Movie Review Teen Wolf The Movie

Teen Wolf The Movie (2023) 

Directed by Russell Mulcahy 

Written by Jeff Davis 

Starring Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Tyler Hoechlin

Release Date January 26th, 2023

Published January 26th, 2023 

I did not watch Teen Wolf when the series arrived on MTV in the mid-2000s. I wasn't opposed to the series, it just wasn't for me. It's a series engineered to excite a fanbase of teenaged girls and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The series had a very successful run and seemed to end on a high note with fans. Now, the series is back for a one off Teen Wolf movie which starts streaming on January 26th, 2023, on Paramount Plus, the streaming home of MTV products. 

Having not watched a single episode of Teen Wolf I expected the film to be dense with lore and incomprehensible. What a surprise then to find that the makers of Teen Wolf The Movie appear eager to welcome new fans. Yes, the movie is certainly for the faithful fans of the series, but as an outsider, I found the action and the story easy to follow and the movie as a whole, very entertaining. There is a particular lack of pretense, a certain understated charm that permeates Teen Wolf The Movie, giving it a welcoming quality that doesn't squander the love of the long time fan. 

Teen Wolf The Movie kicks into gear with an intriguing opening scene. A man enters a restaurant where two of the series star are living and working. The man is there to take a particular mystical MacGuffin that will play a role in the plot. This leads to a fight scene that sets the stakes and allows stars Amy Workman as Hikari, and Dylan Spayberry as Liam, to show off their powers for people who might not be familiar with the role they play in the series. 

The opening heist scene sets up a plot in which the father of Werewolf Hunter Allison Argent, who died in series canon, to bring his daughter back to life. Returning to where she died, he recruits Allison's Werewolf boyfriend, Scott McCall (Tyler Posey), along with Dr. Alan Deaton (Seth Gilliam) to help him. Secretly, Allison's dad is the vessel for an ancient evil who hopes to use the reborn Allison to kill Scott and all other Werewolves and magical beings that stand with him. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media linked here

Documentary Review Filmmakers for the Prosecution

Filmmakers for the Prosecution (2023) 

Directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz 

Written by Documentary 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published January 28th, 2023 

Filmmakers for the Prosecution is a riveting and necessary documentary. The doc captures the remarkable role that filmmakers played in the prosecution of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg in 1945-46. The legendary filmmaking family, the Schulberg's were on the front line of the final days of World War 2 as Americans and Russians made their way into the heart of Berlin and the end of the Nazi regime. Along the way, those filmmakers captured images that have lasted for decades, seered into the collective memory that is world history. 

Filmmakers for the Prosecution begins on Bud Schulberg, a stalwart of the studio system whose family was deeply affected by the holocaust. Schulberg committed his vast resources and influence in Hollywood to helping the war effort. It was the Schulberg family who recruited director John Ford to be in Europe helping to oversee the effort of filming and cataloguing the Nazi atrocities. Those films would go on to be essential to prosecuting Nazi War criminals including Rudolf Hess and Herman Goering. 

Act 2 of Filmmakers for the Prosecution then turns to the efforts of recovering the films made by the Nazis themselves. For reasons that can only be attributed to insane hubris, the Nazis filmed their horrific crimes. Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's own film director enters the story briefly as she helps the Americans find some of the most shocking footage in world history. This footage, which you will see in Filmmakers for the Prosecution, shows Nazi soldiers bulldozing the bodies of Jewish prisoners into improvised graves. 

Find my review at Swamp.Media linked here. 

Movie Review Maybe I Do

Maybe I Do (2023) 

Directed by Michael Jacobs 

Written by Michael Jacobs 

Starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, William H. Macy, Susan Sarandon, Emma Roberts 

Release Date January 27th, 2023

Published January 28th, 2023

Somewhere there is a dusty shelf that someone cleaning that hadn't been cleaned since 1994. On that shelf was a script for a truly awful romantic comedy called Maybe I Do. To whomever failed to leave this script on that dusty, forgotten shelf is a truly cruel human being. The script for Maybe I Do belongs on an ash heap, not on a big screen. This insipid throwback to awful boomer politics of the time when their opinion of popular culture mattered, is a relic of a time when men made jokes about hating their wives and wives joked about their husband's inability to satisfy them sexually. Ugh! 

That this insipid film stars Diane Keaton is seemingly inevitable. The once great actress has an uncanny ability to find the absolute worst movies that play to her worst instincts as an actress. How a woman with this much talent manages to choose the worst movies is some kind of cosmic joke. Keaton's last 20 plus years include some of the worst movies of this young century and Maybe I Do belongs to that epic, awful canon of the worst of the worst. 

In Maybe I Do, Diane Keaton plays a married woman whose idea of lying to her husband, Richard Gere, is going to the movies by herself. Meanwhile, her terrible husband is off having sex with his sort of mistress played by Susan Sarandon. Gere hates Sarandon and lets her know that in no uncertain terms. She still wants to have sex with him. When he finally decides to end things with her, basically stating how much he hates her, Sarandon says she will kill him if she sees him again. Plot point! 

