Movie Review Turtles All the Way Down

Turtles All the Way Down (2024) 

Directed by Hannah Marks 

Written by Elizabeth Berger, Isaac Aptaker 

Starring Isabela Merced, Cree Cicchino, Felix Mallard, Judy Reyes 

Release Date May 2nd, 2024

Published 

Turtles All the Way Down is a film adaptation of Hank Green novel. The film stars Isabela Merced as a teenager struggling with OCD and other related mental issues, some of which are related to the death of her father. Merced's Aza gets roped into a true crime story by her best friend, Daisy (Cree Cicchino from Nickelodeon's Game Shakers), after a friend's father goes missing. The friend is a smoking hottie named Davis Pickett (Felix Mallard). Davis and Aza met at a camp for kids who have lost parents. Now, Davis has seemingly lost another parent under very suspicious circumstances and Daisy thinks they can find him and collect a reward. 

It's a more than a little convoluted but, I must say, I completely adore Cree Cicchino as Daisy. She feels exactly like the kind of friend who enjoy getting into trouble with. Granted, trying to solve a missing person case is not your average kind of trouble to find, but nevertheless that's the plot and damned if Cicchino's infectious excitement doesn't make you want to follow her down this rabbit hole. Naturally, this is a Hank Green adaptation so it will be a journey of self-exploration, there is grief, mental illness and teen romance. Aza and Davis are on a collision course and how he takes to finding out that she's trying to get a reward for finding her dad is the pivot point for what drama there is in Turtles All the Way Down. 

At least, that's what you might think. Director Hannah Marks and co-screenwriters Elzabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker upend expectations in a very unpredictable way. I won't spoil it, but how you take to this unusual way of shifting expectations is a strong indicator of whether you enjoy Turtles All the Way Down. How did I feel about it? I didn't mind seeing what I expected completely subverted. That said, it's quite the ask for audiences to believe something like this is possible. It's an outlandish reach for the movie to pull this off and I can't say I am certain it works. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Happy Hunting

Happy Hunting (2017) 

Directed by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson

Written by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson 

Starring Martin Dingle-Wall, Ken Lally, Kenny Wormald 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 20, 2017 

Happy Hunting is one of the better horror movies of 2017. This Most Dangerous Game knock off takes the premise of hunting humans and puts a redneck, Mexican border setting to it and lets loose with a serious amount of blood and guts. The film reminded me a little of 2016’s brilliant horror-thriller Green Room which used a backwoods milieu to similar effect. That film is far better than Happy Hunting but that this film brings that one to mind says something about how good Happy Hunting really is.

Happy Hunting stars Martin Dingle Wall as Warren, a drunk drifter who gets invited to Mexico to pick up what may or may not be his child. The mother of the child has died and claims the child belongs to Warren but the only way for him to know for sure is to drive to Mexico. Broke and drunk, Warren needs cash so he concocts the worst batch of meth he could cook and tries to sell it to some meth-heads nearby. Needless to say, this doesn’t go well.

After narrowly escaping the meth-heads, leaving bodies in his wake, Warren finds himself in a small Texas border town that looks on the brink of death. Holing up in a motel with the meth-heads money, Warren, naturally stays drunk while he waits to be told where in Mexico he needs to go. Unfortunately, the town hunt is just getting underway and the hunters do not take kindly to visitors. While Warren briefly seeks solace at an AA meeting he meets Steve (Ken Lally) who wants to be his sponsor.

Steve, like everyone else in town, has a secret, he’s a hunter and seeing Warren new in town, he’s chosen him as the prize for he and his wife Cheryl (Sherry Leigh) to hunt down. After drugging Warren they drag him to the town square where he and four other men are set to go running off into the desert to run for their lives from an assortment of small town badasses who’ve become quite proficient at hunting human beings over the years.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Shot

Shot (2017) 

Directed by Jeremy Kagan 

Written by Anneke Campbell, William Lamborn 

Starring Noah Wyle, Sharon Leal, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. 

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 15th, 2017 

The new-in-theaters drama Shot starring Noah Wyle and Sharon Leal may look like a very special episode of a TV drama but it’s a very effective very special episode of a TV drama. This anti-gun message movie, which does also play like an 87-minute public service announcement at times, nevertheless does have a valuable message. The shooting style may not blow you away but the performances are solid and the message is potent.

