Movie Review No Exit

No Exit 

Directed by Damian Power 

Written by Adrian Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari, Taylor Adams 

Starring Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez

Release Date February 25th, 2022

No Exit is a nasty little thriller about an abducted girl, a former drug addict on the run, and a snowstorm that traps a disparate group of people at a roadside shelter. Directed by Damian Power, No Exit has tension and suspense but cannot sustain the excitement for the entire run time. Issues of logic and motivation come in late in the 3rd act, and a magical nail gun becomes an overpowered Deus Ex Machina in the unsatisfying conclusion. 

No Exit stars the very talented Havana Rose Liu as Darby, a reformed drug addict currently finishing out a stint at a rehab facility. The plot of No Exitkicks in when Darby manages an escape from the rehab facility. Darby has just learned that her mother is in the hospital on the brink of death and Darby is determined to reach her before she passes on. Darby’s escape is thwarted by a massive snow storm that closes the roads and forces her to take shelter and a roadside shelter.

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

Movie Review The Desperate Hour

The Desperate Hour 

Directed by Phillip Noyce 

Written by Chris Sparling

Starring Naomi Watts

Release Date February 25th, 2022 

Phillip Noyce’s reviled drama, Lakewood is finally getting a release under a new title, The Desperate Hour. The film which debuted as Lakewood at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021 was met with a torrent of bad reviews before quietly creeping into the shadows and out of any possible awards contention. Now titled The Desperate Hour, the Naomi Watts led thriller is getting a limited and rather low-key theatrical release. 

The Desperate Hour is one of those movies made during the COVID-19 pandemic and needed to find ways to film without risking cast and crew-wide infections. Thus, the story centers on one character for 84 minutes alone in a forest. But that’s not what the movie is about. Instead, The Desperate Hour is about a school shooting that unfolds via an all powerful IPhone that gets reception everywhere and never runs out of a charge until it’s needed for dramatic effect.

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

Classic Movie Review The First Nudie Movie

The First Nudie Musical 

Directed by Mark Haggard, Bruce Kimmel

Written by Bruce Kimmel

Starring Stephen Nathan, Cindy Williams, Bruce Kimmel

Release Date March 3rd, 1976

Specialty film imprint Quiver have once again dug into the annals of 70's cinema for another unique and mostly forgotten movie, 1976’s bizarre sex comedy, The First Nudie Musical. This remarkably 1970's movie stars a pre-Laverne & Shirley Cindy Williams as Rose and Steven Nathan as her boss, adult movie producer Harry Schechter. Harry, having lost money on his most recent picture, is desperately searching for a way to freshen up the porn genre. 

With investors breathing down his neck and threatening to take his studio away, Harry suddenly has a big idea, a porno musical called Come, Come With Me. He even has the opening tune ready to go titled, The First Nudie Musical which he performs off the cuff for his money guys alongside a kickline of beautiful naked women. This is quickly explained away as a dream sequence but one that Harry was vividly illustrating to the investors as he went on.

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

Movie Review Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Written by Michael Green, Agatha Christie 

Starring Kenneth Branagh, Annette Bening, Gal Gadot

Release Date February 11th, 2022 

Death on the Nile is a shockingly bloated and silly mystery movie. Directed by the otherwise brilliant Kenneth Branagh, this blockbuster feels tossed off on a whim with little care to make sure the central mystery was even worthy of a movie. As gorgeous and opulent as the production design for Death on the Nile is, the beauty of the movie only serves to magnify the emptiness of the main characters, plot and dialogue of Death on the Nile. 

Death on the Nile returns Kenneth Branagh to the role of famed Detective Hercule Poirot. In flashback we see Poirot’s heroism in the trenches of World War 1. We see how Poirot’s unique mind proves to be a remarkable asset, even in the chaos of a bloody and deadly war as he outsmarts his superiors with a plan to sneak attack German soldiers and retake a strategic bridge, one essential to the future of the war. It all goes to plan until one soldier fails to heed Poirot’s warning leading to a tripwire and a deadly explosion.

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

Movie Review Studio 666

Studio 666

Directed by B.J McDonnell

Written by Dave Grohl, Jeff Buhler, Rebecca Hughes

Starring Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Pat Smear, Nate Mendel

Release Date February 25th, 2022 

Studio 666 walks a remarkably slim tight rope between comedy and bloody horror and manages brilliantly to stay upright. This wildly fun and playful horror movie starring the rock band, The Foo Fighters, is such a jovial delight that even when someone dies horrifically you can sense they did so with the glee of a child enjoying a theme park ride. Dave Grohl and company are having an absolute ball sending up horror tropes and playing them straight for scares at the same time and I loved every moment of it. 

