Movie Review I'm Not There

I’m Not There 

Directed by Todd Haynes

Written by Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman 

Starring Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, David Cross, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bruce Greenwood

Release Date November 21st, 2007

Published January 15th, 2025 

With the release and popularity of the new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, now is the right time to look back at the last time a filmmaker attempted to bring the life of Bob Dylan to the big screen. In 2007, the remarkably gifted director Todd Haynes made the film I’m Not There and to set it apart from the spate of rock n’roll biopics like Walk the Line, Ray, and so on, Haynes decided to approach the life of Bob Dylan from a few different and quite odd angles. Employing a half a dozen actors to embody aspects of Dylan’s career, I’m Not There flies in the face of the traditional biopic and creates something wholly unique that somehow feels more authentic to the life of Bob Dylan than even A Complete Unknown which is a strictly conventional biopic. 

I’m Not There approaches the life of Bob Dylan the same way Dylan himself does, in eras and personas. The first such persona is a young black boy, calling himself Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), in honor of the musician that inspired Dylan to pick up a guitar. The verbose young Woody is hopping trains, playing his guitar, and sharing his wise-beyond-his-years philosophy as he makes his way to New Jersey where the real life Woody Guthrie is laying in a hospital bed breathing his final breaths. In a parallel with A Complete Unknown, we see our Dylan stand-in arrive at Woody Guthrie’s bedside and play a song for his hero.

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

Movie Review Sing Sing

Sing Sing 

Directed by Greg Kwedar

Written by Craig Bentley, Greg Kwedar

Starring Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin 

Release Date July 12th, 2024

Published January 16th, 2025 

Sing Sing follows the story of a group of men incarcerated at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility who have found a unique way to rehabilitate and find new purpose and meaning. The inmates are part of a theater troupe that uses the art of theater and acting to give these men the space to explore their emotions, their frustrations, and the aspirations for when they may no longer be behind bars. The spiritual leader of the troupe is Divine G (Colman Domingo), a man who fully believes that he was wrongly incarcerated but has nevertheless dedicated himself to healing through art. 

Divine G has written plays for the group and has been the lead actor in a number of productions. He’s also the lead recruiter for the group, always with an eye on the yard looking for a lost soul who might benefit from this unique art therapy. The most recent inmate to catch G’s attention is known as Divine Eye, aka, Clarence Maclin (played by real life former inmate Clarence Maclin). It’s unclear exactly what G sees in Divine Eye but he nevertheless pursues the young man and slowly draws him into their circle.

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

Movie Review The Wolfman

Wolf Man 

Directed by Leigh Whannell

Written by Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck

Starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner

Release Date January 17th, 2025

Published January 17th, 2025 

Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as Blake Lovell, a loving father in a struggling marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner). Out of work, Blake spends all of his time with their daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), which has caused Charlotte to become resentful of their bond. In an effort to repair their marriage and family, Blake asks Charlotte to come with him to Oregon where his late father lived in a remote cabin. Blake’s eccentric father, Grady (Sam Jaeger), disappeared a while ago and has recently been declared dead. Blake is set to travel to Oregon to clean out the cabin and sees an opportunity for a family vacation. 

Arriving in Oregon in a massive moving van, Blake, Charlotte and Ginger get lost and encounter a man named Derek Kiel (Benedict Hardie), a creepy, haunted man whose own late father was a close friend of Grady. Derek agrees to lead them to Grady’s cabin but on the drive, a man in the center of the road causes Blake to swerve into nearby trees where the truck rolls over. Derek is thrown from the truck and in quick succession, he’s attacked and dragged away by some kind of monster on two legs. The monster also attacks Blake, scratching his arm, just as he’s able to escape with Charlotte and Ginger. The three find Grady’s cabin with the monster fast on their tail.

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

Classic Movie Review Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise 

Directed by Richard Linklater 

Written by Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan

Starring Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Released January 19th 1995 at the Sundance Film Festival 

Published January 18th, 1995

On a train traveling through Europe, two twenty-somethings meet by chance and spend one romantic night in Vienna together. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is an American who came to Europe to see his girlfriend and ends up heartbroken and wandering. Celine (Julie Delpy) is a French college student headed home from Budapest after visiting relatives.

Jesse and Celine bond over their mutual distaste with a couple loudly fighting loudly in indecipherable German. They decide to hang out together in the dining car and what begins as a time-killing conversation becomes a series of smart, witty exchanges and real honest romance. Jesse has to get off in Vienna to catch a plane the next morning, she is supposed to just go straight home but Jesse's charm tempts her enough to jump off the train for one romantic night in Vienna.

