Movie Review New Gods Yang Jian

New Gods Yang Jian (2023) 

 Directed bv Ji Zhou 

Written by Muchuan 

Starring Su Ling Chan, David Chen 

Release Date January 20th, 2023

Published January 19th, 2023

New Gods Yang Jian is a gorgeously animated feature film adventure from China. Directed by Ji Zhou, New Gods Yang Jian soars from one adventurous sequence to the next paying homage to classic Asian cinema of the past while carving its own path. The animation house, Light Chaser Animation has crafted a second film in their New Gods series that is more than the equal of the 2021 original that was a massive box office hit. 

New Gods Yang Jian tells the story of a bounty hunter living at the bottom of the economic ladder. As we join the story, Yang Jian and his crew barely have enough fuel to keep their flying boat in the air. They need to capture a fugitive soon or they are out of business. Yang Jian isn't too worried however, he has mystical powers that will help in finding the man they are currently after. This sequence serves the purpose of introducing us to Yang and his mystical fighting powers that he uses to overcome a sizable demon while capturing his human target and turning him over the authorities. 

With that established, we can get on to the real plot. Back on Yang Jian's flying boat is his next client. Wanluo is searching for someone she claims is her little brother. Chenxiang is a thief and a murderer. We are introduced to him as he uses a group of criminals to cover for him while he steals something mystical from a temple beneath a bank that they other criminals are robbing. It's part of a spree Chenxiang is on to steal the components of an ancient mystical weapon, the Golden Lotus Lamp or The Lamp of Universal Contentment. 

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Movie Review Night Moves

Night Moves (1975) 

Directed by Arthur Penn

Written by Alan Sharp 

Starring Gene Hackman, Melanie Griffith 

Release Date July 2nd, 1975

Published ? 

Night Moves is a hidden gem of 1970s neo-noir. The film stars the legendary Gene Hackman as private detective Harry Moseby. Harry is married to Ellen (Susan Clark), a fact that has a surprising prominence despite not having anything to do with the main mystery at hand in Night Moves. Director Arthur Penn cleverly smuggles a domestic drama into a missing person mystery and it's kind of great. Harry Moseby's well-founded trust issues are a significant part of how this movie plays out. 

Harry Moseby has just been given a tip about a potentially lucrative gig. A former Hollywood actress, B-Movie gal, Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward), is looking to hire someone to find her daughter, Delly (Melanie Griffith), an aspiring young actress. As unusual as Arlene is, Harry takes her money and the job and sets about his search. The trail begins with a movie studio mechanic named Quentin (James Woods). Quentin was believed to have dated Delly despite her being only 16 years old. 

Quentin points Harry in the direction of a man who had beaten him up on the set of a movie, a stunt man named Marv Ellman (Anthony Costello). Through Marv the story travels to Florida where Arlene's ex-husband, Tom Iverson (John Crawford), Delly's stepfather, lives and operates a tourist attraction, taking people out on a glass bottom boat or flying them around the area. Also with Tom is his new girlfriend, Paula (Jennifer Warren). 

Indeed, Delly is there, and she doesn't want to go home. The case appears to be closed; all Harry has to do is take Delly back to Los Angeles. If only it were that simple. Things get complicated when Harry has a brief flirtation with Paula and, while tooling around in the glass bottom boat, Harry, Delly and Paula find a dead body. At the bottom of the ocean, they spot a crashed plane with the corpse of the pilot inside. This finally causes Delly to finally go home but, again, the story doesn't end there. 

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Movie Review Out of Exile

Out of Exile (2023) 

Directed by Kyle Kauwika Harris 

Written by Kyle Kauwika Harris 

Starring Adam Hampton, Ryan Merriman, Peter Greene 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published January 19th, 2023 

Out of Exile may not look like much but it's a really solid action movie. Yes, it features a crime story that you've seen before. It's undoubtedly derivative. That said, writer-director Kyle Kauwika Harris infuses the film with a strong personality and perspective. The violence of Out of Exile has a strong purpose. When someone gets shot it means something in this story. A lot of low budget action movies make the mistake of being gratuitous, characters tend to survive gunshot wounds with an almost supernatural level of good luck. That's not so of Out of Exile. 

Out of Exile stars Adam Hampton as Gabriel. Gabriel is fresh out of prison and in need of work. Having come from a long line of criminals, Gabriel's fate is seemingly sealed and a return to crime is almost immediate. With little waiting around, the movie jumps right into a heist that goes wrong very quickly. Gabriel, along with his brother, Wesley (Kyle Jacob Henry), and their partner, Chava (Oliver Rayon), are hitting an armored car. In the midst of the heist the guard carrying the money gets shot and killed. They get away with the money but the killing drives a wedge between the brothers that threatens everything. 

