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 

Movie Review Driveaway Dolls

Driveaway Dolls (2024)

Directed by Ethan Coen

Written by Ethan Coen, Tricia Cooke 

Starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Colman Domingo, Matt Damon, Bill Camp, Pedro Pascal

Release Date February 23rd, 2024 

Published February 23rd, 2024 

Driveaway Dolls is one of the most sex-positive, pro-LGBTQ movies I have ever seen and I love it. Driveaway Dolls is a refreshingly frank and very funny movie that recalls last years Bottoms with a hint of Raising Arizona for good measure. That last part, obviously, comes from the fact that Driveaway Dolls is a rare solo directorial effort from one of the Coen Brothers. Working with screenwriter Tricia Cooke, the comic sensibilities of a classic Coen Brothers take on a modern, LGBTQ friendly sensibility that makes the whole film feel fresh, even as the movie is set in 1999. 

Driveaway Dolls stars Geraldine Viswanathan as Marian and Margaret Qualley as Marian's best friend, Jamie. The two could not be more different. Jamie is uptight and sexually repressed, while Jamie seeks sex as if it were her profession. As we join the story, Jamie is in the midst of cheating on her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) and thus, getting kicked out of her apartment. As for Marian, she's grown weary of life in New York and plans to escape to Tallahasse and the loving arms of her aunt. 

With nowhere to live and nothing better to do, Jamie decides that she's going to Tallahassee with Marian, despite not being invited. Jamie however, has a way to get them there cheap. The two go to Clancy's Driveaways, owned by the gruff but lovable, Clancy (Bill Camp). Just as the girls are arriving, Clancy has finished a phone call. He is to give two people a specific car to take to Tallahassee and since Marian and Jamie happen to be going to Tallahassee, Clancy assumes they are the ones taking the car. 

Find my full length review at Pride.Media 

Movie Review Ordinary Angels

Ordinary Angels (2024) 

Directed by Jon Gunn 

Written by Meg Tilly, Kelly Fremon Craig

Starring Hilary Swank, Alan Ritchson, Nancy Travis, Amy Acker, Tamala Jones 

Release Date February 23rd, 2024 

Published February 20th, 2024 

Okay, fine, I admit it, I cried... hard. I cried. Watching the movie Ordinary Angels made me weep. I'm in my late 40s and I am far more in touch with my emotions than ever before. So, perhaps, that may explain a little why such a desperately conventional movie touched me so deeply that I had to cry. Ordinary Angels is exactly the kind of movie that is constructed to extract tears from the audience. It's a machine that sucks tears from your face whether you are compelled to give up the tears or not. And yet, my tears came not from the forced nature of the plot about an imperiled, adorable 5 year old girl, but from genuinely overwhelmed by the kindness that people are capable of when properly motivated. 

I'm sure that if I did further research I would find that the term 'Based on a True Story' has been abused to the usual degree but regardless, the film does show the most emotional moment of the story as it happened via some pre-credits, archival news footage, and that's going to have to be enough for me. This is a mostly true story about a family that suffered beyond anything normal. After struggling to get pregnant and struggling to give birth, Theresa Schmitt (Amy Acker), passed away just two years after her second daughter, Michelle was born. Just three years after this, Michelle herself fell ill and needed a liver transplant to survive. 

Drowning in debt and lost in grief, Ed Schmitt struggled to keep his family afloat with the help of his mother, Barbara (Nancy Travis). Then, a strange sort of miracle happened in the form of Sharon Stevens (Hilary Swank). A tornado of a personality, Sharon saw the family's story in a newspaper, how their mother had passed away and how Michelle needed a liver transplant and Sharon threw herself into action. At first, Sharon launched a fundraiser at her hair salon, co-owned with her best friend, played by Tamala Jones. This fundraiser brought in more than $3000 dollars but Sharon sensed that this would not be enough. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review 8 Seconds

8 Seconds (1994) 

Directed by John G. Avildsen

Written by Monte Merrick

Starring Luke Perry, Stephen Baldwin, Cynthia Geary, James Rebhorn

Release Date February 25th, 1994 

Published February 27th, 2024 

8 Seconds is a painfully boring film. The mostly true story of famed bull rider, Lane Frost, played by Luke Perry, 8 Seconds is a by the numbers sports movie with all the innovation and excitement of a damp rag. Bull Riding is a sport, of sorts. It takes a great deal of dedication and very strong hands. It also requires the bull to be basically tortured. Controversial opinion, if your sport requires an opponent that doesn't want to be your opponent, to the point where they may kill just to get you to leave them be, it's not really a competition, it's animal cruelty with judges, points, and a time. 

So, yeah, I wasn't really the audience for a schmaltzy, dizzying, dimwitted movie like 8 Seconds. Lane Frost died tragically young and, as demonstrated in 8 Seconds, his accomplishments were relatively limited. He was a multiple time champion of his sport and was kind to children. Lovely qualities that are at odd with the moody, broody, young man who could turn on a dime and be cruel to his loyal and loving wife, Kellie (Cynthia Geary), who takes the brunt of Lane's unpredictable mood swings, often related to his anger toward his father, Clyde, a man who cannot tell his son that he loves him. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media