Studio 666 posits our heroic rock icons, The Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Rami Jaffee, and Chris Shiflett, struggling with their 10th career album. In a meeting with their manager, played by the otherwise toxic Jeff Garlin, they nail down a place to record the record that can provide a little inspiration. The place that the manager has in mind has a history of death. What The Foo Fighters don’t know, but we do, via an opening flashback to the 90s, is that a legendary 90s band was slaughtered by one of their members in this house.

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

Movie Review Asking For It

Asking for It 

Directed by Eamon O'Rourke

Written by Eamon O'Rourke 

Starring Kiersey Clemons, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexandra Shipp

Release Date March 4th, 2022

Asking for It had so much potential. The trailer promised a hardcore feminist revenge movie featuring strong and assertive female characters. The sad reality of Asking for It is that this is yet another in a growing sub-genre of shallow, pseudo-empowerment movies that mistake enacting violence and holding weapons for genuine empowerment. The feature film debut of writer-director, Eamon O’Rourke is a glib revenge fantasy that uses diversity and inclusivity as a marketing campaign more than anything else. 

Kiersey Clemons stars in Asking for It as a naïve young woman named Joey. When we meet Joey she’s working as a waitress and planning for life as an adult. Joey’s plans are derailed after she reconnects with a male friend from High School and, following a drunken night of partying, finds that she’s been sexually assaulted while mostly unconscious. This throws Joey’s life into a tailspin. She becomes deeply withdrawn from family and barely gets by at work.

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

Movie Review Senior Year

Senior Year

Directed by Alex Hardcastle

Written by Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli, Brandon Scott Jones

Starring Rebel Wilson, Angourie Rice, Sam Richardson

Released May 13th, 2022 

Senior Year stars Rebel Wilson as Stephanie Conway. As a teenager, in the late 1990s, Stephanie went from nerdy freshman to the most popular girl in school through sheer determination. The height of her popularity came as the head cheerleader for the Bulldogettes and she’d choreographed an incredible new routine. Unfortunately, Stephanie’s rise created an enemy in Tiffany (Zoe Chao), a fellow cheerleader who decides to sabotage the cheer routine. 

With Tiffany’s intervention, a big jump in which two cheerleaders were to catch a falling Stephanie resulted in Stephanie hitting the gym floor head first, leaving Stephanie in a coma. For the next 20 years, Stephanie remained in a coma while her devoted dad, Jim (Chris Parnell), kept watch and her High School best friends, Seth (Sam Richardson) and Martha (Mary Holland) grew up but stayed connected with their friend via yearly Birthday visits to the hospital.

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

Movie Review Tankhouse

Tankhouse

Directed by Noam Tomaschoff

Written by Noam Tomaschoff, Chelsea Frei

Starring Tara Holt, Richard Kind, Stephen Friedrich, Christopher Lloyd

Released May 9th, 2022

Tankhouse is a comic romp within the weird world of grown up theater kids. The film stars Stephen Friedrich as Tucker and Tara Holt as his lover and muse, Sandrene. Together the couple hopes to change theater presentation forever with their immersive style of drama. Things get off to a good start but go bad very quickly. During their very first immersive theater presentation, a member of the very small audience dies. The woman was very old and seemed to happily participate in the immersive experience but regardless, her death gets Tucker and Sandrene blackballed from New York Theater by Tucker’s beloved mentor, Buford (Christopher Lloyd). 

Though Buford is behind getting Tucker and Sandrene tossed out of the theater world, he nevertheless is able to offer Tucker advice. He tells him to go out into the world and find out what theater really means to him. Buford relates a story, re-told in a delightfully strange animated segment, about how he taught theater in the jungles of Siberia. If you know why that’s funny, then you know. I’m not going to explain it. Tucker needs to go out into the world and find his Siberian jungle.

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

Movie Review Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Directed by Sam Raimi

Written by Michael Waldron

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams

Released May 6th, 2022

Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness is by far the worst movie in the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe. Multiverse of Madness gets off on the wrong foot from the opening scene and gets worse and worse with every turn of the plot and obvious failure of logic. Haphazardly assembled by director Sam Raimi, Multiverse of Madness piles bad special effects on top of bad storytelling while good performances suffocate under the weight of those failures. 

Right off the bat, the direction and editing of Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness is completely on fire, not in a good way. The edits and camerawork bounce around in a dizzying fashion that may be intentional but comes off as amateurish in execution. There is little rhyme or reason for the fast cuts and jarring camera moves and they come off as clumsy and haphazard rather than intentionally disorienting.

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

Documentary Review Box of Rain

Box of Rain

Directed by Lonnie Frazier

Written by Lonnie Frazier

Starring The Grateful Dead, Elizabeth Abel-Talbott, Kerry L. Condon

Released May 10th, 2022

Box of Rain is an emotional journey through the connection of The Grateful Dead and their incredibly unique and dedicated fandom. Shot through the prism of director Lonnie Frazier’s own emotional connection to the band, forged in the wake of a devastating sexual assault, Box of Rainreflects on a loving and supportive fandom that is like few others in modern popular culture, music or otherwise. 