Running parallel to the crime story is the story of Gabriel's estranged daughter, Dawn (Hayley McFarland). Working as a waitress at a diner and not wanting any of her father's money or time, Dawn is attempting to escape an abusive relationship. Naturally, a man of violence such as Gabriel is not going to leave his daughter to such peril. That plot has an important role to play late in Out of Exile and I won't spoil it. Again, it's not something you haven't seen before, it's just well done enough here to make it better than many other, similar movies. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Invaders from Mars

Invaders from Mars (1953)

Directed by William Cameron Menzies 

Written by William Cameron Menzies  

Starring Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz 

Release Date April 9th, 1953 

Published January 20th, 2023 

A young boy awakens the middle of the night to see a bright green flying saucer. It's the kind of thing that has fired the imagination of sci-fi writers and directors for years and it's the opening scene of the 1953 film, Invaders from Mars. Children in movies like this are not to be believed until it is too late. This time, things are a little bit different. Having been shaken by his son's story, George MacLean (Leif Erickson) decides to go and see for himself what his son thinks he saw. When he doesn't return home, George's wife calls the cops. Then the cops disappear. 

The George MacLean that comes back from this brief disappearance is not the same. Gone is the jovial, thoughtful and loving father. Returned is a cruel, abusive, and bitter man. The cops also come back but not the same as they were. They have a conspiratorial conversation with George that unsettles both his wife and his son. Actor Leif Erickson does a wonderful job in this scene of giving us a completely different version of the man we just met. The haunted eyes and desperate shift in nature echoes from his every expression. 

Rather ingeniously given when the movie is made, Invaders from Mars communicates its sci-fi horror story using a very simple visual device, sand. Behind the home of our main character, David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt), is a sandy beach where the aliens he saw have landed and buried their ship. Through visual cues we know that the aliens have made the sand into a trap. The sand captures anyone who gets too close. When they come out of the sand, they are not the same. They have a mark on the back of their necks, a bloody X shape. 

The sparse sets and stock footage and photos of Invaders from Mars are exceptionally well integrated. It's quite clear that writer-director William Cameron Menzie cared about making a good movie despite the limitations of his budget. It's exciting to watch, so many directors of similar 1950s science fiction didn't take nearly as much care in their integration of such things. Shaggy backdrops, shoddy early forms of green screen, and other such things are cheesy hallmarks of the era, charming in their way. That said, it's nice to see a director take such great care in one of these B-pictures. 

The repeated motifs of Invaders from Mars include blank walls in every interior scene, spotlights, everywhere operated by army men, and stock footage, lots of military stock footage. It's all exceptionally well-integrated however, giving the film a strong verisimilitude for something so seemingly cheap. I adore this. :Lengthy shots of rolling tanks are matched with sound design that make you believe those tanks are in the same viciniy as our main characters. It's so good. 

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Movie Review: Missing

Missing (2023) 

Directed by Nick Johnson, Will Merrick 

Written by Sev Ohanian, Aneesh Chaganty 

Starring Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published January 23rd, 2023 

Missing captures our modern true crime obsession in a way that few films ever had. Every true crime fan dreams of doing what the main character of Missing does, diving down a rabbit hole of information on your way to solving a mystery. Of course, the main character of Missing has more motivation than your average true crime fan, but that doesn't change the nature of our excitement, all true crime fans want to investigate leads and follow threads to answers in the way that June (Storm Reid) does in missing, whether it's our family member that is missing or some stranger. 

In Missing, June is a typically self-involved teenager who is constantly mortified by how uncool her mother, Grace (Nia Long), is. Mom is always asking her Siri to make calls for her, even while she's already on a call. Mom and June's relationship is strained as Grace is a working single mom juggling her daughter, work, and a new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), while planning a vacation to Columbia. June is of little help, she's only thinking of the partying she's going to do while Mom and Kevin are out of town. 

Over the course of five days, Mom checks in rarely, which is unusual, while June parties. Then, when it's time for June to meet Mom and Kevin at the airport, she's left standing there for hours. Mom doesn't come home. Returning to her house, June calls the authorities and falls down a rabbit hole while investigating her mother's whereabouts. In the course of investigating her mother's disappearance from afar, she connects with a man named Javi (Joachim De Almeida), who lives in Columbia and who agrees to investigate on her behalf for a mere $8.00 per request. 

Meanwhile, at home, Grace breaks into Kevin's email and begins to discover things about his past, his criminal record, and the many, many, women in Kevin's past who claim that he's stolen money from them. There's also a woman, referred to only as 'babycakes,' who has recently gone missing after trading messages with Kevin. This can't be a coincidence but the movie has a few more twists and turns in play when it comes to Kevin, some you won't be able to predict so easily. 