Meanwhile, while at her elicit movie, Keaton meets a sadsack played by an actor who embodies that term all too well, Wiilliam H. Macy. Seeing Macy crying his eyes out over whatever movie they were watching; Keaton takes pity to comfort him. This leads them to spend the evening together but not in the way you think. They do go and get a hotel but it's only so that they can watch TV, eat fried chicken, and talk about the misery of their loves with their miserable spouses. 

You get no points for guessing that Keaton's spouse is Gere and that Macy's spouse is Sarandon. Making this convoluted nonsense even more convoluted is the other plot of Maybe I Do. At a wedding between their closest friends, Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey appear to be a very happy couple. Then, Bracey sees Roberts about to catch the bouquet and he loses his ever-loving mind. Racing across the room, he leaps off of a table and catches the bouquet right out of his girlfriend's hands. 

Find my full length review linked here at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Ghosts of Monday

Ghosts of Monday (2023) 

Directed by Francesco Cinquemani 

Written by Francesco Cinquemani

Starring Mark Huberman, Julian Sands, Elva Trill, Joanna Fyllidou 

Release Date January 23rd, 2023 

Published 

A television producer travels to Cypress to make a reality show about a supposedly haunted hotel in the new horror thriller Ghosts of Monday. Julian Sands stars as the host of the documentary, a man desperate to see an actual ghost after years of documenting non-haunted hauntings. Mark Huberman is the documentarian, the man charged with keeping his host in line while also investigating any potential haunting. Naturally, this being a horror thriller, ghosts do start showing up. 

In the 80s and early 90s, Julian Sands was a much-respected leading man with international acclaim. It's been years since Sands has stood at the center of a film and Ghosts of Monday is a strong demonstration as to why. Sands is hammy and completely checked out throughout his short stint on screen. Early on, his character is shown to be a bit of a drinker and it's hard not to imagine that the actor was getting a tad bit method in his performance. That's one thing that might explain Sands' rather bad performance. 

Ghosts of Monday relies heavily on a creepy soundtrack filled with atonal shrieks and symphonic flourishes. It's not a great soundtrack but at least it's trying harder than the rest of the movie to be creepy. Most of Ghosts of Monday is stultifyingly mundane. Clues are given as to the nature of the haunting at the hotel, and the link one of the main characters has to the haunting, but these clues aren't particularly intriguing. The film employs some of the tricks of reality TV ghost hunting shows and that only serves to show how low rent the whole movie is.

When your movie has to borrow from YouTube ghost hunting channels to create even a notion of tension, it's not a good sign. The film's best asset is being only a few minutes longer than your average episode of a ghost hunting reality show on YouTube. At a slight 75 minutes with credits, Ghosts of Monday doesn't linger. That's the nicest thing I can say about the movie however as nothing about film ever rises to being more than passably, professional. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Imitation of Life

Imitation of Life (1934) 

Directed by John M. Stahl 

Written by William Hurlbut, Preston Sturges 

Starring Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Rochelle Hudson 

Release Date November 26, 1934

Published January 10th, 2023 

The 1934 mother-daughter drama, Imitation of Life has joined the Criterion Collection. On January 10th, 2023, Criterion released newly remastered 4K version of Imitation of Life featuring a new introduction to the film by film and cultural historian, Imogen Sara Smith and a new interview with author Miriam J. Petty, author of "Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood." That book is a deep dive on the careers of Imitation of Life stars Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington and their unique paths to Hollywood as black women in 1930s Hollywood. 

If I may be blunt, Ms. Petty's book is perhaps more relevant and vital than the movie Imitation of Life which is little more than a minor melodrama with solid performances, muted and neutered by the racism of the time. Certainly, the filmmakers can be commended for trying to tackle racial issues at a time when such virulent racism was inflaming the country, but Imitation of Life really never gains much momentum, likely because of that rampant racism. 

Instead of the woke, for the time, racial dynamic of Imitation of Life, what we really have is a story of mothers and daughters and the sacrifices two mothers make to give their daughters a better life than the ones they've led. Colette Colbert stars as Bea Pullman, mother of Jessie, and recent widower. Bea is struggling to find time to raise her daughter while also keeping her husband's business alive long enough to keep a roof over her head. 

Bea's life is changed forever by complete chance. While she's trying to get her daughter ready to go to the babysitter so she can get to work, Bea is visited by Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers). Delilah is looking for work and was following up on ad in the newspaper. Since she's here, she asks Bea for work and though Bea insists she can't afford to hire Delilah, Delilah persists, saying she will work in exchange for room and board for herself and her young daughter, Peota. 

Bea relents and soon the household is humming with activity including Delilah's incredible pancakes which pair well with Bea's family syrup business. In fact, the Delilah's pancakes are so good that Bea takes a huge leap and opens a restaurant. Using her charm and savvy, Bea finagles a deal for the restaurant space, furniture, and equipment and within months, Aunt Delilah's Pancakes are the talk of the town. The next step takes the pancakes national and makes both Bea and Delilah wealthy, though Delilah insists on remaining Bea's cook.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review My Father Muhammad Ali

My Father Muhammad Ali (2023) 

Directed by Tom Denucci, Chad A. Verdi 

Written by Documentary

Starring Muhammad Ali Jr. 

