Movie Review Strays

Strays (2023) 

Directed by Josh Greenbaum

Written by Dan Perrault 

Starring Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, Will Forte 

Release Date August 18th, 2023 

Published August 21st, 2023 

Strays Stinks! Reaching the nadir of talking animal movies, Strays pees, poops, and generally grosses out in every possible way while begging us to find it cute. Featuring the voices of Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, Strays is a cruel, nasty, disgusting little movie that also happens to be an amateur effort in terms of production and direction on top of the lame gross out humor. I felt a sense of embarrassment while watching Strays, an embarrassment on behalf of the people who filmed this and assumed that what they were doing was worth doing. 

Will Ferrell provides the voice of Reggie a badly abused dog that doesn't realize it is being abused. Reggie's owner is a cruel bully that the movie seems to think is a clever takedown of redneck, man-boy stereotypes. Doug (Will Forte) is instead, a monstrous, nasty creation who says and does terribly cruel things that we're asked to laugh at. It's supposed to be funny that Reggie thinks his name is S###bag. It's supposed to be funny that Doug hates this dog that much. 

It's also supposed to be hysterical that Reggie thinks Doug is playing a game with him when Doug drives Reggie into the country, throws a tennis ball and leaves Reggie to find his way back home. The plot of Strays kicks in when an angry Doug drives Reggie more than 3 hours away and drops him in the middle of a mid-sized city. Reggie has no idea where he is and is immediately set upon by bullies. Thankfully, he's saved by Bug (Jamie Foxx) who, though even smaller than Reggie, is more resourceful. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle (2023) 

Directed by Angel Manuel Soto 

Written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer 

Starring Xolo Mariduena, Bruna Marquezine, Adriana Barraza, Damian Alcazar, Susan Sarandon, George Lopez 

Release Date August 18th, 2023 

Published August 18th, 2023 

What I loved about Blue Beetle is the enthusiasm that pours forth from every frame of this movie. There is a sense of wonder and delight even in as the movie laying out a heartbreaking backstory for main character, Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena). Jaime, as we join the story, has become the first member of his family to graduate from college. Sadly, he's returning home to a lot of bad news. His father, Alberto (Damian Alcazar), has suffered a heart attack and is no longer working. His not working led to the family losing their auto repair business. And the family home is about to be foreclosed upon. 

Jaime feels responsible as his parents had gone to great lengths to get him into college. Now, he's back home and he can't find work. He can't afford to go back to college to complete his law degree and he's trapped in a world where his education doesn't mean nearly as much as the color of his skin. The racial divide in Palmera City is very obvious and seems to have been engineered by the Kord Corporation, headed up by the vicious and vindictive Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), a weapons manufacturer preparing to release her most terrifying new weapon, super-soldier suits based on an ancient technology. 

Standing in Victoria's way is her niece, Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), daughter of Ted Kord, the benevolent former CEO. Jenny wants to carry on her father's legacy of community involvement and investment. She wants to get out of the weapons business completely. Naturally, this places her in conflict with Victoria to a point that places Jenny's life at risk. In a desperate attempt to stop Victoria, Jenny makes a big play. Sneaking into the Kord labs, Jenny steals an ancient piece of alien technology known as The Scarab. The Scarab is the key to Victoria's plans and without it, she's got nothing. 

As Jenny tries to sneak The Scarab out of Kord she runs into Jaime and enlists him to sneak the ancient artifact out of the building. The two had met the day before when Victoria fired Jaime and his sister, Milagro Reyes (Belissa Escobedo) from their cleaning jobs at her resort home. Jaime developed an immediate crush on Jenny so, naturally, he's happy to help her in this moment, unaware of the level of danger he's inviting into his life and the life of his family. 

The legend of The Scarab is that it chooses the person that it will attach itself to. The choice is based on who The Scarab believes is worthy to wield its magical powers. When Jaime picks up The Scarab he has no idea that he would be the one the ancient alien tech would choose. Once The Scarab does choose Jaime however, Blue Beetle kicks into second gear as the war between Jaime, his family and Victoria Kord's army of super soldiers, led by the ruthless Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), is on. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Brightwood

Brightwood (2023) 

Directed by Dane Elcar 

Written by Dane Elcar 

Starring Dana Meryl Berger, Max Woertendyke 

Release Date August 22nd, 2023 

Published August 22nd, 2023 

Brightwood is a trip. A bickering couple goes for a run. The husband whines and complains, the wife won't stop listening to a podcast. He wants to go home but can't because he's trying to spend time with her as he feels his marriage is disintegrating. She would like to run alone but feels a pull from who they used to be and lets him come along. They go for a run around a local pond and something supernatural occurs. The couple becomes trapped in the forest, unable to escape and seeing strangers in the woods who may or may not be hostile. 