Lonnie Frazier was a teenager who accepted a ride home from a group of boys she’d known for years from School. She had no reason to suspect that these boys she’d known so well would change her life with their horrific actions. Lonnie Frazier was raped on the way home from a party and it created scars that have lasted a lifetime. Desperately seeking some form of comfort and stability, Lonnie Frazier found something in the music and community surrounding the band The Grateful Dead.

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

Documentary Review Facing Nolan

Facing Nolan 

Directed by Bradley Jackson

Written by Bradley Jackson

Starring Nolan Ryan 

Released March 12th, 2022

After captivating audiences at the South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this year, the documentary Facing Nolan is headed to theater screens nationwide. Directed by Bradley Jackson, director of The Man Who Never Cried, Facing Nolan chronicles the iconic career of Baseball Hall of Famer, Nolan Ryan from his rise to fame in the late 1960's to his fireballing final years with the Texas Rangers.

Nolan Ryan was born in Refugio, Texas in 1947, one of six kids. He began playing amateur baseball at Alvin High School in the early 1960's. He was an immediate standout. In 1962, when Nolan was merely a sophomore in High School, a scout for the New York Mets saw him pitch and declared that Nolan had the best arm he'd ever seen. Nolan would go on to be drafted by the Mets in 1965.

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

Classic Movie Review Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude 

Directed by Hal Ashby

Written by Colin Higgins

Starring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Charles Tyner

Released December 20th, 1971

Well, I did it, I watched Harold & Maude for the first time and the magic is lost on me. I think I get it, the message, no one can tell you who to love or how to love or how to live. It makes sense, and it’s a fine message. And Hal Ashby is a very good director. Harold & Maude is a great looking movie, it’s filled with quirky characters and a strong anti-establishment attitude that I do admire. However, other, quirkier, aspects of the movie simply left me cold. 

Harold & Maude stars Bud Cort as Harold, a depressed young man in his early 20’s who fills his days by attending funerals and faking his death by suicide. Harold is a deeply morbid young man. His strained relationship with his mother, Mrs Chasen (Vivian Pickles), has reached a bizarre breaking point. Basically, Harold is repeatedly faking his suicide death specifically to provoke his mother. Mrs Chasen, meanwhile, appears entirely unfazed by Harold’s performances, aside from when he bloodied her bathroom.

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

Classic Movie Review Shivers

Shivers 

Directed by David Cronenberg

Written by Written by David Cronenberg

Starring Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, Barbara Steele 

Released October 10th, 1975 

Director David Cronenberg’s debut feature, Shivers, is about the loss of bodily autonomy. It’s about what happens when an outside force enacts itself upon someone and robs them of their agency. Sure, in this case, it’s a slug like parasite but the meaning, at least in a modern context, could not be more symbolic of governmental interference. Given that bodily autonomy is a top headline in the battle over abortion in America today, it’s an interesting time to look at Cronenberg’s 45 plus year old take on the idea behind Shivers. 

The symbols of conformity are what we first recognize in the opening scenes of Shivers. A disembodied, soothing, oily voiceover tells us about the self-contained amenities of an island apartment complex called Starliner Towers. It’s the picture of perfection. There is no need to ever leave as the building has doctors, dentists, grocery stores and pharmacies. All of that plus the serenity of living more than an hour away from the teeming masses in urban centers. Naturally, Cronenberg is here to splash blood all over this multi-dwelling Eden.

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

Movie Review Benediction

Benediction

Directed by Terence Davies

Written by Terence Davies 

Starring Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Simon Russell Beale

Release Date June 3rd, 2022 

Benediction is a movie that is indirectly about empathy. Creating empathy is what director Terence Davies intends but the film has a main character who defies our desire to empathize with him. Siegfried Sassoon, the famed ‘War Poet,’ whose work aimed to expose the human cost of war, isn’t interested in our empathy. Sassoon's arc in Benediction is from nearly dying a martyr, to bitterness, and finally to a man seeking the illusion of comfort in religious salvation.

Benediction is directly about the life of Siegfried Sassoon. And Benedictionis indirectly about how Terence Davies builds the case for Sassoon’s late in life search for salvation. Having spent his life as a disillusioned hedonist and then a self-closeted homosexual, you might think that the Catholic Church is the last place Siegfried Sassoon might turn. That is unless you see Benediction which makes the case for how a lifetime of bitterness pushed Siegfried toward spiritual salvation as a last resort.

