Classic Movie Review Scream

Scream 

Directed by Wes Craven

Written by Kevin Williamson 

Starring Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard

Released December 2oth, 1996 

Scream was a flashpoint in the horror genre of the mid to late 1990s. Some credit a smart marketing campaign, the film was distributed by Dimension Films, a branch of then indie powerhouse Miramax. Putting aside all that we know about Harvey Weinstein and his company, they made Scream a phenomenon through incredible word of mouth at a time when the horror genre was at the lowest of lows. 

In the previous year to the release of Scream, the highest grossing horror movie of 1995 ranked 82nd overall in theatrical gross and brought in just $21 million dollars in worldwide sales. That movie was Tales From the Crypt: Demon Night. Now, in terms of business, that movie did make money and there was a strong business model in terms of low budget horror and $20 million dollars in revenue. But, the genre was truly at its lowest in terms of reputation and cultural impact until Scream came along.

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

Movie Review Vengeance

Vengeance 

Directed by B.J Novak 

Written by B.J Novak 

Starring B.J Novak, Boyd Holbrook, Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher

Released July 29th, 2022

Vengeance stars B.J Novak as a feckless writer bouncing from one meaningless hook up to another while dreaming of being a podcast star. He claims that he wants to tell the story of America but his naked ambition is clear to everyone but him. Novak’s Ben Manolowitz’s life is turned upside down when he gets a call in the middle of the night telling him that his girlfriend has died. 

This is a curious phone call because, as I mentioned, Ben’s not a guy who goes for commitment. He doesn’t have a ‘girlfriend,’ he has a series of meaningless sexual encounters that pass the time when he isn’t working. The man on the phone, Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), however, is convinced that Ben was his sister, Abilene's (Lio Tipton) boyfriend. Abilene has been found dead of an apparent overdose somewhere in West Texas.

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

Movie Review Nope

Nope 

Directed by Jordan Peele

Written by Jordan Peele 

Starring Keke Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott

Release Dated July 22nd, 2022 

A shoe stands on its end, the toe pointing into the air. It’s an evocative image, shoes don’t do that. But a shoe does do that in the new Jordan Peele horror thriller Nope. Come to think of it, the sight of a shoe in such an unnatural position is the kind of image that might cause one to say ‘Nope’ while slowly backing away from whatever might be the cause of this image. It’s not just a shoe though, there’s a well placed drop of blood on that shoe as well that offers another disturbing aspect to this sight. Then the context for the shoe comes fully into frame and… 

I am not going to spoil this for you, I promise. I am going to do a little tap dancing to get through this so bear with me. I want you to see Nope because it is so unique and thrilling. So, trust me when I tell you that nothing I write in this review will reveal anything important regarding the surprises and shocks of Nope. And trust me again when I tell you that those shocks and surprises are worth every penny of your ticket price.

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

Classic Movie Review Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams 

Directed by Phil Alden Robinson

Written by Phil Alden Robinson

Starring Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Amy Madigan

Released May 5th, 1989

If you build it he will come

Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) became a hippie as a way of breaking away from his father. Now, at age 36, Ray is consumed by the notion that he is becoming the same failed dreamer that his father was. Thus why, when Ray is visited by a voice amidst his cornfield and told “If you build it, he will come” he decides to do something radical and illogical. Something his father would never do.

Ray follows the voice to a vision of a baseball field in the middle of his massive cornfield. The field will consume a great deal of acreage and possibly bankrupt Ray and his family but ,with his wife Annie’s (Amy Madigan) support, Ray plows under the crops and goes ahead with his crazy dream . When the next spring arrives so does the ghost of legendary ballplayer ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta R.I.P)

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

Movie Review Alone Together

Alone Together

Directed by Katie Holmes 

Written by Katie Holmes

Starring Katie Holmes, Jim Sturgess

Release Date July 22nd, 2022

There have been a few pandemic movies but not in the sense of a thriller or expose of the incompetence that caused the pandemic. Rather, so far, filmmakers have preferred telling more human stories than going after the bigger stories that will require a more complex take. The latest small scale pandemic story comes from actor-director, Katie Holmes. 

For her second time behind the camera as a director, Katie Holmes settled on a relatively small scale story. Alone Together finds Holmes starring alongside Jim Sturgess as strangers stranded at the same Air B’n B just as the pandemic was beginning to overtake New York City. Holmes certainly isn’t taking it easy for her first directorial effort. Despite the small scale story, Holmes takes on the challenge of directing and starring in Alone Together, which is not as easy as Holmes makes it seem in this charming film.