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

Movie Review Eat the Night

Eat the Night 

Directed by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel 

Written by Guillaume Breaud, Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel

Starring Lila Gueneau, Theo Cholbi, Erwan Kapoa Fale 

Release date January 10th, 2025 

Published January 19th, 2025 

Eat the Night stars Lila Gueneau and Theo Cholbi as siblings, Appoline and Pablo. Having apparently been abandoned by their parents, Pablo supports the two of them by selling drugs while the two share a bond over a video game called Darknoon. The game is pretty much Appoline’s obsession. It became her world when she and her older brother began playing together and it became a source of comfort and continuity amid the chaos of their day to day lives. 

Thus, when the makers of Darknoon announce that the game is coming to an end in just mere months, it sends Appoline and Pablo on separate paths. While Appoline remains obsessed with the gaming world, Pablo looks outward. After being assaulted while selling drugs on gang turf, Pablo is cared for by Night, a kindly hotel employee. Pablo returns to see Night the following day on the pretense of offering him a job producing and selling drugs with him.

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

Classic Movie Review Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet 

Directed by David Lynch 

Written by David Lynch

Starring Kyle McLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern

Release Date September 19th, 1986

Published January 20th, 2025 

The passing of legendary director David Lynch caused me to want to look at one of his films that I have always found daunting and unpleasant. Blue Velvet contains a performance by Dennis Hopper that is among the most unsettling, unpredictable, and bizarre that I’ve ever seen on screen. Well, that’s what I felt as a 21 year old film critic learning about movies and arrogantly flying in the face of more conventional opinions. I was a hotheaded contrarian but one who chose his battles. Blue Velvet became a battleground for me because it was beloved by many respected film scholars. But, the reality of Blue Velvet was that it and specifically, Dennis Hopper's abrasive and hard charging performance, had challenged me in a way I wasn't ready for. 

Blue Velvet isn’t exactly entry level film studies. The thick layers of trauma, sentimentality, delusion, and sexual dysfunction that define Blue Velvetrequire a mature perspective. Lynch’s approach often needs a more scholarly eye than what mine was at 21 years old and with no experience in film school. I had also previously seen Eraserhead and found it so off-putting that I could not finish it, which I am certain colored my opinion of Lynch’s work as I approached Wild at Heart and then Blue Velvet, both films I was simply not ready to process.

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

Movie Review Back in Action

Back in Action

Directed by Seth Gordon

Written by Seth Gordon, Brendan O’Brien 

Starring Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, Glenn Close 

Release Date January 17th, 2025 

Published January 21st, 2025 

Back in Action stars Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx as Emily and Matt, CIA partners who fall in love while working on an op. Naturally, this op goes sideways and the two end up nearly dying. This puts a scare into them both as Emily is pregnant. With their colleagues and enemies assuming that they are dead, the two use the opportunity to disappear and start a new life in the suburbs, raising kids, getting jobs, and pursuing hobbies like normal, everyday Americans. 

This actually works out for a surprisingly long while, especially in the social media and surveillance era, no one stumbles over them still being alive for more than 15 years. Unfortunately, with their 15 year old daughter, Alice (McKenna Roberts), acting out and finding trouble in a nightclub, mom and dad’s CIA skills come into play and he couple are caught on camera beating up leering creeps in a video that ends up going viral.

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

Movie Review Three Birthdays

Three Birthdays 

Directed by Jane Weinstock

Written by Jane Weinstock, Nevin Schreiner 

Starring Josh Radnor, Annie Parisse, Nuala Cleary

Release Date January 24th, 2025 

Published January 22nd, 2025 

Three Birthdays is utterly insufferable. The film is about a group of whiny characters creating their own problems by failing to communicate with each other for their own selfish, manipulative, and moronic reasons. The film is set in Ohio, in 1970, and uses the rise of campus violence and protests against the Vietnam war, as a backdrop for a story about progressive-liberal characters who fail spectacularly in their vain attempts to live up the ideals they claim to believe in. 

The structure of the story takes us through three singular days in the lives of a family that includes daughter Bobbie (Nuala Cleary), dad, Rob (Josh Radnor), and mom, Kate (Annie Parisse). Each day the movie focuses on is a birthday for one of our main characters, beginning with Bobbie. On this day, Bobbie has decided to lose her virginity but not before she writes treacly poetry about it that would make a real 15 year old girl cringe. The movie seems to find her attempt to find a rhyme for virginity quite amusing but it doesn’t translate to being actually amusing.

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

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.