Missing doesn't quite have the skillful presentation of its predecessor, Searching. That film used the medium of internet based sleuthing in service of a much better story. The story of Missing isn't bad but it's far more deeply convoluted than that of Searching. Where that movie had a relative clarity to its logical storytelling, Missing falls short. If you start pulling threads on Missing the story frays with far too much ease. The main plot is rather silly with characters making choices that don't make a lot of sense. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Hexed

Hexed (1993) 

Directed by Alan Taylor 

Written by Alan Taylor

Starring Arye Gross, Adrienne Shelly, Claudia Christian 

Release Date January 22nd, 1993

Published January 23rd, 2023 

Hexed is among the strangest and most disjointed films I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of movies in my more than 23 years of writing about movies. Hexed stars Arye Gross as a hotel worker who lies constantly and everyone hates him. Everyone except for the one woman that the script requires to tolerate how awful he is. A cruel and unforgiving universe required in 1993 that a brilliant actress, writer and director attempt to do the impossible and try to make Gross seem likable. Sadly, even the prodigious talent of the much loved late Adrienne Shelly can't work such impossible magic. 

Matt Welsh is such an awful, disgusting, gross human being that when he's bullied by someone ostensibly more obnoxious than him, you kind of feel like he deserves it. That Matt is our designated protagonist is a cruel taunt. The poster has promised comedy but the movie we are trapped inside once we've committed ourselves to watching it, is distinctly unfunny and borders on incomprehensible as it ping pongs this ungodly protagonist from one unfunny bit to the next. 

The plot, such as it is, has ubiquitous supermodel known as Hexina coming to stay at the hotel where Matt is one of the desk clerks. This is a problem for Matt as he has claimed to have not only known Hexina, but dated her. When she arrives and doesn't know who he is, Matt is surely to be humiliated and belittled once more. Matt needs to concoct a plan to save himself and he gets one when a man calls to speak to Hexina and Matt intercepts the phone call. 

As luck would have it, Hexina is set to meet this man who she has never seen before. Matt figures, if he impersonates the unseen man, he can go on a date with Hexina and everyone at the hotel will think that Matt really does know her. His plan works as he's able to steal a car from a hotel patron and pick up the supermodel in full view of his most bitter detractor, Simon (Michael E. Knight). Meanwhile, as awful as Matt is, Hexina is only worse because she is a crazed murderer. 

Hexina has only come to this backwater hotel because someone is blackmailing her. This person wants to trade their blackmail item for sex and Hexina thinks that Matt is this person. After, indeed, having a terrifyingly unfortunate and problematic sex scene with Matt, Hexina tries to kill him. After he explains how he had sex with her under false pretenses, and highly questionable consent, Hexina makes him take her to the man she was intended to meet. Once there, Hexina shoots the man in the head and drafts Matt to be her co-conspirator. 

All of this is intended to be funny. Hexed is a comedy. It's a 'dark comedy,' allegedly, but that is no excuse for all of the ugly, nasty, gross, unfunny nonsense that makes up Hexed. Hexed is a bizarre example of just how weird the early 1990s truly were. The early 1990s were bursting with bizarre sexual politics and a fetishistic dedication to presenting the most masturbatory of male fantasies as movie plotlines. That was the case with Body of Evidence, which released one week prior to Hexed, and that is also the case with Hexed. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Come Find Me

Come Find Me (2023) 

Directed by Daniel Poliner 

Written by Daniel Poliner 

Starring Victoria Cartagena, Sol Miranda, Tovah Feldshuh 

Release Date January 10th, 2023 

Published January 3rd, 2023 

Come Find Me is based off of a short film that writer-director Daniel Poliner had made a few years back. That film starred Sol Miranda, beloved character actress from The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, among other shows, as a principal at a struggling New York City middle school. Wanting to give Miranda a larger platform to show off her skills, Poliner expanded the original short film by adding in the story of the daughter of his original main character, here played by Victoria Cartegena. 

It's a lovely motivation to want to do something to showcase a talent you respect but the result is a deeply confounding drama that shifts in time and space so often as to completely lose the point and purpose of the story. The characters seem to know what's going but they don't do very well to let those of us in the audience in on what is happening. Come Find Me is filled with what appears to be ideas about mothers and daughters, domestic abuse, confronting death, and other such ideas but none of the ideas make much sense as the movie descends into a series of repeated scenes that I think were shifting in time, maybe? 

Come Find Me opens on Christina (Victoria Cartegena), a lawyer on the verge of making partner but questioning her future. Christina is back home in New York City for a big case involving a bank. Meanwhile, she's also plagued by something happening back in California where a pro-bono client is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend and has just found out that she's pregnant. Victoria is also pregnant and is rather ambivalent about that fact. She's in a new relationship with a fellow lawyer back in California and worried about what being pregnant might do to this new relationship and her future as a lawyer. 

Also, while Victoria is in New York, she's avoiding her mother, Gloria (Miranda). Gloria is a very involved mom, a long-time teacher and now principal who gets very involved in the lives of her students. This, in the past, caused a rift between mother and daughter after Gloria had Christina attend private school instead of the struggling middle school where she worked. Christina would have preferred to be close to her mom during this time. 

As Christina is struggling through a case that could make her career, she's also dealing with her mother's finances, much to her mother's disdain. It's all very dramatic and weighing on Christina's conscience as she's also waiting for word on what is happening with her pregnancy. This all comes to a head at the end of the first act of Come Find Me which then abruptly shifts to two years in the future and becomes a movie about Gloria and not Christina. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media