Release Date January 13th, 2023 

Published January 9th, 2023 

As much as I did follow the life of the legendary Muhammad Ali, I was somehow unaware that he had a son. And yet, indeed, the greatest boxer of all time did have a son and he did name that son, Muhammad Ali Jr. How is it possible that he was not part of the story of Muhammad Ali's life? How did it happen that even people like me, people who think they know Muhammad Ali's life story, never knew that he had a son that he named after himself? It's a weird and harrowing story. 

Muhammad Ali Jr. was born in 1971, at the height of his father's return to the world stage. Ali had just come out of jail for having refused to go to Vietnam and was fresh off of the first fight against Joe Frazier, billed as The Fight of the Century. Muhammad Ali wasn't around for much of the early part of his son's life as he was training and fighting in the midst of the greatest run of his boxing career. That's not an excuse. I have no idea what kind of Father Muhammad Ali was, only that I know he was a very busy man in the early 1970s/ 

From the time Muhammad Ali Jr was born through most of his life, he was not much known. According to the new documentary My Father, Muhammad Ali, his teenage years were spent with his mother's parents while his mother and famous father toured the world. In High School, Muhammad Ali Jr. fell into drugs and spent a number of years battling addiction and being estranged from his famous family. He had a family of his own. a couple of daughters from a couple of moms and struggled until not long after his father passed away in 2016. 

At some nebulous point following his father's death, Jr beat his addiction and started to use the Ali name to garner attention. This may or may not have been at the behest of a friend, and former New York City Police Officer, named Richard Blum. Together they star in this unusual documentary that follows Muhammad Ali Jr today as he tries to start a boxing-based charity alongside his supposed best friend. The notion of this 'best friend' taking advantage of Ali Jr. hangs thick over My Father, Muhammad Ali. 

Part of what makes My Father, Muhammad Ali so strange is the odd structure employed by directors Tom Denucci and Chad A. Verdi. The film opens with them introducing Dr. Monica O'Neal, a psychologist known for her appearances on reality television, as much as for her work as a Harvard graduate and psychologist. She made her name profiling the 'psychology of Bravo,' with special attention to the various cast of Real Housewives of insert large city here. 

That's not intended to impugn her integrity as a doctor, it's just what she's known for, your opinion of Real Housewives characters or series, is entirely up to you. Dr. O'Neal is here to examine/interview Muhammad Ali Jr. but that doesn't really happen. What does happen is a series of odd encounters wherein Muhammad Ali Jr. lovingly recalls his father and talks about some of the troubles in his life in relatively vague terms. The film teases talking about Muhammad Ali Jr's daddy issues, but he continues to go back to what a great man and father his legendary father was. O'Neal meanwhile, doesn't make much of an impression. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review On Sacred Ground

On Sacred Ground (2023) 

Directed by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell

Written by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell, William Mapother 

Starring William Mapother, Amy Smart, Frances Fisher 

Release Date January 13th, 2023 

Published January 6th, 2023 

On Sacred Ground tells a very unique story. Long time character actor William Mapother stars in On Sacred Ground as a reporter with a very specific right wing perspective. He's long been suspicious of environmental terrorists and his reporting on that subject catches the eye of a right wing news outlet. This right wing news outlet, working in league with oil company lobbyists, seeks to hire Mapother's Daniel McKinney to cover the story of an oil pipeline that is the subject of Native American protests. 

The story that news organization and the oil company are pushing is that the Native American activists are violent, eco-terrorists who are disrupting a safe and legal oil pipeline and causing the kind of environmental crisis that they claim to be protesting against. The propaganda has Daniel on the side of the oil company, a perspective furthered when he arrives at the site of the pipeline protest where he witnesses a particularly emotional and physical protest in progress. 

Access to the site is controlled by an oil company representative named Elliott (David Arquette). Elliott claims that the violence of the protests is not coming from the army of mercenaries hired as security by the oil company or the lines of Police Officers also on the side of the oil company. No, according to Elliott the supposedly non-violent, mostly Native American protesters are the ones throwing rocks, threatening Police and Security and doing damage to oil company property. 

What Elliott and Daniel's new newspaper boss, Ricky (Frances Fisher), did not expect was for Daniel to embed himself with the protesters. Thinking he can uncover the violence among the protesters, Daniel goes to their camp and finds himself drafted in as a volunteer in a very well organized and trained group of protesters. The protesters bring Daniel in, show him their training in non-violent protest and place him on the front line of that non-violent protest where he witnesses what has really been happening. 

The story of On Sacred Ground is based on the story of a group of military veterans who joined the ranks of Native American protesters Standing Rock in North Dakota. This group of veterans were brought together by a fellow veteran, Wesley Clark Jr., son of General Wesley Clark, a former Democrat Presidential candidate. He went to Standing Rock at the behest of a friend and found Native American protesters being brutalized by what he called a private army employed by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

Find my full length review at Swamp.Media