Movie Review I.S.S

I.S.S (2024) 

Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite 

Written by Nick Shafir 

Starring Ariana Debose, Chris Messina, Pilou Asbaek, John Gallagher Jr., Costa Ronin 

Release Date January 19th, 20024

Published 

I.S.S is a terrific and timely thriller. Set aboard the International Space Station, the story follows a rookie astronaut, played by Ariana Debose, as she joins her first space mission. She's supposed to spend the next six months studying lab rats and seeking cures or treatments for disease. What she gets however is a day or so of acclimating to her strange new home before something on the ground, an international incident involving the United States and Russia, throws her mission into chaos and threatens the lives of everyone on board the I.S.S 

Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana Debose) has worked her whole career toward going to space. When we meet her, her dream is coming true. Foster and Dr. Christian (John Gallagher Jr.) are aboard the Soyuz Space Capsule on their way to the I.S.S. On the space station, they are welcomed by fellow American, Gordon Barrett and the three person Russian crew, Alexey (Pilou Asbaek), Nika (Maria Mashkova), and Nicolai (Costa Ronin). The atmosphere is mostly congenial, though issues of workspace do cause a bit of tension between Kira and Alexey who must work in close quarters. 

The plot kicks in when communication from the station to the ground gets cut off. The internet is down and, as the crew is observing the Earth, they see what appear to be large scale explosions. When communication is restored between the station and Earth, the Americans and the Russians are each advised to take control of the space station, by any means necessary. This leads to a series of ever escalating encounters as each side tries to decide whether they are getting accurate information from the ground and whether or not they are capable of attacking people they have considered their friends and colleagues until now. 

I.S.S is a thrill ride. Directed by documentarian turned feature director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the film keeps amping up the tension in scene after scene all while creating a surprisingly realistic recreation of the famed International Space Station on a relatively modest budget. Cowperthwaite's direction is assured and confident with a masterful control of the tension and suspense. The cinematography by Nick Remy Matthews is superb and the camerawork underlines the growing tension of the plot perfectly. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review He Went That Way

He Went That Way (2024) 

Directed by Jeffrey Darling 

Written by Evan M. Weiner

Starring Jacob Elordi, Zachary Quinto, Chimpanzee 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 7th, 2023 

He Went That Way is a deeply misguided movie. Despite a unique true story basis, the movie cannot figure out what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? Is it a road movie? Is it a thrilling road movie? It's deeply unclear and wildly strange but not in a very interesting way. The film stars of the moment star Jacob Elordi as a serial murderer and Zachary Quinto as the trainer of a world-famous chimpanzee named Spanky. No, I didn't make that up, that's the actual character dynamic. A road movie featuring a serial murderer, an animal trainer, and a chimpanzee. Ugh!

Jim Goodwin (Quinto) is slowly losing everything. His marriage is struggling, he and his chimpanzee, Spanky, have lost their television show, and now he's on the road and possibly having to beg someone who owes him money to finally pay him. With his vehicle breaking down, Jim stops at a gas station. There, he meets Bobby Falls (Jacob Elordi), a drifter thumbing a ride on Route 66. Jim offers to take him as far as Chicago, Jim's destination, and they hit the road. 

On their first stop, a roadside motel, Bobby reveals that he's carrying a gun. He threatens Jim, steals his wallet and ring, and demands that Jim take him to Michigan where Bobby claims he has a girl waiting for him. In flashbacks following this scene, we see flashes of some of the murders Bobby has committed. He's murdered several people since coming back from, what we assume is Vietnam, though the movie isn't clear about this idea. The film actually opens with Bobby dumping a dead body out of a car, unrelated to anything to do with Jim and Spanky. 

And from there, Jim spends several days trying to convince Bobby not to kill him and, perhaps return his wallet and pinky ring. Jim also has the tricky task of keeping Bobby from killing the people that they meet along their way, including a pair of teenage girls that Jim picks up for them by introducing them to Spanky the Chimp. This could work, I guess, as a story, if it were played as wildly absurd but Quinto and Elordi play these scenes completely straight and the direction is basic and adds nothing stylistically to underline how bizarre this story is. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Weak Layers

Weak Layers (2024) 

Directed by Katie Burrell

Written by Katie Burrell, Andrew Ladd 

Starring Katie Burrell, Jadyn Wong, Chelsea Conwright, Evan Jonigkeit 

Release Day January 5th, 2024

Published January 5th, 2025 

Weak Layers is a throwback to a time in the 1980s and 90s when comedies set on ski slopes became a mildly popular sub-genre. These movies were all the same formula, a group of slobs battling a group of snobs. The slobs throw wild, over the top parties filled with drugs, booze, nudity, and associated debauchery, before having to learn a valuable lesson that leads to them to clean up their act just long enough to win, or come close to winning, a big skiing competition. The only notable differences in these comedies was whether or not they featured just skiing or skiing and snowboarding. 

It's been a few years since we've seen one of these skiing comedies like Ski School, Aspen Extreme, or Snowboard Academy. As terrible as these movies often were, there was a particular charm to them. Skiing comedies, like the similar sub-genre of Summer Camp movies, think Meatballs, have a breezy, silly, dopey quality that made them very easy to watch. Weak Layers does well in recapturing the silly, stupid, easy to watch qualities of the classic ski-comedy. 

Weak Layers was co-written and directed by Katie Burrell who also stars in the movie as Cleo, a wannabe film director, killing time drinking, partying and skiing. Cleo shares an apartment with her two closest friends, Lucy (Jadyn Wong), and former Olympic skier, Tina (Chelsea Conwright). When the trio parties just a little too hard and end up trashing their apartment, they're forced to live in a friends van while they seek a new place to live and party. 

The trios best bet for getting the money together for a place to live is a longshot. Cleo's video of her friends partying and skiing has recently gone viral and earned her the chance to submit a short documentary to a contest with a $10,000 grand prize. To win, she and her friends will have to clean up their acts and do some of the best skiing of their lives while Cleo captures it all on camera and turns it into an award winning skiing movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s The Unborn

The Unborn (1991) 

Directed by Rodman Flender 

Written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris

Starring Brooke Adams, Jeff Hayenga, K Callan, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Kudrow 

Release Date March 29th, 1991 

Box Office Gross $1.15 million dollars 

The Unborn is part of a special subgenre of 90s horror, the laughable kind. Okay, fine, it's also a movie that wants to tap into the fears inherent in struggling to become a new parent and bring life into the world, but the film is truly laughable in that effort. Goofy special effect babies, over the top, shrill performances, and artless direction render The Unborn part of the Corman Classics, a group of cheap, often quite terrible films that Roger Corman artlessly pumped out of his mass manufactured movie company. While Corman's legend has earned a reappraisal for the careers he helped to launch, we should not forget the huckster Corman was at heart, a salesman crafting and selling faulty products at low, low prices. 

Poor dewy-eyed Brooke Adams has the thankless task of playing the lead role in The Unborn. Adams plays Virginia, a children's book author who has been trying for several years to have a child with her milquetoast hubby, Brad, offering bland support and dodging any blame for their failure to conceive. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, the couple has agreed to see an experimental doctor with a new scientific approach to helping couples conceive. The new method is terrifying and painful involving a dark operating room and large needles. The production design is cheap but the lack of lights, at the very least, does create a sense of the unnatural. 

The special new doctor is Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen), a man who has worked miracles for other families, though the nature of these miracles are slowly coming to light. In fact, the family that recommended that Virginia see Dr. Meyerling suffers a tragedy when the daughter born from Dr. Meyerling's experimental procedures begins showing sociopathic tendencies that end with her murdering her little brother while he slept. Other women have ended up before their baby is born and one woman, a new friend of Virgina's, ends up in a coma. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Mayhem

Mayhem (2024) 

Directed by Xavier Gens 

Written by Xavier Gens

Starring Nassim Lyes, Loryn Nounay, Oliver Gourmet 

Release Date January 5th, 2024 

Published January 3rd, 2024 

Mayhem is an ultraviolent revenge thriller out of France. Directed by Xavier Gens, Mayhem follows a Mixed Martial Artist who is just out of jail and hoping to stay out of trouble. Naturally, trouble finds him instead and he ends up going on the wrong after accidentally killing the brother of a drug dealer. He picks up his life in Thailand but as stories like this always go, the past is going to catch up with him leading to a final confrontation and a bloody, bloody end for most of the baddies. 

Mayhem stars champion kickboxer Nassim Lyes as Sam, a reformed bad boy eager to rebuild his life after time in prison. Things are looking up for Sam as he gets out of prison and immediately earns a well paying job on a construction site. It's long hours and hard work but it's also a chance to rebuild his life on the right side of the law. Naturally, if that were allowed to happen then this would not be a bloody revenge action film so don't get used to this status quo. 

In fact, it takes barely a day before Sam's past comes back to haunt him. A drug dealer who wanted Sam back in his employ has sent thugs to kill Sam. As Sam flees through the rugged streets of Paris, he ends up on a construction site where he ends up killing the man chasing and attacking him. This man happens to be the drug dealer's brother. This will force Sam to give up Paris in favor of going on the lam. Leaving behind all that he's known to go to Thailand and try to start over. 

The story then picks up five years down the road. Sam has a wife and has adopted her daughter as his own. They have a baby on the way. They also have plans to buy a home, with money raised by Sam returning to fighting where he throws fights on behalf shady gangster types. Sam's wife may as well have a bulls eye on her forehead, she is not long for this movie. I'm honestly not sure we learned her name. She's here to die and motivate Sam to become the ultimate killing machine. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Bricklayer

The Bricklayer (2024) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Hanna Weg, Matt Johnson 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson, Clifton Collins Jr. 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 4th, 2023 

The Bricklayer is a remarkably banal and completely terrible movie. The film stars Aaron Eckhardt as the titular bricklayer. Naturally, he's not bricklayer, not really anyway. He does lay bricks and even builds a small wall early in the movie, but his tragic backstory is soon revealed. The Bricklayer, aka Vail, lost his family when they were slaughtered by his former friend, played by Clifton Collins Jr. This caused Vail to abandon the life of a CIA spy in favor of bricks. He believes that he had killed his former friend but now he's found out that he's wrong. 

Collins' terrorist character is back and is now murdering international journalists and framing the CIA for the kills. The CIA needs Vail to come out of retirement and finish the job of killing the terrorist. Naturally, the only person the CIA could possibly team him with is an inexperienced tech wiz who can find information that the rest of the CIA can't because their lazy and jaded and she's young and beautiful. Nina Dobrev is the whippersnapper CIA agent who will pose as Vail's wife as they snoop their way inside the high society of Greece where the most recent murdered journalist was staying. 

The cliches of The Bricklayer move fast and furious. Literally, some of these were made cliche by the Fast and Furious movies. Aside from a hero who enjoys the trade of bricklaying, there is nothing remotely original about The Bricklayer. I mean everything, right down to star Aaron Eckhardt's raspy tough guy speaking voice. In one of the first scenes in the movie, Eckhardt is shot by one of those bad guys who rarely hits anything while firing a needless number of bullets. So, Eckhardt duct tapes his gunshot would shut, and engages in a hand-to-hand fight that would put most MMA fights to shame. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom

Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (2023) 

Directed by James Wan 

Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall

Starring Jason Mamoa, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II 

Release Date December 21st, 2023 

Published December 29th, 2023 

Wow! Aquaman 2 The Lost Kingdom is quite bad. I truly did not care for this DCEU sequel to what wasn't a bad first film. The sequel is lazy and dimwitted, ponderous and often quite ugly to look at. It's everything we've come to dislike about modern comic book blockbusters. The worst element is the CGI, a rubbery mess of indecipherable visuals and some of the worst fight scenes since Michael Bay assaulted our senses in the Transformers franchise. The biggest disappointment, however, is director James Wan, a supremely talented director who appears to be on complete autopilot in this lazy sequel. 

The film begins with a hacky sitcom monologue which sets up the new dynamic of the Aquaman movie universe. Aquaman, AKA, Arthur Curry (Jason Samoa), delivers a monologue that appears to break the fourth wall except that it is couched as a dialogue with his new baby, Arthur Jr. He's bringing the baby up to speed on where we stand now with Arthur as the King of Atlantis, hating the restrictions of being King and finding ways to be the Arthur of old, a superhero who fights evil and protects the good. His wife, Hera (Amber Heard), is also around... somewhere. 

Much of the early portion of the film is Arthur with his baby and sharing beers with his dad, Tom (Temeura Morrison). That is until, David Kane, AKA, Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) makes his presence felt. He's somewhere in Antarctica searching for The Lost Kingdom. With the aid of a genius scientist, Dr. Stephen Shin (Randall Park), and the effects of Global Warming, he does find something, an ancient weapon called The Black Trident. The possessed weapon begins to infect Black Manta's mind, using his hatred for Aquaman to drive him to free the Lost Kingdom from a centuries long curse. 

In order to find Black Manta, Arthur must do the unthinkable, break his brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), out of a desert prison where he's been held since the end of the last movie. Thanks to the power of lazy screenwriting, Orm knows where to find Black Manta, or the Star Wars cantina where someone else knows where Manta is. It is one of the most boring prison breaks in movie history. It's remarkably by the numbers, hampered by bad CGI, and wildly underwhelming villains guarding Orm. Same can be said for the visit to a pirate bar featuring rejected Star Wars aliens. 

Click here for my full length review.