Things are not going great for Mark Newman (Wyle) on this Friday afternoon. He’s just been told that he has 36 hours to finish five days’ worth of work he’s doing as a sound editor on a movie followed by a lunch date with his soon to be ex-wife Phoebe (Sharon Leal). This portion of his rotten day, however, is about to get worse as not far from where he and Phoebe are finishing another argument a teenager named Miguel (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) has just been handed a gun which he immediately fumbles and fires, sending a bullet into Mark’s chest.

Here’s when the film supposedly gets clever as it turns into a real-time drama from the moment Mark is shot, about 7 minutes into the movie, and the next hour or so as Mark lies on the sidewalk, is rushed to the hospital and undergoes an examination by an E.R. doctor played by the wonderful character actor Xander Berkley. These scenes have an exceptional authenticity to them, especially if you’ve ever been in an emergency medical situation.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride (2017) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by William Goldman 

Starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Robin Wright, Andre the Giant, Billy Crystal Carole Kane

Release Date September 25th, 1987 

Published September 20th, 2017 

The Princess Bride is one of the most rewatchable movies in history. This rich, robust, and homey comedy never ages and never falters. Rob Reiner’s direction, aside from a truly terrible film score, is unassailable in every comedy beat. Then there is the absolutely perfect casting. Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, and each of the supporting players, from Chris Sarandon as the evil Prince, Christopher Guest as the evil six-fingered henchman, and Billy Crystal’s cameo as Miracle Max, could not be better.

This weekend, September 25, The Princess Bride turns 30 years old and I am happy to tell you that I have probably seen this movie more than 30 times in that 30 years. The film feels like home to me with these wonderfully erudite characters, their supreme code of conduct, and the wonderfully generous laughs. I can’t call The Princess Bride a perfect movie, once again I will mention that terrible film score, but it’s damn near perfection.

Westley (Cary Elwes) is a young farm boy in the employ of the family of Buttercup (Robin Wright). Though Buttercup attempts to annoy her farm boy with one silly task after another we are told in Peter Falk’s wonderful voiceover that Westley’s constant refrain, "as you wish," to each of her requests is his way of confessing his love for her. Eventually, Buttercup realizes that she’s been annoying him because she’s been trying to hide her feelings for him and the two fall madly in love just as Westley is about to leave.

Westley is to take to the seas to seek his fortune so that he may soon return and give Buttercup the life she richly deserves. Unfortunately, it’s reported that Westley’s ship was attacked by a pirate legend known as the Dread Pirate Roberts and he does not take prisoners. With Westley thought dead, Buttercup becomes distant and lonely and when the Prince (Chris Sarandon) arrives at her door wanting to make the most beautiful girl in the kingdom his future Queen she accepts knowing that she is only giving her body to the task but not her heart.

What Buttercup doesn’t know is that the Prince is merely using her and plans to kill her with his first plan to have her kidnapped and killed in the fields of the rival kingdom of Gilder. The princess’s captors are a wonderful comic mixture with the leader Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) claiming to be the smartest person in the world, while his henchmen, Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) and Fezzik (pro wrestling super-legend Andre the Giant) are the greatest swordsman and the biggest brut in the kingdom respectively.

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

Movie Review American Assassin

American Assassin (2017) 

Directed by Michael Cuesta

Written by Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz 

Starring Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Taylor Kitsch 

Release Date September 15th, 2017 

Published September 16th, 2017 

American Assassin stars Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a normal college age kid who we meet while he is vacationing in Ibiza with his beautiful girlfriend. Just after she has accepted his marriage proposal, terrorists sweep over the beach, killing dozens of people in an all too plausible scenario that calls to mind the Paris nightclub attack. Among the dead is Mitch’s new fiancée while he is wounded in the leg and shoulder but narrowly survives.

Cut to 18 months later, a dejected Mitch is now sporting a full beard and a whole set of new muscles on his thin frame. We watch as he corresponds with Muslim terrorists via a private chat network. Mitch is getting himself recruited to become a terrorist with the goal of getting all the way to the man who organized the attack on the beach that killed his girlfriend. What Mitch doesn’t know is that the CIA, specifically deputy director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan), is in on his private messages and are set to spoil his chance at vengeance.

