Movie Review Linoleium

Linoleum (2023) 

Directed by Colin West 

Written by Colin West 

Starring Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seahorn. Katelyn Nacon 

Release Date February 24th, 2023 

Published February 19th, 2023 

Linoleum stars Jim Gaffigan as Cameron, a scientist and star of a failing children's television show. Cameron dreams of being an astronaut and as we join the story, he's sending in an application to NASA. And then a corvette falls out of the sky. Inside the car is what looks like a younger, slightly better-looking version of Cameron. Later, he relates the story to his family, including his soon-to-be ex-wife, Erin (Rhea Seahorn), and his loving if capricious daughter, Nora (Katelyn Nacon). Cameron also has a son but I am not even sure he's in the credits for the film, he exists to be indifferent to his father and the story in motion around him. 

Cameron's basement man-cave is stocked with NASA memorabilia which we see as Cameron is sneaking off to sleep apart from his disapproving wife. The following day we learn that the man in the Corvette crash is a scientist and astronaut whose uncanny resemblance to Cameron is intended as a way of commenting on the shortcomings of his dreams. Where this similarly looking man has succeeded in all of Cameron's dreams, Cameron himself, is a failure. This notion culminates in this man, Kent Armstrong, taking Cameron's job as host of his children's show. 

Running parallel to this odd story about Cameron and his doppelganger is that of Cameron's daughter, Nora (Katelyn Nacon). Nora is awkward and acerbic, unpopular at school but not really caring for popularity. Nora then meets Marc (Gabriel Rus), a new kid in school who happens to be the son of Cameron's doppelganger. Nora and Marc slowly build a romantic connection despite Nora saying she's gay more than once early in the film. 

That sounds more problematic than it is as there is an explanation. That said, the explanation is bizarre and may leave some audience members deeply confused. The final act of Linoleum sees three parallel stories seemingly merge at different points in time. Characters begin to merge in terms of timelines and it all coalesces into a very interesting conclusion, though one that remains open to interpretation. I can understand audiences that are deeply put off by how Linoleum plays out. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Untamed Heart

Untamed Heart (1993) 

Directed by Tony Bill 

Written by Tom Sierchio 

Starring Marisa Tomei, Christian Slater, Rosie Perez 

Release Date February 12th, 1993 

Published February 12th, 2023 

So... let's see if I understand this correctly. We are going to work this out together, you and me, dear reader. Christian Slater is a grown adult who still believes that when he was a child living in the jungle that his father stole magical rubies from a Baboon King to try and save Slater's characters life. When the Baboon King, who was trying to murder Slater's father, finds out that the rubies are for trying to save the child, the Baboon King tears out his own heart and puts it into the child Christian Slater's chest. He believes this story still, as an adult working at diner, that he tells this to the women he's been stalking/falling in love with. 

That's something that a human being wrote down and then made into a movie. Untamed Heart is a wild damn disaster of a romantic drama. It's a bizarre movie that appears to think it's perfectly normal for a grown man to rarely speak and believe that he has a baboon heart so thoroughly that he doesn't want to get a heart transplant that might prolong his life. And he's the romantic lead in this movie. No, he's not the little brother who suffered a head injury as a child that the actual romantic lead in the movie takes care of because their parents are gone, he's the actual lead in the movie. 

Okay, yeah, that's completely insane. Marisa Tomei is the actual star of Untamed Heart as a diner waitress named Caroline. While walking home late one night, Caroline is accosted by a pair of mashers, played by Kyle Secor and Willie Garson. Secor attempts to sexually assault Caroline but is thwarted by Adam (Christian Slater). He scoops up an unconscious Caroline and takes her home where he places her on a porch swing and spends hours watching her sleep. Yeah! 

By this point, it's been established that though Caroline and Adam have worked together for some time, he doesn't speak to her or really anyone if he doesn't absolutely have to. So, if they don't know each other, how does Adam know where she lives? Well, he's been stalking Caroline for weeks, perhaps months at a time. He says he just follows her home to make sure she gets there safe but later we will learn that he was also breaking into her house and watching her sleep. 

