedy and others don’t know what movie they are in and come off confused and perturbed. 

Co-screenwriter Phillip Cordell takes a prominent role in Clone Cops as the titular, Clone Cop. All of the cops in this future world are based on one super-cop, who may or may not have just been a guy playing a cop in a popular gaming or TV series? Regardless, he’s now been cloned hundreds of times as part of a popular internet gaming series where his clones, wearing bizarre Lego head style masks and engage in combat with a group of terrorists, all for the amusement of an audience watching live on the internet.

Click here for my full length review. 

Movie Review Heart Eyes

Heart Eyes 

Directed by Josh Ruben 

Written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, Michael Kennedy

Starring Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa, Gigi Zumbado

Release Date February 7th, 2025 

Published February 7th, 2025 

Horror comedy is tricky business. You don’t want to make the movie so funny that people don’t take the horror elements seriously. On the other hand, you don’t want to make the horror so graphic and terrifying that laughing feels awkward or inappropriate. The recent film Companionstarring Sophie Thatcher threaded the horror comedy needle by having the comedy arise from the absurdity of the premise and several clever needle drops. 

Another great example of the horror comedy balancing act at its best is Happy Death Day where the dynamic duo of star Jessica Rothe and writer-director Christopher Landon managed to bring horror and comedy together via a clever reimagining of the premise of the comedy classic Groundhog Day crossed with a slasher movie. But the main reason Happy Death Day worked so well was star Jessica Rothe and her boundless charisma and comic timing. Not to take anything away from Christopher Landon whose script was very smart and his direction was crisp.

Click here for my full length review. 

Classic Movie Review Hitch

Hitch (2005) 

Directed by Andy Tennant

Written by Kevin Bisch

Starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes, Kevin James, Amber Valetta, Michael Rappaport, Adam Arkin

Release Date February 11th, 2005

Published February 8th 2025 

With his wit, style and natural charisma it was a wonder in 2005 why Will Smith had not attempted to master the romantic comedy genre. By the time Smith made Hitch, it had been a solid five years since Smith had done a film without a weapon in his hand and an explosion at his back. Not since his breakthrough on TV's Fresh Prince Of Bel Air had Smith done anything close to comedy that wasn’t a one liner amid a hail of bullets.

In New York City there is an urban legend about a guy so charming that he has taken to teaching other men to emulate his charms. This legend is known as the Date Doctor and while most don't believe he exists, he does, in fact, exist in the form of Alex Hitchens, known as Hitch to his clients. The Date Doctor guarantees he can help any guy get any girl in three dates or less. Don't get the wrong idea though, he's not some alpha make pick up artist, Hitch won't help a guy with a one night stand, nor will he teach men to lie to women. He's all about helping them find true love in a long term relationship.

Click here for my full length review. 

Classic Movie Review Fandango

Fandango (1985)

Directed by Kevin Reynolds 

Written by Kevin Reynolds 

Starring Kevin Costner, Sam Robards, Judd Nelson

Release Date January 25th, 1985

Published February 9th, 2025

On January 24th,1985 Kevin Costner took his first leading man role in the mostly forgotten road comedy Fandango. Co-starring Sam Robards, Chuck Bush and Judd Nelson, Fandango follows friends from the University of Texas on one, final, epic road trip before each head off to Vietnam or maybe Mexico.

The year is 1971 and it's the day before Kenneth’s (Sam Robards) wedding and his graduation day from the University of Texas and the day he finds out he’s been drafted. So has his best friend, Gardner (Costner), while their roommate Hicks (Nelson) has already volunteered to go. With their future’s uncertain the friends pile into a generic movie road trip car and head for the border with plans to dig up a relic of their earlier college years.

Click here for my full length review. 

Movie Review Kinda Pregnant

Kinda Pregnant 

Directed by Tyler Spindel 

Written by Julie Palva, Amy Schumer

Starring Amy Schumer, Brianna Howey, Jillian Bell, Will Forte, Damon Wayans Jr. 

Release Date February 5th, 2025 

Published February 11th, 2025

Because it has become quite fashionable for men to hate Amy Schumer ever since she rocketed to fame on Comedy Central and in the movie, Trainwreck, I need to say that I’ve always liked her. Despite the accusations of joke theft and a couple of movies that didn’t play to her best assets comedically, I’ve always found her style of comedy appealing. She’s irreverent, she never held back on stage, and as an actor, she had an offbeat style that made her unique from the typical movie star. 

I am mentioning all of this to head off any notion that I am an Amy Schumer hater. It’s not me trying to be part of the cool crowd when I say that Schumer’s new Netflix comedy, Kinda Pregnant is a deeply odd and wildly unpleasant film. The movie, co-written by Schumer, stars the comedian and actress as a deeply unlikable and unreal caricature of a human being. She has traits that are intended to be broadly comic but come off as unformed ideas tossed off in a pitch meeting that accidentally ended up in a completed script.

Click here for my full length review. 

Movie Review Love Hurts

Love Hurts

Directed by Jonathan Eusebio 

Written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, Luke Passmore

Starring Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose 

Release Date February 7th, 2025

Published February 12th, 2025

Love Hurts stars Academy Award winner Ke Hui Quan as Marvin, a mild mannered real estate agent who is secretly a killing machine. Years earlier, Marvin left behind the life of an enforcer for his gangster brother, Knuckles (Daniel Wu), for the quiet life of a sweet, good natured, real estate agent that everyone quickly comes to like. It’s a strange transition but one that Marvin is incredibly proud of. His new life may appear dull and his persona, milquetoast, but at least he doesn’t break bones and end lives anymore. 

Naturally, the new status quo of Marvin’s life is about to be upended. Rose (Arianna DeBose), has returned after a lengthy absence. Rose happens to have been key to Marvin getting out from under his brother’s thumb. Marvin had promised to kill Rose in exchange for being able to leave his old life behind. With Rose back in town, Marvin’s lie about killing her is exposed, leading Knuckles to send killers after his little brother to find out why Rose is still alive and where she may be hiding while taunting the people who planned to have her killed.

Click here for my full length review.