Nimona (2023) - Movie Review

Blue Sky Studios deserved better. I had given them a lot of flak for stuff like the Ice Age series and the Rio series, but their last two features not only showed drastic improvement from that standard, but showed that they had carved out their own niche in the modern animation market. Ferdinand had its growing pains, but still had some solid messaging, and Spies In Disguise only built on them further to make something even better. At long last, they found their (in my opinion) much-needed lane for today's family films with some strong pacifist messaging.

Then Disney bought out Blue Sky’s parent company 21^st Century Fox, repeatedly delayed their next feature, and then outright cancelled it along with Blue Sky Studios as a whole. The company that thinks digging up the graves of their previous successes, and that a new coat of CGI paint will cover the smell of stale corpse that is being paraded in front of audiences for profit, is a sound business strategy, but allowing a studio to continue operation and produce media that, just maybe, people might actually want to watch isn’t.

But out of the ashes of Blue Sky, this film still managed to take flight. Picked up by Annapurna Pictures, with animation by DNEG (who proved their salt as a dedicated animation studio with Ron’s Gone Wrong and Entergalactic), and Spies In Disguise directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (who were originally slated for the helm before Blue Sky got shuttered) brought back in. That this whole production exists as a manifestation of hubris and spite against the conglomerate that tried to stop it from being made, quite frankly, has already earned my respect. But hoo boy, did it not stop earning it from there.

The Killer (2023) - Movie Review

A new David Fincher film coming out is always cause for celebration. A new David Fincher film coming out after he scored another career highlight with Mank, more so. A new David Fincher film coming out with reuniting with writer Andrew Kevin Walker, the scribe behind his breakthrough work Se7en (and script doctor on his other crowning work Fight Club), even more so than that. Sure, I can’t say I was expecting this to entirely reach those same heights, but as someone who holds both creatives in such high esteem, I was definitely curious to see what a new team-up between them would look like. And in a lot of ways, it’s business as usual for the both of them, and in just as many, there’s something different going on here.

El Conde (2023) - Movie Review

Time to add a new dot on this blog’s global cinematic coverage with a look at some Chilean cinema… although this isn’t necessarily all that new for this blog, or indeed for just the stuff I’ve seen outside of it. We’ve looked at director Pablo Larraín’s work on here twice before with the historical biopics Jackie and Spencer, and there’s some ‘6 Degrees To Kevin Bacon’ that can be played connecting this to the only other Chilean film I’ve seen in The Wolf House, an animated horror story set in the Colonia Dignidad, whose overlord, Paul Schäfer, has been publicly defended by conservative minister Hernán Larraín, Pablo’s father.

They Cloned Tyrone (2023) - Movie Review

After co-writing Creed II, and getting thrown into the unholy soup that is the script for Space Jam: A New Legacy, writer Juel Taylor has made his directorial debut with one of the better Blaxploitation flips I’ve seen in a minute. Where remakes of the old guard like Shaft and Superfly felt the need to modernise the genre’s aesthetics (which only brought into question why they’d even bother getting involved in that genre in the first place), this actually sticks to its identifiable qualities, albeit with some updating on the cultural references like Obama and Bitcoin. The moody, shadowy cinematography from DP Ken Seng, the Terrace Martin-esque funk soundtrack from Desmond Murray and Pierre Charles (those basslines are just *chef’s kiss*), the frankly amazing costume design across the board; this looks really damn good.

Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023) - Movie Review

Even before I recognised Robert Rodriguez’s name as a filmmaker, the Spy Kids series was the shit when I was a kid. The first one in particularly was largely responsible for me going through a major spy phase, getting a bunch of toy gadgets and playing mock action spy in the playground… alone… because goddamn, if you think reading my words as an adult makes me look awkward, kid-me was even worse. And the films themselves have held pretty damn well… okay, two of them have held up really well, with 3-D: Game Over having aged especially poorly thanks to the visuals and ugly-ass red-blue 3D, and All The Time In The World being just a categorical disaster that Rodriguez himself was basically strong-armed into doing thanks to Harvey Weinstein (a statement which itself has aged even worse than Game Over).

But even those films still held onto the unshakeable earnestness that RR approaches every production with. The way he wrapped up so many wrong-headed ideas in All The Time In The World with a genuine message about putting family first and doing right by your kids (made stronger by how he often makes films with his kids)… I mean, the film overall still sucks, but there’s no denying that he meant that shit.

You People (2023) - Movie Review

I wasn’t even planning on watching this. I was originally going to check out Rebel Moon, but then I read up on how there was going to be a director’s cut, and given… well, everything to do with Zack Snyder and extended cuts, I want to both avoid the larger conversation as best I can while also giving him the best chance possible. So, as a result, that review is getting moved to early next year. And out of blind panic, and remembering that this film was a talking point earlier in the year, I basically went “fuck it” and picked this. Words cannot express how much I regret that decision.

We Have A Ghost (2023) - Movie Review

Christopher B. Landon’s latest film sees him shift from the ‘(insert ‘80s movie) but it’s a slasher’ prompting that’s been part of his last handful of releases, but only somewhat. He’s still quite indebted to the nostalgic films of that era; it’s just that the specific horror genre flavouring is different.