For her part, Caroline finds all of this incredibly romantic. The 90s were a goddamned mess. If you don't believe that women have spent most of their lives being gaslighted into thinking insane things are actually romantic, you haven't seen this nutzo movie that posits a stranger breaking into a woman's home to watch her sleep for weeks or months on end, as romantic devotion worthy of them spending the rest of their lives together. 

The scene were we find out that Adam has been following Grace comes when he breaks into her house and puts up a Christmas tree in her room, fully decorated. He did this while she and her entire family were sleeping. Her reaction to this is somehow not complete horror. Instead, she responds by saying thank you and 'I can't believe you remembered.' Remembered what? Christmas? Honestly, I wonder if they had Marisa Tomei's character act dumber just so she might seem like she would buy into Slater's Adam as a legit romantic partner. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Magic Mike's Last Dance

Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written by Reid Carolin 

Starring Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek

Release Date February 10th, 2023 

Published February 14th, 2023 

Can I recommend a movie solely on the strength of the sexual chemistry between the two leads? It seems like a thin premise for recommending a movie. But, Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek are so incredible together, so insanely sexy together, I kind of want to recommend Magic Mike's Last Dance. Even as the plot seems like nonsense and the story feels cobbled together on the fly, the smoldering sexual chemistry of Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek is so fiery, it's kind of worth suffering the nonsense for. 

Magic Mike's Last Dance returns Channing Tatum, and his washboard abs, to the role of Mike Lane, stripper turned furniture maker, turned bartender as we join this story. Mike's dream of making handmade furniture failed amid the pandemic and he has sustained himself as a bartender for hire at parties ever since. That's how Mike meets Maxandra (Salma Hayek). She's a bored, rich, soon to be divorced cougar who has hired Mike on the recommendation of one of her employees. 

According to said employee, Mike can give Maxandra the kind of experience she's been craving, the kind of male attention she's desired since deciding to leave her husband. Indeed, Mike reluctantly agrees to her terms and provides such an experience. Showing off his insanely sexual lap dance skills, Mike sweeps Maxandra up in a lusty tornado of writhing flesh and she's hooked immediately. Though Mike doesn't want to be a kept man, he can't resist when Maxandra asks him to follow her to London, her primary home. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Batman Begins (2012)

Batman Begins (2005) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Christopher Nolan 

Starring Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes 

Release Date 

Published 2012 

Henri Ducard: Are you ready to begin?

Bruce Wayne: I-I can barely stand...

Henri Ducard: [kicks him] Death does not wait for you to be ready! Death is not considerate, or fair! And make no mistake: here, you face Death.

And that is how Bruce Wayne began his journey some seven years ago in writer-director Christopher Nolan’s first Bat-masterpiece, “Batman Begins.” It’s appropriate that Bruce Wayne, the man who would be Batman, would be trained as a ninja; the nerd culture that deified the caped crusader are of the same ilk who’ve turned the Asian legend of the ninja warrior into an outsized caricature.

It’s that knowing of what the audience wanted combined with his own particular, peculiar interests that have made Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy both crowd-pleasing and deeply personal. We will see in “The Dark Knight Rises,” Nolan’s Batman thesis statement, just how well the director combines his ability to dazzle the masses with his deep seeded philosophical aims.

“Batman Begins” is certainly a remarkable opening statement. In retrospect it’s much easier to see in the film how Nolan wanted to use this iconic character not merely to entertain but to critique and enlighten. From the opening moments when Bruce Wayne loses his parents to crime informed by poverty to the attempt by Ra’s Al Ghul to raze Gotham City by rotting it from within the philosophical aims of Nolan and his co-writer and brother Jonathan Nolan are vague but emerging.

We will get to the philosophy in a moment; let’s dig in to the surface story first. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) lost his parents to a horrendous murder in a back alley. With years of guilt and anger boiling within Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City from a failed stint in college with the intention of purging himself by killing his parents killer. When the man is murdered by a Mob Boss, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), Bruce needs a new path and winds up somewhere in Asia.

