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. 

Movie Review Bullet Train

Bullet Train (2022) 

Directed by David Leitch

Written by Zac Olkewicz 

Starring Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Bryan Tyree Henry, Joey King, Sandra Bullock, Bad Bunny, Zazie Beetz. 

Release Date August 5th, 2022 

Bullet Train gives us a whole new side of Brad Pitt, a mature, comic, borderline neurotic, voice that somehow fits with his uncommon movie star good looks. Where Pitt has spent years trading on cool, Bullet Trainfinds the actor giving himself to a fully comic performance in a way that is completely un-self-conscious. Brad Pitt is still a movie star but his performance in Bullet Train is not a movie star performance in the traditional sense. And it's certainly not a typically Brad Pitt performance. 

Bullet Train stars Brad Pitt as a criminal given the code-name Ladybug by his unseen handler, voiced by Sandra Bullock. Ladybug is headed back into the criminal world for the first time since a nervous breakdown took him to a therapist's couch and time away from death that has haunted so much of his life, especially recently. As related in a terrific sequence that opens Bullet Train, we learn that Ladybug is paranoid about his luck. He stopped killing people a while ago and yet, his bad luck finds him repeatedly in proximity of death.

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