Jen (Dana Meryl Berger) and Dan (Max Woertendyke) have an immediately tense chemistry. Their bickering is charged with various slights and a lengthy history of misdeeds and miscommunication. The night before this run that they are on, the couple was at a party where an inebriated Dan appeared to flirt with everyone there, much to Jen's increasing irritation. Dan thinks he was just being friendly but tries to apologize, though Jen isn't particularly interested. 

As he struggles to keep up, Jen says she's going to the pond for a few laps. Dan wants to quit but also doesn't want his wife to have the last word in their conversation. He follows along and the two end up in an unfamiliar spot. There is something off about the trail on this day, something Jen can't quite put her finger on. Eventually, after a lap, she can't find the path they came in on. More attempts to leave, more times arriving back where they started. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Babadook

The Babadook (2014) 

Directed by Jennifer Kent

Written by Jennifer Kent 

Starring Essie Davis 

Release Date May 22nd, 2014 

Published June 28th, 2024

Until a recent edition of my podcast, the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts, I was not aware that The Babadook, the incredible low budget horror movie that became an underdog smash in 2014, had an connection to the LGBTQ community. Then, as we were deciding on a classic for the final week of Pride Month, my co-host, Jeff Lassiter, suggested The Babadook. And I was puzzled.

I wondered if writer-director Jennifer Kent was connected to the LGBTQ community or perhaps star Essie Davis. But I have seen no indication of either speaking about their personal lives over the past 10 years. That's when Jeff explained a funny anecdote that, for reasons unexplained, Netflix had included The Babadook in a collection of Pride Month Movies. This led to members of the LGBTQ community embracing The Babadook as a pride movie in an ironic or sarcastic manner that became a genuine embrace. It became a meme in the LGBTQ horror community that the monster itself, the Babadook, of the title was queer.

“The Babadook” stars Davis as Amelia, a put-upon single mom dealing with an increasingly troubled child. Amelia’s son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), like many children, believes he has a monster under his bed. This fact has kept his mother up late many nights in attempts at reassurance. Samuel’s monster takes on a name from a bizarre children’s book that Amelia does not recall having purchased, ‘The Babadook.’

‘The Babadook’ is not, in fact, a children’s book but rather an illustration of upcoming events that will change as events change in the home. This, of course, is not a new concept in horror but there is a twist here that only the observant audience member will be able to pick up on. What’s truly clever about “The Babadook” the film is how this book and all of the varying cliches of possession/demon horror movies are routed to a single emotional point, the death of Amelia’s husband on the day that Amelia gave birth to Samuel.

Read my full length review in the Pride Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday

Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday (1993) 

Directed by Adam Marcus 

Written by Jay Huguely, Dean Lorey 

Starring John D. LeMay, Kane Hodder, Erin Gray, Allison Smith, Steven Culp, Steven Williams 

Release Date August 13th, 1993 

August 17th, 2023 

It's weird and rare to see a horror movie franchise parody itself and yet, that's exactly what we get in the opening moments of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The film opens on a beautiful woman alone at a summer camp. She's making all of the mistakes that a victim of Jason Voorhees makes. She's getting naked and then running around in just a towel. Naturally, of course, this grabs Jason's attention and he begins his usual methodical pursuit. And then the see is turned on its head. Floodlights fill the scene, the woman as well as dozens of FBI Agents pull guns and explosives are used to blow Jason Voorhees to little bits. 

This sequence features a shot of Jason's mask flying toward the screen and a shot of Jason's still beating heart which is pretty cool. For a moment, only a moment, it seems as if Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, might have a sense of humor and purpose in taking this aging franchise in an interesting new direction. And then, the movie flies completely off the rails. If you could think of a worse direction to take Jason Voorhees and this franchise you would be meeting quite a challenge. The decisions made by director Adam Marcus and writers Jay Huguely and Dean Lorey are so insane that they defy any attempt to defend them. 

So, with Jason blown to bits how does the story continue? Jason's charred pieces are taken for an autopsy. The coroner in charge of Jason's body, for reasons that cannot be explained, decides to eat Jason's heart. It's implied that something supernatural, something Jason is doing from beyond the grave, is causing this otherwise normal guy, to eat Jason's heart but that doesn't make this scene any less insane. Eating Jason's heart turns the coroner into Jason Voorhees but he still looks like the coroner. As the coroner, Jason sets about murdering the staff of the coroner's office and begins seeking a way to keep himself alive. 

To let us know that Jason is still around, we occasionally see Jason, full hockey mask and overalls regalia intact, in reflections. You know, in case we forgot what movie we were watching. For real, we might actually need the reminder as Jason Goes to Hell is set to retcon more of Jason's backstory to serve this new narrative. In a move that baffled long time fans, Jason is revealed to have a sister, played by a slumming former television star, Erin Gray. She has a daughter who is about to give birth and Jason wants to get in that baby in order to be reborn into a new body. 

Thus, Jason kills his way through several bodies, he can't sustain the bodies he enters by vomiting himself from one victim to another. All while he searches for his sister and the baby that he hopes he can enter and be reborn. Why and how a mindless killing machine like Jason Voorhees would suddenly have this supernatural body swapping power to the knowledge of how to use these powers is beyond any attempt to explain. He just now has these powers just as he now has a sister that he never had before. Look, if you're going to question it, you're not going to enjoy Jason Goes to Hell. I know, I didn't enjoy it. 

Well, I should say, I didn't enjoy it in any way that the filmmakers intended me to enjoy it. On a derisive level, I did have a little fun making fun of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The sight of various characters in the guise of Jason Voorhees vomiting Jason from one body to the next is a gross but hilarious visual. I laughed at poor Erin Gray who seems to be lamenting every moment that she spends being in this movie. Gray was once a popular and beloved television star and its clear that being part of a late in life sequel to a dying horror franchise is not how she saw her career playing out. Her dead behind the eyes delivery borders on intentional comedy. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Classic Movie Review Sorcerer

Sorcerer (1977) 

Directed by William Friedkin 

Written by Walon Green

Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou 

Release Date June 24th, 1977 

Published August 16th, 2023 

In our final tribute to famed director William Friedkin, myself and my co-hosts on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast watched and talked about Friedkin's much maligned and recently reconsidered 1977 thriller Sorcerer. When it was released, Sorcerer was written off by many critics and it was considered a failure for not reaching the box office heights of Friedkin's twin classics The Exorcist and The French Connection, a standard that was desperately unfair to this far more challenging movie. 

Sorcerer was a remake of The Wages of Fear, a challenging, cynical, and deeply uncommercial French movie that was based on an equally bleak and unrelenting book. Sorcerer thus was never designed as a typical blockbuster with the kind of wide appeal that creates box office success. It's a tribute to Friedkin's dedication as an artist and his hubris as a businessman that he would try use his clout to make a deeply uncommercial movie into a success. It didn't work, but he did make one hell of a great movie. 

But don't ask my why it was called Sorcerer, that title is complete nonsense. The story of Sorcerer introduces us to four desperate men fleeing from what is likely an early death. Each has a criminal background that was a recipe for dying before their time. Wanting to prolong their miserable lives, each man escapes to South America where work is scarce and survival is a struggle. There are few jobs and the one potentially well paying gig is so ludicrously dangerous it may not be worth doing. 

Oil companies are destroying the natural beauty of the South American jungles. When one of their oil rigs catches fire the only way to stop it is to blow it up. For that, they need nitroglycerin, a volatile explosive, one that is deeply unstable. The slightest jostling could set off the explosive and destroy anyone in the vicinity of it. Nevertheless, the oil company is offering good money to transport nitroglycerin via truck over the uneven ground of the jungle to their oil well fire. They need four men for the job and, of course, the four desperate men we've met before are the men for the job. 

With nothing to lose, these four lost souls must rebuild trucks that are capable of running smoothly enough not to set off the nitroglycerin while sturdy enough to make it over the mountainous jungle terrain where paved roads are a non-existent luxury and dirt paths are often covered over by landslides due to the rainy season. It's a fool's errand that only men at the very end of their tether would attempt to take on. That's the backdrop of Sorcerer that sets us on a path of intense, grim, nasty scenes that you watch through your fingers as you gasp for every tension filled breath. 

Sorcerer is like Ice Road Truckers on steroids. If you've never seen that History Channel reality series, it follows truckers who carry supplies across the most perilous terrain in the world as they risk dropping their giant semi-trucks through ever more perilous and icy terrain. Sorcerer may not be on ice but the landscape of loose dirt and gravel feels just as perilous. Add to that the nitroglycerin in the back of the two trucks on this journey and you get the sense of the pressure cooker of suspense that is Sorcerer. Where the thought that a TV show can't necessarily film and share the death of its protagonists, removing a little of the suspense of Ice Road Truckers, a movie is not bound by this and it feels as if we could lose any one of our main characters in Sorcerer at any moment. 

One of the reasons that Sorcerer was a bad bet to be a big hit was Friedkin's decision to cast actors not familiar to American audiences. Aside from Roy Scheider, fresh off the success of The French Connection and Jaws, the cast is almost entirely unknown to American audiences. This was a calculated choice by Friedkin as because we don't know these actors, we can't assume which one might survive and which one might die. A movie star provides a comfort that they will be around for a while in a movie they are the star of. Hiring unknown actors however, creates doubt that has a big role to play in the breathtaking suspense of Sorcerer. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90's Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder (1990) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne 

Written by Bruce Joel Rubin

Starring Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello

Release Date November 2nd, 1990 

Box Office $26.9 million 

Director Adrian Lyne is known best for his sexy, sweat-soaked thrillers about cheating husbands, scheming women, and rich guys who pay for sex. So, seeing that he's also the director of a gritty, Vietnam era horror movie like Jacob's Ladder is a little jarring. Now, of course, he does throw in needless nudity, Elizabeth Pena's breasts are lovingly captured on screen for no particularly good story reason, but otherwise, Jacob's Ladder is a grand departure for the tawdry director of admittedly zeitgeist grabbing sex thrillers. 

Jacob's Ladder tells the story of a deeply haunted Vietnam vet named Jacob, played by Tim Robbins. Jacob nearly died in Vietnam after his unit was the subject of a violent surprise attack. Jacob himself was stabbed in the gut and had to have his intestines pressed back into his body before he could be taken back to the base hospital. Jake remembers being gutted by a bayonet but he also has another memory that he cannot quite reconcile. Just prior to his being stabbed, Jacob's unit seemed to be having severe hallucinations and overdoses. 

Is it a dream or a memory? Jacob cannot tell. However, when Jacob survives a pair of attempts on his life and compares notes with some of the members of his unit, it appears that there may indeed have been more to this firefight than a surprise attack. Meanwhile, Jacob isn't sleeping, he's in desperate pain from a back injury. Thankfully he has a benevolent chiropractor named Louie (Danny Aiello) who acts as friend, confessor, therapist and guardian angel. Louis is seemingly the only one able to comfort the ever-tormented Jacob. 

On top of his traumatic near death in Vietnam, Jacob lost a son before the war. Gabriel (Macauley Culkin), was struck and killed while riding his bike. Jacob's life has been a mess ever since. Despite having two other children, Jacob fell apart, his marriage to his wife, Sarah (Patricia Kalember) fell apart and then Jacob nearly died. It's no wonder that he can barely function and gave up life as a Park Avenue Shrink for a relatively more peaceful and less stressful job as a postal worker. Boomers and Gen-X'ers are making dark jokes right now, millennials are a bit confounded and thinking yes, being a postal worker would be less stressful.  Both sides are right. 

Anyway, that's Jacob's Ladder. Jacob barely functions, survives a few attempts on his life, has a couple more near-death experiences and begins seeing demons. He has meltdowns at any function he attends, when he's not sick he's obsessed with his time in Vietnam. He's slowly destroying his relationship with his girlfriend, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), while she may have a secret related to what is happening to Jacob. What is real and what is a hallucination begins to intermingle into a confusing mélange of disconnected horror images that all mean nothing when the ending is revealed. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media