Movie Review Origin

Origin (2024) 

Directed by Ava Duvernay

Written by Ava Duvernay

Starring Anjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Isha Blaaker

Release Date January 25th, 2024 

Published January 25th, 2024 

Origin is a big project. Adapting a non-fiction story tracking the origin of racial discrimination via the history of the caste system worldwide, is not an easy task. It's a roiling beast of a project that director Ava Duvernay is perhaps the only filmmaker could attempt to tame and tease into a familiar film drama. The book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, a bestseller for writer Isabel Wilkerson, is a deeply academic, research heavy effort that is far from the most natural book to be turned into a dramatic feature film. Director Ava Duvernay had to give a dramatic shape to the story and she found that shape in the author's life story. 

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor stars in Origin as Isabel Wilkerson, an author struggling with the idea for her next book. She wants to chart the origin of racism in America but her research slowly takes her in a new direction. What she finds is that racism isn't as simple as white people hating black people, though that is a big part of it. Rather, the true roots of racism are often economic in nature. The need for a class of people who exist to do the work that others don't wish to do leads to the owning class to create a caste system in which particular members of a culture are chosen to be that class of people who will perform tasks. 

Leaders in these cultures quickly realized that they could create the workers they needed by exploiting racial and religious differences. Demonizing people for the color of their skin or by the difference in their religious beliefs proved to be an effective way to find a cheap, pliable workforce, groups of people who have no option but to accept poor treatment, low wages, and terrible working conditions, just for the chance to survive. Thus, confronting racial differences required more than overcoming a specific prejudice based on color, it requires dismantling economic systems that have been constructed over hundreds of years that thrived off of this forced labor based on discrimination. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review The First Omen

The First Omen (2024)

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson 

Written by Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson, Keith Thomas 

Starring Nell Tiger Free, Sonia Braga, Ralph Inseson, Bill Nighy

Release Date April 5th, 2024

Published April 5th, 2024 

The First Omen isn't so much of a movie as it is a widget. I mean widget in its first definition, not the internet definition. The First Omen is a product created by a committee who were given budget and a deadline and told to create a sellable product. The people who made it may be of the highest talent and may create a terrific product, but there is no escaping the widget comparison. If The First Omen were not connected to a studio owned franchise, it would not exist and the people who made it, likely would never have worked together. A studio had a product that it wanted made. The studio chose a product manager, a team lead, and a group of people to run the factory floor and they crafted a product for consumption in the market place. 

You can say, that's most movies, and I don't disagree with you. But, you can sense when someone is making a passionate work of art, a deep expression coming from the soul of a genuine artist. And, you can tell when someone is tasked with producing a widget, when they are accomplishing an assignment with a budget and deadline and not a work of a passionate soul. This is not to simply say that by its nature, The First Omen is a bad movie, it's not poorly made. It's a terrific widget. But a widget will never be a transcendent work of art. It will always be a functional mass produced consumer product, no matter how good the effort was to create it. 

The First Omen stars Nell Tiger Free as Sister Margaret, a troubled young Nun who has come to Rome at the behest of her loving mentor, Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy). Cardinal Lawrence was once a humble Priest who helped Margaret survive a difficult childhood in a Massachusetts orphanage. Now, he's using his power as a Cardinal in Vatican City to get Margaret a place at a church run orphanage in Rome, in 19171. It's a heady change for Margaret who turned to God after growing up tormented so badly by visions that she thought she might lose her mind. She still occasionally has horrific visions of the abuse her mind tells her did not actually occur. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Roadhouse

Road House (2024) 

Directed Doug Liman 

Written by Charles Mondry, Anthony Bagarozzi 

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor MacGregor 

Release Date March 21st, 2024

Published March 25th, 2024

Imagine if someone tried to remake The Room without Tommy Wiseau. Imagine if they tried to take Wiseau's premise and treat it with seriousness and make it into a serious drama? Would it even still be The Room? No, the magic would be gone. It would be a boring soap opera. No, the magic of The Room is the unique alchemy that emerges from when Tommy Wiseau's outsized ambition crashes headlong into his complete lack of talent and is forged in the fire of his self-delusion. You cannot remake that. You cannot recapture that kind of magic. 

Roadhouse is like The Room. The magic of Roadhouse comes from the unique alchemy of director Rowdy Herrington's love of sleazy bars with sticky, beer soaked floors, holes in the walls from errant fists, and from Patrick Swayze's unmatched ability to be bizarrely emotionally detached and fully physically present in every scene. His Zen bouncer is a miscalculation in theory but in practice, it is cheeseball comic gold. He's funny but only because he has no idea that he's funny. The joy or Roadhouse is how deeply dedicated Swayze and everyone else is to this sleazy, cheeseball nonsense. 

