Movie Review Jane

Jane (2022) 

Directed by Sabrina Jaglom 

Written by Sabrina Jaglom, Rishi Rajani 

Starring Madelaine Petsch, Chloe Yu, Chloe Bailey

Release Date August 26th, in AMC Theaters only, and on the new streaming platform CreatorPlus on September16th, 2022. 

The opening moments of Jane begin with a woman standing on the end of a wooden outcrop. Below her is a roiling ocean. The woman takes a step forward and disappears into the abyss. We soon find out that the young woman who has taken her own life is Jane. Jane’s death will drive the plot of the movie named for her as she haunts her former friends, especially our main character, Olivia played by Riverdale star Madelaine Petsch. 

Olivia, played by Madelaine Petsch, lives by a very specific, very strict clock. Her day is planned out by her time of awakening, her shower, her breakfast and the time for leaving for school. Naturally, at school, her day operates on another schedule, one set by the school, but also one that is unchanging as her home schedule. Whether this is a trait Olivia has always had or one developed as a trauma coping mechanism is unknown, though I imagine this regimented life is something she chooses rather than having it thrust upon her.

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

Movie Review Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul

Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul (2022) 

Directed by Adamma Ebo 

Written by Adamma Ebo 

Starring Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown 

Release Date September 3rd, 2022 

In theaters now and streaming for Peacock subscribers

Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul is a deeply confused movie. The film, directed by newcomer Adamma Ebo, stars Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown as Trinitie and Lee Curtis Childs, the disgraced leaders of a massive mega-church somewhere in the American south. At first, Honk For Jesus Save Your Soul takes on the feel of a Christopher Guest movie about complete un-self aware characters revealing their absurd self-delusions to our gleeful schadenfreude. Then, from time to time, the movie grows deathly serious and as an audience member you are left scratching your head about how the movie intends for you to feel about what you’re watching. 

Context clues slowly reveal that Lee Curtis, behind his bluster and expensive suits, is a closeted gay man. The purported scandal that has seemingly decimated his church occurred when Lee Curtiis may or may not have been getting sexually involved with young male members of the church youth. Portions of Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul show the conniving married couple trying to use their vast wealth to make the scandal go away. Meanwhile, the couple is using the documentary being made about their downfall as a marketing tool to promote the big comeback of their church, much to the chagrin of the unseen documentary filmmaker who claims to only want to tell the truth.

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

Movie Review Class

Class (2022)

Directed by Nicholas Celozzi 

Written by Nicholas Celozzi 

Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Debbie Gibson, John Kapelos 

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Directed by John Hughes 

Written by John Hughes

Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, Paul Gleason

Class stars Debbie Gibson and Anthony Michael Hall in an update of the classic Breakfast Club formula that Hall is inextricably linked to. It’s the story of a detention class in a nondescript modern High School. Gibson plays Miranda, the school drama teacher in charge of the latest detention group. She’s seconded by the hardass School Guidance Counselor, Mr. Faulk (Hall). In Faulk, Hall is playing a role similar to that of Paul Gleason’s far more broad caricature of a guidance counselor in the John Hughes classic. 

I say that Gibson and Hall are the stars but they are really parts of an ensemble and since this is a movie about kids, high school, and detention, it’s the students who are center stage for the movie. Naturally, the kids fall into types, the stoner, the jock, the popular girl, the outcast and so on. There are a couple gender flips and the spectrum of sexual identities are in play, but much like The Breakfast Club, the point of having character types is to subvert those types and break through to the real person beneath.

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