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

Movie Review Bob's Burgers The Movie

Bob's Burgers The Movie 

Directed by Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman

Written by Loren Bouchard, Nora Smith 

Starring H. Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, John Roberts, Kevin Kline

Released May 27th, 2022

Loren Bouchard’s animated series, Bob’s Burgers, has been a consistent delight for 11 seasons on Fox. Now, Bouchard has brought the fun to the big screen in Bob’s Burgers The Movie. And while, we must admit, a Bob’s Burgers movie is deeply inessential, that doesn’t stop it from being funny and endearing. Those familiar voices and the quirky characters they bring to life would be hilarious in any context even as a big screen effort isn't necessary. 

The Bob’s Burgers Movie tells a harrowing story for our beloved Belcher Family. Bob (H Jon Benjamin), is frantically preparing a burger to take to a meeting with a bank manager. The family is behind on an important loan and he hopes a burger will grease the wheels a little for an extension. Linda (John Roberts) is her usual optimistic self, she’s convinced that everything will work out just fine with the bank. 

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

Movie Review Top Gun Maverick

Top Gun Maverick

Directed by Joseph Kosinski 

Written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie

Starring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell

Released May 27th, 2022

I walked into Top Gun Maverick highly skeptical. My experience of the original Top Gun was as an overly polished, jingoistic, cold war era male fantasy. Despite Tom Cruise’s magnetic performance and Anthony Edwards’ terrifically funny performance, I was not a fan of Top Gun. So imagine my surprise when the sequel Top Gun Maverick began getting terrific reviews from critics that I greatly admired. It didn’t completely cure my skepticism but it created a modest optimism. 

That modest optimism was then met and exceeded when I finally saw Top Gun Maverick. This is one terrific action movie. High flying suspense, incredible camera and stunt work, flawless special effects, everything you’d hope for on a more than 150 million dollar budget. But what really surprised me was the strong characters. The original was a shallow examination of cocky flyboys and the women trying to save them from themselves. This film smartly spends time with Peter ‘Maverick’ Mitchell and reveals his vulnerability, his empathy, and humanity.

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

Movie Review Prometheus

Prometheus

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by Joe Spaihts, Damon Lindelof

Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Charlize Theron

Released June 1st, 2012

I really liked Prometheus when I watched it in theaters for the first time. I was bowled over by the technical virtuosity of Prometheus and the wonderful performances of stars Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender. Unfortunately, upon revisiting Prometheus I discovered the emptiness of Prometheus. The hedging of bets over the existence of God versus the proof of science is the realm of the coward.

On first blush, Prometheus seems like a bold exercise in questioning where we came from and who we are as a people. The film offers a pair of scientists as the lead performers in Noomi Rapace as Shaw and Logan Marshall Green as Holloway. Rapace's scientist is also a woman of faith whose ever-present cross is also a reminder of her father and a longing to see him and her mother again someday. Green's Holloway is more pragmatic. Following the discovery of alien drawings in different caves around the globe has led him to believe that human beings were engineered by aliens and he aims to find them and ask them why, thus solving the great question of why we're here.

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

Movie Review Bloody Oranges

Bloody Oranges

Directed by Jean-Christophe Meurisse

Written by Jean-Christophe Meurisse 

Starring Olivier Saladin, Lorella Cravotta, Alexandre Steiger 

Released July 8th, 2021

Bloody Oranges promises a subversive good time and mostly delivers. This French black comedy is at times bleak, other times surreal, and always strangely intriguing. Directed by Jean Christophe Meurisse, Bloody Oranges has shock value that is matched by an oddball group of characters whose stories you can't help but get caught up in. Some of these people are despicable villains and some are naïve innocents caught up in a system that doesn’t care about basic human decency. 

The story begins at a Dance Contest. A group of judges are debating who should win the grand prize. Eventually, the group settles on a lovely elderly couple named Laurence (Lorella Cravotta) and Olivier (Olivier Saladin). The couple is delighted to win and excited to have a chance at real prize money at the next regional contest. The couple desperately wants the prize money as their bank is about to foreclose on their home.

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

Movie Review Men

Men 

Directed by Alex Garland 

Written by Alex Garland 

Starring Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear 

Released June 1st, 2022

Alex Garland is a remarkable director. From the flawlessly composed shots to the immaculate production design, to the unsettling storytelling, Garland has a most unique sensibility. For his latest effort, Men, starring Jessie Buckley, Garland’s craftsmanship is as exceptional as his story is layered and disturbing. Examining misogyny, both external and internalized, as only he sees it, Garland has delivered a film that is more than the equal of his first two extraordinary films. 

Harper (Jessie Buckley) just wants a little peace and quiet. She’s rented a large cottage in the English countryside for a quiet place to recover from the end of her marriage. Bluntly speaking, Harper’s husband, James, played by Paapa Essiedu, took his own life after Harper told him she was divorcing him. James pulled no punches in telling Harper that he was going to kill himself if she divorced him, and then he did it.

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