In remaking Roadhouse, the fun is completely lost in favor of a desire to be taken seriously. The premise is played straight with the fun sucked out almost entirely. A deeply bored Jake Gyllenhaal replaces Swayze's Zen and so much is lost in that translation. Gyllenhaal is too good of an actor to understand the glorious silliness of being a Zen bouncer fighting rednecks over control of a small Kansas town. Instead of trying to be above it, Gyllenhaal just comes of bemused and self-satisfied and that's just not fun at all. Plus, he doesn't rip out a single throat. Not one. 

Road House begins in bizarre fashion, establishing that no one knows what they are doing here. Gyllenhaal's Dalton shows up at a bar where they hold an unsanctioned fight club. There, a bruiser, played in cameo by Post Malone, has fought and defeated 6 men. Dalton is set to be next but the bruiser smartly bows out, refusing to fight Dalton because he knows who Dalton is. He's also just fought 6 other people and is bleeding and exhausted. So, instead of establishing Dalton as a man of honor and toughness, he comes off as an opportunist and a coward. Not the best way to introduce our hero. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Immaculate

Immaculate (2024) 

Directed by Michael Mohan 

Written by Andrew Lobel 

Starring Sydney Sweeney, Alvaro Morte 

Release Date March 22nd, 2024 

Published March 26th, 2024 

Great directors know that all aspects of filmmaking matter. The script, the aesthetic, the music, the sound, it's all important to creating a truly great movie. First time director Michael Mohan demonstrates control over all aspects of filmmaking in his exceptional debut feature, Immaculate. The story of a Nun who is tricked into moving to Italy and into an ancient nunnery with a deep, dark, secret, Immaculate uses the tools of filmmaking exceptionally well. Most notably, the film's impeccable sound design puts the horror in your head in an inescapable fashion. 

Immaculate stars Sydney Sweeney as Sister Cecilia. At the age of 8, Cecilia fell through the ice in her hometown and nearly died. From that day, she dedicated herself to God and the search to find the reason God spared her. Now a nun, Sister Cecilia has recently lost her home parish in Detroit, Michigan. Fate intervened on her behalf as just as she was looking for a place to continue her path with God, Father Sal Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte), found her and offered her a place in an ancient Italian convent. 

This particular convent serves a very important purpose. The nuns here administer to elderly nuns in hospice. It will be Sister Cecilia's job to help make her sisters comfortable as they reach the end of their lives. At least, that's what the job is supposed to be. Unfortunately, shortly after her arrival in Italy, Sister Cecilia falls ill. The illness takes hold and is a complete mystery until it is revealed that Sister Cecilia is pregnant. This comes as a shock to all as Cecilia is unquestionably a virgin. This leads her fellow Nuns and Father Sal to claim she is undergoing a miraculous Virgin birth. 

Plot mechanics tell you that not all is as it appears. There is a sinister element of Immaculate that we are aware of from the start of the film but that is kept from Sister Cecilia. The film opens with a terrifying sequence as a young Nun is attempting to escape from the convent. As she is just about to slip through a gate, a group of Nuns in terrifying, faceless masks capture her. I will leave to see the movie to see what happens next. I will only say that it took my breath away for a moment. It's a terrific sequence and sets up the rest of Immaculate incredibly well. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review One From the Heart

One From the Heart (1982)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola 

Written by Armyan Bernstein, Francis Ford Coppola 

Starring Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia, Nastassja Kinski, Lainie Kazan, Harry Dean Stanton

Release Date February 11th, 1982

Published February 8th, 2024 

I owe massive debt of gratitude to filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. It's because of their love of movies that I had the chance to see Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart on the big screen. In late 2023, the team known for their script for A Quiet Place and their terrific horror movie, Haunt, returned to their home community, the Quad Cities, specifically Davenport, Iowa, to open The Last Picture House, an art house theater. Since then, they've brought modern Oscar contenders, short films and revivals like One from the Heart to the Quad Cities. And I cannot thank them enough for sharing their passion for movies. Because of Beck and Woods, and their brilliant bar manager, Alexa, I was able to discover a new favorite movie, a shaggy dog fiasco of a musical from the 1980s. 

The reputation of Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart is one of being a fiasco. One from the Heart is remembered mostly as a fantastic failure, a risky, overwrought flop from a filmmaker mad with power and new technology. Roger Ebert related an anecdote in his mixed review of the film about how Coppola turned a $9 million dollar production into a $25 million dollar failure due to his desire to use the most modern technology of 1982 to achieve his intensely unique vision. Coppola has long been portrayed as a madman on the sets of his movies and One from the Heart is another film teeming with Coppola lore. 

One from the Heart is a throwback to the big, blowsy, ballsy musicals of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, modernized with the kind of sex and nudity that the Hayes Code kept out of the movie business for so many years. The film stars Frederic Forrest as Hank, a layabout who has, perhaps, become too comfortable in his stagnating romance with Frannie (Teri Garr). She's certainly noticed and her restlessness versus his desire not to change is the fractious, contentious, romantic heart of One from the Heart. As Frannie strains against the confines of domesticity, Hank longs for things to be simple and home bound. 

The breaking point for the couple arrives when Frannie meets an exciting and intriguing piano player named Ray. Ray is played by Raul Julia, a man who wreaks with sex and passion. Where Hank wants a life of simple domesticity, Ray wants to travel, make love on the beaches of Bora Bora, or dance the night away in clubs or, in one truly spectacular sequence, in the streets of Las Vegas. Here Frannie and Ray ignite a strip long dance sequence filled with sweat, passion, and sex. It's a boldly chaotic dance staged like those elaborate stage musicals of Hollywood's past crossed with the sex and drug infused passion of the 70s and early 80s. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Madame Web

Madame Web (2024)

Directed by S.J Clarkson 

Written by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, S.J Clarkson 

Starring Dakota Johnson, Adam Scott, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor 

Release Date February 14th, 2024 

Published February 16th, 2024

Madame Web is a uniquely misconceived superhero flick. Part Morbius, part Catwoman, and all terrible, this Dakota Johnson led adventure in Sony's Wish.com version of the Marvel Universe is stunningly terrible. It's the kind of bad that catches you off guard. In this day and age movies tend toward being merely mediocre. Money and careful, risk-averse studios appeared to have found away to keep the truly bad movies away from the big screen in favor of making dull, inoffensive, and forgettable into an all new kind of bad movie. And yet, Madame Web has escaped the web of the merely mediocre into the rarified air of being genuinely bad. 

Madame Web stars Dakota Johnson as Cassie Webb, an EMS worker with a murky past. Cassie's mother died in childbirth and she grew up in the foster system. As an adult, Cassie's main source of support is her partner, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). When Cassie is nearly killed while providing life saving measures she begins to have visions of the future. These brief glimpses into the very near future help Cassie see that a mad man dressed in a dark costume is stalking three teenage women, each of whom she's met before, ever so briefly. Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O'Connor), are from entirely different backgrounds but they share a connection, a lack of a family. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Reality Bites

Reality Bites (1994)

Directed by Ben Stiller

Written by Helen Childress

Starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, Ben Stiller 

Release Date February 18th, 1994

Published February 21st, 1994

In the 80s you were called a sellout when you appeared in commercials for brands that people didn't like or respect. In the 90s, this insult evolved into people being called Posers. Essentially, people who tried to be part of a culture that they were not authentically part of were 'Posing,' pretending to be cool and hip and down with the kids. It's strange to think how antiquated this thinking is today. In our modern culture, some of the most popular celebrities are themselves a brand that is associated with other brands for the purpose of selling products to consumers, also known as fans. In the 80s, famed comedian Bill Hicks railed against celebrities in Diet Coke commercials as the ultimate sin that one could commit against authenticity. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find a celebrity who isn't accompanied by some kind of brand deal and we all just accept it as the norm. 

Sorry for the tangent but writing about Reality Bites bums me out so getting distracted is like a gentle and brief oasis. Reality Bites is the ultimate Poser movie. In the 90s, if marketers wanted to reach the youth market that would find an attractive model or celebrity, throw some flannel and chunky boots on them and have them 'Hello Fellow Young People' their way into our living rooms. We'd roll our eyes and call them posers and then probably still buy the products but ironically and without passion. That's Reality Bites in a nutshell, a movie that comes wandering in dressed in flannel and armored in irony and disaffected youth while selling the notion that it is The Big Chill for Generation X. And yes, I rolled my eyes when I thought of that and then bought a ticket for Reality Bites so I could roll my eyes in front of the big screen and pretend not to care about how the movie was selling a conception of my generation to me like any other branded product. 

Reality Bites stars Winona Ryder as Lelaina Pierce, college valedictorian and wannabe documentarian. Lelaina spent her college years getting drunk, getting high and still making it to class on time and getting good grades. Most of Lelaina's time is spent behind a camera where she has been documenting the lives of her closest friends including Vickie (Janeane Garofalo), a manager at The Gap, Sammy (Steve Zahn), a closeted gay man, closeted at least to his family, and Troy (Ethan Hawke), Lelaina's on again, off again, best friend and flirting partner. We get to see plenty of Lelaina's supposed documentary and what we see does not communicate any serious attempt at documentary filmmaking. It's an entirely facile representation of someone's dream of making movies and it gets Reality Bites off to a deeply inauthentic start that doesn't get any better from there. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media