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

Movie Review Spin Me Round

Spin Me Round 

Directed by Jeff Baena 

Written by Jeff Baena

Starring Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza 

Release Date August 19th, 2022 

Spin Me Round is a bizarre movie. The comedy starring the lovely Allison Brie and the brilliant Aubrey Plaza has a ridiculous amount of promise and falls short. The idea behind the narrative is a good one, and with Brie and Plaza, along with supporting ringers such as Tim Heidecker and Molly Shannon, Spin Me Round should have been a no-brainer indie comedy sensation. Instead, director Jeff Baena throws in one twist too many and leaves one MAJOR plot thread dangling, leaving Spin Me Round to spin its wheels. 

Spin Me Round tells the story of Amber (Allison Brie). Amber has been the manager of an Italian themed chain restaurant for most of her working life. She did try to leave and start her own restaurant but it didn’t work out. Thankfully, her old boss, played in a completely wasted cameo by Lil Rel Howery, brought her back and she seems content to work there for the foreseeable future.

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

Movie Review Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bodies Bodies Bodies 

Directed by Halina Reijn

Written by Sarah Delappe 

Starring Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Pete Davidson

Release Date August 5th, 2022

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a mixed bag. At once a horror whodunnit and a snappy send up of Gen-z, Bodies Bodies Bodies has a tricky tone to pull off and I don’t think it quite threaded the needle. The movie wants laughs and scares in equal measure and while it earns both, the whole is never as good as the parts. In the end Bodies Bodies Bodies is quite effective but not as effective as it needs to be. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies stars Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalova as a young couple traveling to a hurricane party. Stenberg is Sophie and Bakalova is Bee, and what Bee doesn’t know is that they have not actually been invited to this party. This is despite the fact that the party is being put on by Sophie’s oldest and closest friend, David (Pete Davidson). Sophie has dropped out of the lives of her closest friends while she was in rehab and while getting clean, she met Bee and fell in love.

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

Movie Review Get Away if You Can

Get Away if You Can 

Directed by Dominique Braun, Terrence Martin

Written by Dominique Braun, Terrence Martin

Starring Ed Harris, Dominique Brau, Terrence Martin

Release Date August 19th, 2022 

Imagine being trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight. Now imagine it’s you and the most insufferable, bickering married couple you can imagine. That’s the equivalent experience of watching the new movie Get Away if You Can. A romantic boat trip intended to save a marriage becomes a slog from one boring encounter to the next, and from one obnoxious argument to another. 

Get Away if You Can was written by, directed, and stars Dominique Braun and Riley Smith as the married couple. She’s from Brazil, he comes from a wealthy family in the boat business, headed up by his domineering father, played by Ed Harris. While he is deeply in love with his wife, the man’s family is opposed to his wife. The man’s father is fully convinced that the wife is a golddigger who is out to get her son’s fortune after Dad kicks off.

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

Movie Review Mack & Rita

Mack & Rita 

Directed by Katie Aselton

Written by Madeline Walter, Paul Welsh

Starring Diane Keaton, Elizabeth Lail, Taylour Paige, Loretta Devine

Release Date August 12th, 2022

I’ve been struggling with this silly review of this very silly movie for a couple of days. Why? Because I like Diane Keaton and I don’t enjoy hating her movies. Diane Keaton is a classy actress with a wealth of talent and style who was great… in the 1970s. Ever since the late 90s something has possessed Diane Keaton to make some of the most unwatchable movies of the past 30 years. Movies such as Because I Said So, Mad Money, Town & Country, The Family Stone, Poms, The Book Club, Hanging Up, And So It Goes, are some of the most dull and insulting movies I have ever seen. 

Naturally, I’ve been told over and over and over again that Diane Keaton simply doesn’t make the kinds of movies that would appeal to my male, 40 something year old sensibilities. That’s true, but in my professional standing, a film critic of more than 20 years of experience, I feel I am still quite qualified to judge the work before me and the work before me is desperate, cringe-inducing, and often quite unintentionally sad. Keaton goes for laughs in these movies and I just end up feeling sorry for her.

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

Movie Review Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing 

Directed by Olivia Newman

Written by Lucy Alibar

Starring Daisy Edgar Jones, Harris Dickinson, David Straithairn

Release Date July 15th, 2022

Where the Crawdads Sing is too cowardly to be the kind of unconventional movie it could be. The story of a young woman raising herself in a South Carolina Swamp, Where the Crawdads Sing has an intriguing idea at heart but fails to capitalize on that idea. Instead, the film, and, I am told, the book, fall back on a conventional courtroom story to carry the drama. There is nothing wrong with a good courtroom mystery but it needs to be better than your average episode of Law & Order television episode or it needs to be scrapped. Crawdads fails that test. 

Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya Clark, played as a child by Jojo Regina and Leslie France, and played as an adult by Daisy Edgar Jones, is known as ‘The Marsh Girl." The judgmental nickname is given to Kya by residents of the town closest to her swamp home. Kya’s family each left the marsh years ago, a series of leavings that are covered in a well crafted montage, while Kya chose to stay. At first, Kya stayed to care for her alcoholic father, played by Garret Dillahunt. Eventually, Kya just came to love the marsh and after finding ways to care for herself, she stayed.

Find my full length review linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Xanadu

Xanadu 

Directed by Robert Greenwald

Written by Roger Christian Danus, Marc Reid Rubel

Starring Olivia Newton John, Michael Beck, Gene Kelly

Release Date August 8th, 1980

This week, Olivia Newton John passed away. She was 73 years old and had bravely fought cancer for several years. Tributes have poured in for the singer who holds a wonderfully unique place in our culture. She's at once a figure of resolute earnestness that Generation X held up for mockery. But she's also a person who is remarkably easy to like and whose work is very easy to enjoy. Take for instance her rather checkered film career. Aside from Grease, a movie that has achieved cult fame, she wasn't in many movies and she was certainly not in many good movies. 

In fact, my favorite Olivia Newton John movie is one that falls into the not very good category. Xanadu is an epic fever dream of cocaine fueled 1970's weirdness. It's a musical that longs to bring the generations of the big and the disco together for a Brady Bunch style family singalong. It's pure bland white bread on one side and goopy, gooey Hollywood cheese on the other. It's a massive misfire of intent and yet a wildly enjoyable failure.

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

Movie Review Emily the Criminal

Emily the Criminal 

Directed by John Patton Ford

Written by John Patton Ford

Starring Aubrey Plaza 

Release Date August 12th, 2022 

Emily the Criminal stars the always appealing Aubrey Plaza as the title character. Emily works as a food delivery drone for a catering company. Her life is generally uneventful. She’d wanted to be an artist when growing up but life got in the way of her dreams. Now, she struggles to get by while watching friends climb corporate ladders and live lavish lifestyles and her frustration grows. 

Naturally, the rest of Emily the Criminal is about how Emily’s life is changed, for better and for worse. She becomes a criminal, she starts a romance, and major incidents reveal who she really is. Believe me, I am not slagging off this plot, it’s solid and not remotely as rote or predictable as I made it out to be. That said, the plot is the hanger on which rests a dynamic dramatic and romantic performance from Aubrey Plaza.

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

Movie Review Fall

Fall 

Directed by Scott Mann

Written by Scott Mann, Jonathan Frank 

Starring Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Release Date August 12th, 2022

Well, it’s official, I am afraid of heights. Watching the new movie Fall, the story of two extreme climbers going to the top of the tallest TV tower in Texas, confirmed something I had kind of already known about myself. I’d had a minor panic attack while at the top of the former Sears Tower in Chicago about 10 years ago and I am pretty sure it came from just looking out of a window at the vastness of the City of Chicago and quickly growing dizzy. 

The movie Fall confirms the diagnosis. Watching this movie I nearly passed out on two occasions and had to stop watching for a few minutes after one particularly harrowing look down from the top of the tower. Say what you will about some aspects of Fall, once the movie arrives at the top of the television tower in the midst of a vast desert, the terror is no joke. Fall is a movie you watch through your fingers and yell at in your mind as you root for the characters to take tighter grips and not lean over the edge so much.

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

Movie Review Us

Us 

Directed by Jordan Peele 

Written by Jordan Peele 

Starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

Release Date March 22nd, 2019 

Us was a horror movie event when it was released in 2019. Jordan Peele has turned his every work into something everyone needs to see, something confirmed by his recent film Nope. Following the breakout success of his Academy Award winning Get Out, Peele busted through some very high expectations and created another masterful horror movie. Us is a chilling, gripping, watch-it-through-your-fingers, entertaining creepfest. That it is also masterfully acted and directed is an example of how too many filmmakers allow genre to hold them back. The best filmmakers, like Peele elevate the genre rather than lower themselves to it. 

Us stars Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson, a suburban mother of two. Adelaide is happily married to Gabe (Winston Duke) and the two of them have a daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright), and a son, Jason (Evan Alex). As we meet them, the family is on their way to Adelaide’s mother’s former home where they will spend the weekend and go to the nearby beach to spend time with their friends, party boy, Josh (Tim Heidecker) and wine-mom Kitty (Elizabeth Moss).

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

Movie Review The Invitation

The Invitation (2022) 

Directed by Jessica M. Thompson

Written by Blair Butler

Starring Nathalie Emmanuel, Thomas Doherty, Alana Boden

Release Date August 26th, 2022 

The Invitation is an extraordinarily boring and predictable bit of horror nonsense. Though it is competently crafted and not terribly acted, the film holds no life, no energy, and no form of invention. The Invitation is the kind of movie that simply... exists. Competent filmgoers will guess the twist very quickly and what remains of the movie is tedious, aside from one terrific and sadly underutilized supporting performance. 

The Invitation stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie, a struggling would be artist living in New York City. Evie has recently lost her mother and believes that she has no other living family. This changes when she is gifted a DNA testing kit and free chance to find new relatives. Through this, Evie finds that she has roots, indeed a full family line, living in England. In fact, Evie's Cousin Oliver (Hugh Skinner) happens to be coming to New York on business and wants to have lunch.

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

Movie Review Low Life

Low Life (2022) 

Directed by Tyler Michael James

Written by Hunter Milano, Noah Rotter

Starring Wes Dunlap, Lucas Neff, Lucy Urbano

Release Date August 26th, 2022

I'm a huge fan of true crime channels on YouTube. Creators and channels like Lazy Masquerade, Savox, The Internet Investigator, and Hanna the Horrible have given me endless hours of fascinating content on the macabre and terrifying side of true crime. Amidst that genre of channel is a sub-genre of videos where the creators detail the often horrifying yet totally real downfalls of other YouTubers. Whether they were child predators using their fame to lure victims or crazed narcissistic murderers, these stories carry an even greater fascination because so much is known and available about these people. The video evidence of their emotional and professional declines are available for the world to say on their very own channel. 

The new to streaming thriller Low Life is like witnessing one of these YouTuber crime stories firsthand and as a fan of this content, the film captivated me. Low Life stars Wes Dunlap as Benny Jansen, a loud mouthed, motor mouthed YouTuber who specializes in catfishing and exposing child predators. Benny's efforts are noble, in theory, we should all surely want to see predators get taken down. However, as Benny uses these stories to make himself famous and to make money, the ethical and legal lines surrounding what he does become very blurry.

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

Movie Review The Beach

The Beach (2000) 

Directed by Danny Boyle 

Written by John Hodge 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoye, Robert Carlyle 

Release Date February 11th, 2000

The Beach is a deeply odd movie. Directed by Danny Boyle, The Beach stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Richard, an American traveling in Thailand. While staying at a cheap motel, Richard meets a crazed weirdo named Daffy (Robert Carlyle) who gives him a map to a hidden island paradise. Later, after finding Daffy dead, Richard goes to a pair of strangers he’d been vaguely stalking and asks them if they’d like to try and find this hidden paradise with him. 

The two French strangers are a couple, Etienne (Guillaume Canet) and Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen). If you haven’t guessed that Richard chose this couple because he’s developed a crush on Francoise, you’re the only one. You can guess it just from what I wrote but in the movie you couldn’t miss it as Danny Boyle is not subtle about showing Richard staring holes through Francoise on a regular basis.

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

Movie Review Samaritan

Samaritan (2022)

Directed by Julius Avery 

Written by Bragi F. Schut 

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Javon Walton

Release Date August 26th, 2022

30 minutes into the new Sylvester Stallone action movie, Samaritan the titular superhero has yet to appear. Instead, we’ve spent 30 minutes watching a child character named Sam, played by Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, attempt to determine what we already know: Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Joe Smith’ is secretly the Superhero known as Samaritan. To this point the movie has established plenty about Joe while showing a city in the depth of economic despair and Sam and his mother as struggling so badly that mom has to borrow her son’s lunch money to get to work. Never mind that the kid is wearing a pair of classic red and white Air Jordan shoes. 

At the 30 minute mark we know that the bad guy in the movie, Cyrus (Pilou Asbaeck) has acquired the only weapon in the world that could kill Samaritan, a hammer forged by Samaritan’s late twin brother, Nemesis. And we can assume, since Sam’s investigation is still going at the 30 minute mark that we are still not very close to Samaritan actually arriving in the movie. Convention dictates that Sam gets caught snooping around by ‘Joe.’ Sam explains that he knows who Joe really is and that Joe first denies his identity, followed by a scene where he’s forced to reveal himself, and then he must reluctantly enter the fray against Edwin and his gang, likely to rescue Sam.

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