In Asia Bruce meets and becomes a student of a man calling himself Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). He’s allegedly a minion of a man known as Ra’s Al Ghul but we will come to know that Ducard is Ra’s and he has plans for his new pupil that involve the destruction of Gotham City. Ra’s Al Ghul is the head of a secret society that has for years restored the balance of the world by laying waste to areas of the world that have grown decadent and out of control and Gotham City is set to join Rome, Sodom & Gomorrah and others on the ash heap of history.

When Bruce leans of Ra’s Al Ghul’s plans the compassion instilled in him by his late father compels him to hope for Gotham City and soon defend it. Bruce’s decision sets the stage for what will be a clash of will and philosophy that will carry audiences through “The Dark Knight Rises;” Ra’s Al Ghul’s cynical belief in the cleansing fire and Batman’s scarred optimism that good can somehow triumph over even the worst evil.

Is it really as simple as a glass half empty versus a glass half full? Of course not, though Ra’s Al Ghul’s nefarious plot to poison and weaponize Gotham’s water supply has a certain ironic quality in my thesis. The deeper meaning of “Batman Begins” and what carried forward through “The Dark Knight” and comes to fruition, allegedly, in “The Dark Knight Rises” is a belief in hope against great odds; the belief that a once great city or country can be great again but only after a great struggle.

Surely, Christopher Nolan’s vision of America in Gotham City is one on the road to complete ruin. It’s a vision that is littered with the bodies of the brave and beleaguered, the good and the evil, but is still a vision of hope. Is not America’s past stained with the same blood? Are we not hopeful that from the horrors of the past greatness can be recovered?

Hope, dear reader, is at the heart of Batman and “Batman Begins” is a far more hopeful movie than many are willing to give it credit for. Just check that hopeful happy ending as Bruce Wayne and his best friend Alfred ponder a future where the ruins of Wayne Manor are restored to an even greater and more effective glory.

Not having seen “The Dark Knight Rises” my theory of hope among the darkness of the Batman series may be completely disproved but I don’t think so. Christopher Nolan may have dark visions of a rotting society but he’s far too savvy to give into the cynicism that is the true enemy of his vision. Batman/Bruce Wayne himself may not be so lucky, but Gotham City will survive and a new hope will be born from the ruins with Batman, man or legend, as its symbol of hope.

Movie Review Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania

Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania 

Directed by Peyton Reed

Written by Jeff Loveness

Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Jonathan Majors 

Release Date February 17th, 2023 

Published February 15th, 2023 

In the Quantum Realm Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) believed she would live out her days alone and lost. Then, a spaceship crashed in front of her. Inside was a man with no name, though she would eventually know him as Kang (Jonathan Majors). For a time, Janet and this nameless man worked together to try and escape from the Quantum Realm. That partnership ended when Janet found out who Kang really was, an entity, a being, a God, known as Kang The Conqueror. 

Kang once held a mastery over time. His God-like powers allowed him to travel the multiverse where he destroyed entire branch universes in order to consolidate his own power. Trapped in the Quantum Realm after Janet betrayed him, Kang built an empire and kept searching for a means to escape. That chance to escape comes after Janet has managed to escape, with the help of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), aka Ant-Man. It takes a little time but when Cassie Lang built a machine that could map the Quantum Realm, it opened a portal that sucked in Cassie, her dad Scott, Janet, her husband, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Janet's daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), aka The Wasp. 

Now trapped in the Quantum Realm and separated from each other, the family must find a way to reunite. All while being pursued by Kang who hopes to steal whatever means allowed Janet to escape from the Quantum Realm. That means being, Pym Particles, the creation that allows Ant-Man and The Wasp to shrink or grow in size and take advantage of the strength of ants. Kang believes that this technology could be used to restore the MacGuffin that gave power to the ship that stranded him in the Quantum Realm and allow him to travel to and conquer universes as he had done before he was exiled. 

And that's the plot of Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. Can Scott Lang overcome the God-Like powers of Kang the Conqueror and keep him from destroying countless universes. It's a solid and relatively simple plot but one that lacks much in terms of depth. Scott Lang's character arc isn't much. He wishes he could go back to before The Snap and be with Cassie as she grows up. Kang, with his ability to manipulate time, might be able to give him that wish. However, though the trailer seems to indicate that Scott would be open to working with Kang, that doesn't happen in the movie. 

At no point is Scott not the Ant-Man we've always known, a slightly gawky devoted dad and practical screw-up. The movie doesn't change him much nor, does it appear that his experiences saving the world alongside the Avengers seem to have changed him much. He's perhaps become overly cautious when it comes to Cassie, urging her not to take risks or do anything that might risk her safety, even if said thing is the right thing to do. That's not really much of an arc but that's about all that we get in Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. 

In terms of arcs, none of these characters seem to have much growth or change. Janet Van Dyne does open up to her family for the first time since she has been back in her own universe but that's only because of the dangerous circumstances at play and not due to any emotional growth on her part. As for Hank and Hope, they're mostly sidelined here. Hope especially, seems to have less dialogue and screen time than in the previous Ant-Man movies. Michael Douglas has a few moments where he looks cool but he's mostly superfluous to the plot. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Spoiler Alert: Character Arcs and Functionality in Knock at the Cabin

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan 

Written by M. Night Shyamalan 

Starring Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka Bird, Kristin Cui, Rupert Grint, Jonathan Groff, Abby Quinn, Ben Aldridge 

Release Date February 3rd, 2023 

Published February 3rd, 2023 

Knock at the Cabin is a horror thriller about the apocalypse. Four characters, played by Dave Bautista, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint, and Nikki Amuka Bird, travel to a cabin in Pennsylvania where they hope to avert a worldwide apocalypse. To do this, they must convince a family of three, played by Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge and their daughter played by Kristin Cui, to willing sacrifice one member of their family. The four visitors have had a shared vision of the future and received a vague prophecy related to this specific cabin and whoever lives there. 

In this article we are going to examine the character arcs and how they function in M. Night Shyamalan's nightmare fantasy of the end of the world. To do that, there will be spoilers. If you are wanting to see Knock at the Cabin, you should see the movie first and then come back and engage with this article. 

Leonard - Played by Dave Bautista, over the course of Knock at the Cabin we learn that Leonard is a schoolteacher and that he coaches middle school sports. Leonard is big and imposing but has a gentle quality as he demonstrates upon meeting Wen, the young daughter of Eric and Andrew. As he joins Wen to catch Grasshoppers for a school project, Leonard gently works to make Wen comfortable before he is compelled to reveal why he has come to this mostly empty stretch of Pennsylvania forest. 

Leonard is the de-facto leader of the four people who come to the cabin. It's Leonard who reveals the prophecy and the details of the apocalypse and that each of his fellow visitors will die until Eric and Andrew make a decision about which of them should die to save humanity. And that's pretty much it. Leonard appears wise and Dave Bautista invests him with a particular passion that is very compelling but, he doesn't change much as we see him. The biggest change in Leonard's life happens entirely off-screen. 

By the time that Leonard has arrived at the cabin, he's a devotee of this apocalypse plan and doesn't waver. Perhaps his arc is coming to accept his own fate, dying by his own hand, but again, it's not an arc. Instead of having an arc where he starts at one point of an emotional or physical journey, Leonard is a functional character. Leonard exists to motivate change in Eric and Andrew. I am not saying this as a negative critique, I'm just establishing how he functions in this story. 

Abby - Abby is a line cook and a mother of a son named Charlie. She enjoys cooking and likes making people happy. Like Leonard, the biggest arc of her life happened off screen. Finding Leonard and the rest via a message board and going to Pennsylvania to carry out their role in trying to prevent the apocalypse, happens before we meet Abby. What we see of Abby is that she is manic, anxious, and a little panicked. And that never changes until her character is killed to set off another plague of the apocalypse. Like Leonard, she functions as a motivator for Andrew and Eric. 

Sabrina - Sabrina is a nurse and a supremely kind woman. Though she uses a weapon to break into the cabin in violent fashion, when Eric is injured during the home invasion, Sabrina tends to him and cares for him. She goes out of her way to make Eric comfortable as he has suffered a concussion during the brawl. It's likely just how she was as a nurse, a caring, loving presence. Like her fellow visitors, her arc happened offscreen as she went from a full time nurse with a family to someone who drove 6 hours to be at this place, at this time, to try and stop the apocalypse. Her death doesn't go as planned but she seems prepared to accept it when it comes. 

Redmond - Redmond is the last of our foursome and the only one who gets a scene outside of the main narrative. Redmond is belligerent and agitated but that's explained by the fact that he knows he's the first to die if Andrew and Eric fail to make a choice. It will come about through the arguing back and forth between Eric and Leonard, that Redmond knew Eric and Andrew before coming to the cabin. As Eric recalls, Redmond approached him and Andrew at a bar in Boston and assaulted Eric with a beer bottle after having overheard the two men professing their love to each other. 

Find my full length Spoiler Alert Article at Geeks.Media. 

Spoiler Alert: The Absence of Consequence in Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool (2023)

Directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Written by Brandon Cronenberg

Starring Mia Goth, Alexander Skarsgard, Cleopatra Coleman 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published February 3, 2023 

This article contains spoilers for the ending of the new movie Infinity Pool. I highly recommend you see the film before you read this article. Infinity Pool is a mindbending, genre-defying, exploration of unchecked privilege. Writer-Director Brandon Cronenberg takes influence from his father, David Cronenberg, in crafting eye-catching body horror while using his film to explore themes he finds interesting such as the notion of identity and the unchecked privilege of the uber-rich. The title alone, Infinity Pool, suggests an unending lavish and luxurious privilege reserved only to those who could afford it. 

SPOILERS AHEAD JUMP NOW AND SEE INFINITY POOL... 

The plot of Infinity Pool comes into focus when Alexander Skarsgard's James Foster is arrested for vehicular homicide. The previous night, he'd gone out with his wife, Em, played by Cleopatra Coleman, and a couple they'd just met, Gabi and Alban Bauer, played by Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert. They foursome got drunk and while driving back to their resort, with James behind the wheel, they struck a man crossing the street, killing the man. Gabi then convinces them to leave the scene without reporting the incident, compounding their legal problems the following day. 

James is arrested while his wife and the Bauer's are detained. The investigating detective, played by Thomas Kretschmann tells James that the punishment for his crime is death. The family of the man he killed is allowed to exact their revenge by executing him themselves. But, there is a way out. For a free, the cops will make a complete clone of James, one with all of his features and memories, and that clone will stand-in when James is put to death. The only catch is that James will have to watch his own execution. James agrees and is forever changed by seeing himself be gutted by the oldest son of the man he killed. 

This death sentence is James' initiation into an exclusive club. The Bauers inform James that they've also been through their own execution after an infinity pool that Alban installed at another resort, went to pieces and killed two workers. Since seeing their own execution, the Bauers have built a hedonistic group of fellow Americans who've committed death sentence offenses while staying at this resort. Having seen their own deaths, the group finds that there are really no consequences for their actions and thus they seek to engage in even greater debauchery to achieve an ever more elusive high. 

Em leaves immediately, not remotely interested in James' new friends. Thus, James is left free to indulge in drugs, group sex, and murder, all with no consequences. If the group is caught murdering a local official who ticked them off, they won't die. They can simply pay a fee for another clone and enjoy the incredibly morbid show of watching themselves die again. As you can imagine, this kind of unchecked privilege leads James to his darkest depths. Reaching a nadir, he will try to save himself, but what is he saving himself from? 

The final act of Infinity Pool is basically James becoming a plaything, a toy for Mia Goth's Gabi to play with as she pleases. The game she chooses has James killing one his own clones in a fight to the death. It's a horrific death and since James can never be sure whether he is himself or a clone of his original self, there is an extra kick of desperation, confusion and anger that underscores the fury he lets loose on this other version of himself. 

Find my full length Spoiler Alert Article at Geeks.Media linked here.