Once Mitch is the hands of the CIA, he is turned over to a secret training organization headed up by a badass former Navy Seal and spy named Hurley (Michael Keaton). Hurley doesn’t think Mitch is emotionally stable enough for the kinds of missions he trains people for but soon enough Mitch proves to be one of only two recruits with the capability to keep up with Hurley and with a major mission coming up to stop a nuclear bomb from being built, there is no time to waste on whether or not Mitch is ready or not.

American Assassin moves at a brisk pace. Director Michael Cuesta may not have a great ear for dialogue based off the leaden, exposition-laden jargon of American Assassin, but he has a terrific eye for action. The opening assault on the beach in Ibiza is frighteningly real and graphic. Some will consider the scene exploitation but I feel it accurately reflects where the story is heading without being disrespectful to real-life tragedies. This is the kind of attack that we’ve seen before and the way Cuesta captures it is intense and jarring.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Lipstick Under My Burkha

Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017) 

Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava 

Written by Alankrita Shrivastava 

Starring Ratna Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Aahana Kumra 

Release Date July 21st, 2017 

Published July 19th 2017 

“You know what our problem is? We dream too much?”

That quote is devastating. It comes from the movie Lipstick Under My Burkha from writer director Alankrita Shrivastava. It’s a remarkable film about four wonderful characters staring into the face of oppression and still trying to live their dreams. Lipstick is only Shrivastava’s second directorial feature and yet she directs with the surety and beauty of a veteran filmmaker. Her eye and ear are perfectly in tune to her characters, who each have big beautiful beating hearts.

Auntie (Ratna Pathak) is at the center of the story, a brilliant, well-respected elder in her community. Yet, she is only 55 years old and a widow and her desires have not cooled with age. Auntie has been Auntie for so long that just trying to say her own name is a challenge. Reclaiming her name is the start of admitting she still has the desires she’s been nursing via a romance novel that she reads as the film’s narration with the story acting as a not too blatant Greek chorus to the story of the movie.

Auntie’s desires come to the fore when she meets a much younger swim instructor whose muscled torso fires the dreams she has of the male character in her book. Pushing her desires ever further she begins to carry on a secret phone relationship with the young man and dreams of perhaps finding the courage to tell him who she really is and how he stirs her soul and so much more. Ratna Pathak could not be better cast in the role of Auntie, still a beauty at 55 with tender eyes and an inner strength radiates to the very end.

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

Classic Movie Review Mauvais Sang

Mauvais Sang (1987) 

Directed by Leos Carax

Written by Leos Carax 

Starring Michel Piccoli, Juliette Binoche, Denis Levant 

Release Date September 9th, 1987 

Published September 10th 2017 

Mauvais Sang or Bad Blood, the English title, stars Dennis Levant as Alex, a small time criminal about to break into the criminal big time. After the death of his father, Alex is sought by his father’s former associates, Marc (Michel Piccoli) and Hans (Hans Meyer) to be part of a heist that will require his quick hands. The heist involves stealing the cultures of a dangerous virus that is ravaging France, a plague that affects those who make love without being in love.

The esoteric virus is a relatively minor player in the drama of Mauvais Sang which is far more interested in the love triangle of Alex, Marc and Marc’s much younger love Anna (Juliette Binoche). Though she is very young, Anna makes it clear that Marc is the only love she has ever known until Alex comes along and upsets their insular little world. Marc has recently become distant following the death of Alex’s father as he believes his rival, an old woman only referred to as The American, was behind the death and is plotting his murder as well if he can’t pull off the virus heist.

Marc’s growing emotional distance and Alex’s insistent romancing are the forces at war for much of the film’s second act which features a 30 minute scene in which Alex and Anna talk and bond and flirt and warn each other of the potential downfalls of a relationship between them. Anna maintains that she loves Marc, despite his age and growing coldness toward her. Alex meanwhile is insistent on his feelings and the scene culminates with a glorious expression of Alex’s newfound love, a street dance/run set to David Bowie’s Modern Love.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal.