Movie Review Dead Before They Wake

Dead Before They Wake 

Directed by Andy Crane, Nathan Shepka

Written by Nathan Shepka

Starring Nathan Shepka, Sylvester McCoy

Release Date January 27th, 2025

Published January 23rd, 2025 

Trigger Warning: This is a review of a movie about sex trafficking. And it’s not a good movie. With the success of such films as Taken and The Sound of Freedom, sex trafficking has become a topic that filmmakers find easy to dramatize and use as a prop around which to center action scenes. It’s easy for audiences to root for a hero who is blowing the heads off of sex traffickers. It’s the most basic, hacky, easy to dramatize thing in the world. 

When it became out of fashion to have all of your stock villains be terrorists or Russians or Russian terrorists, a new action movie boogeyman was needed. And thus we got the vaguely Central European, heavily accented, overdosed on tattoo ink and weed, baddies who kidnap young girls to sell to rich creeps. It’s practically a cottage industry now in low budget action movie culture to put swarthy men in gold chains and track suits and call them sex traffickers. Why, I just wrote half of a direct to Netflix feature with just that description above.

Find my full length review at Geeks. Media 

Classic Movie Review S.F.W

S.F.W 

Directed by Jefery Levy 

Written by Danny Rubin, Jefery Levy 

Starring Stephen Dorff, Reese Witherspoon, Jake Busey, Joey Lauren Adams 

Release Date January 20th, 1995

Published January 24th, 1995 

S.F.W stars Stephen Dorff as Cliff Spab, a 20 year old slacker who rises to fame after he and a friend are among a group held hostage inside of a convenience store. A terror group called S.P.L.I.T Image is behind the hostage situation and they document the whole thing with video cameras that they demand to be played on television or they will kill their hostages. The TV networks agree and Cliff’s sarcastic, slacker philosopher becomes the star of the show. 

With his catchphrase “So F***ing What” doubling as a thesis statement on modern life, the film picks up Cliff’s story in the wake of the end of the hostage crisis, a bloody shootout that ended with the death of Cliff’s friend, Joe (Jack Noseworthy). Free from the terrorists, Cliff re-enter the world unaware of his newfound fame. Returning home, Cliff is met by a series of uncaring family members, shallow hangers-on, and con artists eager to cash in on Cliff’s fame.

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

Movie Review Presence

Presence 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written by David Koepp

Starring Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan 

Release Date January 24th, 2025 

Published January 25th, 2025 

Presence is a wonderfully experimental and ingeniously crafted ghost story that gains an unexpected amount of emotional weight as it builds to stunning final moment that is genuinely surprising and heartbreaking; Director Steven Soderbergh, playing with cinematic form as he’s done throughout his 35 plus year care, has created a brilliantly modern ghost story centered around a family in crisis. 

Lucy Liu is the most recognizable in the cast, she stars as Rebecca, a busy business woman who dotes on her teenage son, going as far as choosing a new family home specifically for his benefit. It’s in a school district where Tyler (Eddie Maday) can dominate the swim team and build his college resume. It’s no wonder then that Tyler’s little sister, Chloe (Callina Liang) feels like an afterthought. Thankfully she has a wonderfully doting dad, Chris (Chris Sullivan).

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

Classic Movie Review Miami Rhapsody

Miami Rhapsody

Directed by David Frankel

Written by David Frankel

Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Mia Farrow, Gil Bellows, Antonio Banderas, Mia Farrow

Release Date January 27th, 1995 

Published January 27th, 2025

Miami Rhapsody stars Sarah Jessica Parker as Gwyn Marcus, a neurotic, recently engaged, young woman who is struggling with the concept of marriage. She loves her fiancé, Matt (Gil Bellows), but her ideas of marriage have been rocked by the recent problems in the longtime marriage of her parents, Nina (Mia Farrow) and Vic (Paul Mazursky). Dad believes that mom is cheating on him and he’s right. Gwyn confirms that Nina has been sleeping with Antonio (Antonio Banderas), the nurse for Gwyn’s grandmother. 

But, it’s not just Gwyn’s parents whose marriage has hit the skids. Gwyn’s little sister, Leslie (Carla Gugino), just got married and over the course of a few weeks the marriage is just about over as Leslie starts cheating on her husband. Speaking of cheating, Gwyn’s older brother, Jordan (Kevin Pollak), cheated on his pregnant wife with the wife of his business partner. All of these infidelities coincide with Gwyn’s engagement to Matt and, naturally, all of the chaos and mistrust, has poor Gwyn questioning whether marriage is worth the hassle and potential heartbreak. 

As you can sense from that brief description of the plot, Miami Rhapsody relies on a lot of coincidences. And the plot centers on a lot of characters that we are supposed to like being awful to the people they are supposed to love. Everyone, including Gwyn’s dad, who I’d failed to mention before, is cheating. And Gwyn keeps tripping over everyone’s affairs in the strangest series of coinciding events imaginable for one family. To say that the action of Miami Rhapsody stretches believability is an understatement.

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

Documentary Review Time Passages

Time Passages 

Directed by Kyle Henry 

Written by Kyle Henry 

Starring Kyle Henry

Release Date January 31st, 2025 

Published January 28th, 2025

Time Passages is a haunting, beautiful, and deeply emotional documentary. Written, directed, and crafted by Kyle Henry, the documentary takes us through a monologue by Henry as he comes to terms with the slow motion passing of his mother, Elaine. After years of being Kyle’s closest friend and champion, Elaine developed dementia and slowly faded away. And to make matters even more tragic, the progression of Elaine’s condition coincided with a pandemic that separated Kyle from his mom by several states. 

Through the use of home videos, photos, and conversations with his siblings, Kyle attempts to rebuild his mother’s memory. Time Passagesthus begins as a vain attempt to jog his mother’s failing memory and develops into a tribute to his mother’s life, before finally becoming an ongoing grief therapy session as Kyle begins to interview his mother in an unexpected, almost surreal fashion that is surprisingly effective, emotional and deeply cathartic.

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

Movie Review Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Susannah Grant 

Starring Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhardt

Release Date March 17th, 2000 

Published Wednesday January 29th, 2025 

An attractive and quite nervous woman sits in a rather forgettably well appointed office. She’s pitching herself for a job that she is not fully qualified for. It’s a job that she could probably be trained to do quite well, but, on paper, she doesn’t have the credentials. So, she plays up her strengths. She’s a people person, she’s great at interacting with the public. And, she’s a mom. She’s cared for her children all of their lives, something she sees as qualifying her for the job of being a nurse or nurses aid. But of course, she’s not getting this job. Being a nurse of any kind requires schooling and she doesn’t have that. 

This woman is Erin Brockovich and through moxie, grit, and desperation, she knows she can do anything. She could move mountains if someone gave her the tools to do so. She has a drive and a determination that should make her very successful but life has intervened on more than one occasion in her life to prevent her from the kind of success that driven people like herself tend to find. That being the kind of success that comes with a financial reward.

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

Movie Review Loren and Rose

Loren and Rose 

Directed by Russell Brown 

Written by Russell Brown

Starring Jacqueline Bissett, Kelly Blatz, Paul Sand

Release Date January 28th, 2025 

Published January 30th, 2025

Loren and Rose is a movie that loves movies. The film, written and directed by Russell Brown, uses the story of a down on her luck former movie star, played wonderfully by Jacqueline Bissett, to poke at how Hollywood treats actresses after a certain age, while also indulging his love for Hollywood classics. Loren and Rose contains visual references to Citizen Kane, vocal allusions to Casablanca, and the film itself is an homage to the brilliantly experimental, 1981 movie, My Dinner with Andre with a Hollywood spin. 

It’s been years since Rose (Bissett) has been a Hollywood sensation. After a few years at the top of cast lists with her name up in lights, Rose was cast aside by Hollywood for the crime of entering her forties. This, plus a few poor business decisions, and a quirky personal life, led Rose to take whatever role she could find. This means a lot of low budget horror, well beneath the dignity of a former screen icon.

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

Movie Review You're Cordially Invited

You’re Cordially Invited 

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Written by Nicholas Stoller 

Starring Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon, Geraldine Viswanathan

Release Date January 30th, 2025 

Published January 31st, 2025 

You’re Cordially Invited is an obnoxious movie. This, sadly, has become par for the course for Will Ferrell who has turned obnoxious into his brand ever since he failed to transition from goofy blockbuster star to serious actor in and around 2005 to 2008, give or take. Feeling rejected by critics, Ferrell leaned back into what made him a box office draw, screaming, yelling, flailing, and falling down until perhaps, someone might laugh. It’s a charmless brand of humor that feels desperate to remain relevant. 

You’re Cordially Invited proceeds from an ancient, creaky, premise about a pair of wedding parties booked for the same weekend at a venue that can only support one wedding at a time. Ferrell plays Jim, the overbearing father of Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), a college student who announces rather suddenly that she’s engaged to marry her D.J boyfriend, Oliver (Stony Blyden). Though he’s skeptical that his little girl is ready to be married, he comes around quickly and begins to plan a wedding at the same venue where he’d married Jenni’s late mother.

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

Movie Review Captain America The First Avenger

Captain America The First Avenger (2011) 

Directed by Joe Johnston 

Written by Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely 

Starring Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Stanley Tucci, Dominic Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell 

Release Date July 22nd, 2011 

Published February 10th, 2025

Captain America is returning to the big screen on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2025, with Captain America: Brave New World. Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson is taking over the mantle of Captain America in the continuation of the franchise that, after Iron Man, solidified the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 2011’s Captain America: The First Avengerwas a terrific introduction of the Captain America character and remains, all these years later, a high point in the MCU. Let’s look back. 

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was a 98-pound weakling with a heart twice the size of his tiny frame. In 1942, all Steve wanted was to defend his country in the 2nd World War. Steve didn't have bloodlust or a death wish, rather, he saw Hitler as just the kind of bully that he'd spent his young life fighting against and he was eager to strike a blow on behalf of those being harmed by Hitler's evil.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Man of the House

Man of the House 

Directed by Stephen Herek 

Written by Robert Ramsey, Matthew Stone, John J. McLaughlin

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Christina Milian, Cedric The Entertainer, Anne Archer

Release Date February 25th, 2005 

Published February 23rd, 2005 

Some movies aren’t made to be remembered. Most movies, in fact, are not memorable. You’ve likely forgotten most of the movies that you have seen in your life. Does this mean those movies were bad? Not necessarily, but it doesn’t speak well of those movies. I would much rather have a memorable experience than lose two hours of my life to something that is not going to linger in my mind beyond the time I spent with it. All of this is to say that I saw and wrote about the movie Man of the House in 2005 and even revisited it for a podcast. And yet, when I tried to recall the movie, it was nearly impossible. 

Man of the House is such a desperately forgettable experience that trying to recall it is an effort, and probably not worth such effort. So, I decided to try an experiment. Without consulting my previous review and fighting with my own memory, I am going to try and recall the experience of Man of the House. Then I will actually watch this trivial movie while consulting my original and podcast reviews of the movie just to see whether I am capable of recalling a movie that does not ask to be remembered.

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

Movie Review Cold Wallet

Cold Wallet 

Directed by Cutter Hodierne 

Written by Cutter Hodierne, John Hibey 

Starring Raul Castillo, Josh Brener, Melonie Diaz, Tony Cavalero

Release Date February 28th, 2025 

Published February 24th, 2025 

One thing I cannot do is find any sympathy for people who bring about their own bad circumstances. For instance, I have no time for people who die climbing Mount Everest. If you’d like to not die on the side of a frozen mountain, choose not to go. Pretty simple. I feel the same way about people who lose money in crypto scams. If you want to avoid losing money in Bitcoin or whatever, don’t get into Bitcoin or Crypto. I’ve managed to not get into crypto for its entire existence, thus I have not lost money on it. Pretty simple. 

I mention this because the movie Cold Wallet was up against a lot to get me to care about people who lost money in a cryptocurrency scam. The movie pulls off quite a trick because it never bothers to ask you to like its main characters. By the time you reach the end of the movie and the main character is met with a moral crisis, it’s surprisingly compelling, even if you have no idea what the character is about to do via some sort of internet exchange of currency.

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

Movie Review Adult Best Friends

Adult Best Friends

Directed by Delaney Buffett

Written by Delaney Buffett, Katie Corwin 

Starring Delaney Buffett, Katie Corwin, Mason Gooding 

Release Date February 28th, 2025 

Published February 26th, 2025 

Adult Best Friends stars Delaney Buffett and Katie Corwin as Delaney and Katie, childhood best friends who grew up together and are beginning to grow apart. While Katie is embracing the conventions of adulthood, including a long term relationship with John (Mason Gooding), Katie remains in young adulthood, drinking and partying and begging Katie to join her. As Katie would rather stay home with John and Katie wants only to go out and party, the two struggle to maintain their lifelong bond. 

The plot kicks in when John proposes to Katie and she accepts. Now, Katie must find a way to tell her best friend that she’s getting married while worrying that Delaney’s disdain for John will cause an irreparable rift in their friendship. In order to break it to Delaney gently, Katie plans a beach vacation for them, returning to a beachside town where they’d vacationed and partied more than a few times. Delaney thinks it will be a weekend of drinking and partying, while Katie hopes they can find quiet moments for a heart to heart conversation.

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

Movie Review The Rule of Jenny Pen

The Rule of Jenny Pen

Directed by James Ashcroft 

Written by Eli Kent, James Ashcroft 

Starring Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow 

Release Date March 7th, 2025 

Published March 6th, 2025 

The Rule of Jenny Pen stars Geoffrey Rush as Stefan Mortenson, a judge who suffers a stroke in the midst of the sentencing for a murder trial. Waking up in a nursing home, Judge Mortenson finds his mind and body assaulted on all sides but is what happening real or only in his mind? Leading the assault is Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), a bully who has lived in this nursing home since childhood. Crealy wears a puppet on his arm named Jenny Pen that he uses as part of his torture. 

Throughout the run time of this remarkably unique horror movie, the scares come as much from Lithgow’s unhinged performance as from the ravages of age. If you have a deep seated fear of infirmity and the loss of faculties due to age, The Rule of Jenny Pen will be leaning on that particular nerve throughout the entire film. The nursing home setting is not a new one for a horror movie but co-writer and director James Ashcroft uses the setting remarkably well in crafting scenes of creeping terror.

Find my full length review at Horror.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Mickey 17

Mickey 17 

Directed by Bong Joon Ho

Written by Bong Joon Ho

Starring Robert Pattinson, Naomie Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun 

Release Date March 7th, 2025 

Published March 7th, 2025 

Mickey 17 is a dark sci-fi comedy from the brilliantly unique mind of writer-director Bong Joon Ho. The film covers topics that Bong Joon Ho has addressed in his previous films, sympathetically examining the lives of those at the bottom of the economic ladder, rot and corruption in the moneyed class, and the little things that make life matter. In the case of Mickey 17, the question boils down to whether you believe death gives life meaning. Does living life to the fullest mean nothing when you know you’re not actually going to die? 

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has a tendency to trust the wrong people. A lovely guy, Mickey first placed his faith in Timo (Steven Yeun), and paid the price when Timo lost all of their money to a gangster with a fetish for watching people die. Narrowly avoiding the gangster, Mickey and Timo sign up for a dangerous job off of planet Earth. A failed politician, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife, Yifa (Toni Collette), are leading an expedition to colonize an alien planet and they need a crew.

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

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.