In this case, we have a haunted house story that plays out like a cross between Beetlejuice and E.T., showing Kevin (Jahi Winston) moving into a new house and making friends with ghost Ernest (David Harbour), while Kevin’s father (Anthony Mackie) and brother (Niles Fitch) try to make bank off of Ernest on social media. And honestly, the entertainment value varies quite a bit depending on what is being pulled from.

Maestro (2023) - Movie Review

Bradley Cooper is one of my favourite people working in Hollywood right now. As an actor, he just got done completing the heartbreaking character arc of a talking raccoon and solidifying him as one of the greatest modern superheroes with Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. As a producer, he backed another whopper of a comic book flick with Joker, a film I still hold in rather high regard and am beyond curious to see what in the hell the sequel is going to shape into. And as a director, his debut with A Star Is Born was a monster hit when it came out, and one of my faves from that year. The man just keeps making power moves, and always with this unmistakable confidence that, no matter what direction he takes, it’s the right one for him.

It's the kind of quality that makes him helming a film like this (or, more specifically, why Steven Spielberg would emphatically insist that he helm it) make total sense, and something of a necessity in order to do it right. While I freely admit that I don’t know all that much about Leonard Bernstein, the legend around his name carries a lot of weight, and with the take that’s being attempted here, there’s a incredibly high degree of difficulty in making it work.

Run Rabbit Run (2023) - Movie Review

‘Elevated horror’ as a sub-genre heading has its elitist undertones and occasionally nebulous usage, but there is still a certain aesthetic that fits that heading. Artsy and unconventional horror films have been a backbone of the genre since its inception, but specifically since the early-mid 2010s, there’s been a noticeable push towards that kind of fare.

In retrospect, the whole movement (if it can even be considered unified enough to count as such) felt like a direct reaction to the waning years of the found footage craze spearheaded by Paranormal Activity, which was reaching its nadir around the time that elevated horror films really started to take off. Instead of the façade of amateur filmmaking provided by the prominent handheld camerawork, and the gratuitous use of jump scares, elevated horror tended to delve more into the formalist side of things, returning to the technical fundamentals to see how far they could be pushed and bent to create new sensations. I may not entirely agree with the naming and framing of this general wave, but as a functional label, it can be quite handy.

Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (2023) - Movie Review

The idea of making a sequel to Aardman’s first feature has been floating around since that film initially came out, and considering modern trends towards legacy sequels and the like, it would make sense for them to attempt it around now. It helps that their last film, the Shaun The Sheep sequel, was bloomin’ fantastic and a high benchmark for a studio that’s already a legend in the industry. However, for both good and bad, this is quite a different clucker from the original.

You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah (2023) - Movie Review

Well, the last two days have been a bit of a rollercoaster. Going through Happy Madison’s output for the year has led to some pleasant surprises, some unsurprising duds, and some genuinely amazing stuff. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m going into this directly after having my heart torn open by Leo, but this coming-of-age teen flick… it’s alright. Just… alright.

Leo (2023) - Movie Review

Well, here’s a combination that feels like it was pulled out of an Angry Critic’s nightmares: A Happy Madison animated movie about talking animals. Or maybe just this Angry Critic’s nightmares, since both talking animal movies and Happy Madison productions have been regular targets since this blog started. But for as much shit as I give the both of them when they’re bad, that’s mainly because I still have fond memories of when they were both good. As I got into when I looked at Hubie Halloween, Adam Sandler was part of my childhood and was something of an oddball inspiration as his stock character of the quick-to-anger outsider was a lot like me back then. And talking animal movies exist for a reason, as they make telling stories to kids about characters going through more adult issues easier to deal with, since cute animals are a lot easier to relate to than those old people with their rules and bedtime mandates (in a child’s mind, at least).

The Out-Laws (2023) - Movie Review

Dammit, I knew that getting lucky with Murder Mystery 2 being kind of decent wasn’t going to last. Although honestly, I have some morbid appreciation for this because I didn’t even think they made American comedies like this any more. Both here and for my FilmInk work, I find myself regularly bringing up how modern US comedies seem to spend a lot of time just ad-libbing and riffing instead of actually moving the plot forward or doing anything interesting with the characters. Nowadays, most filmmakers have gotten it into their heads that comedy can help advance a story instead of just grinding it to a halt for little to no reason, but there are some brave little soldiers who are doing their best to keep that style alive.

Murder Mystery 2 (2023) - Movie Review

After the atrocity we dealt with yesterday, I’m in the mood to push my luck, much like a naïve man who just survived a shootout and is now under the impression that nothing can kill him. As such, knowing that even the depths of Happy Madison rarely reach the utter revulsion of Freelance, I’ll be spending today and tomorrow looking at the four HM releases that made it to Netflix.

The Wonder (2022) - Movie Review

This has the single most peculiar opening to any film I’ve reviewed on here. It’s peculiar because this is a period drama that begins with a shot of the sound-stage that the sets in the film are located on, panning across while Niamh Algar narrates about how this is indeed a film and asking the audience to believe in its story as the characters will. There’s an initial pang of worry that this is insecurity showing through on the director's part, similar to Terry Gilliam’s introduction for the film Tideland that essentially begged his audience to regress back to the mind-state of a child in order to understand what was really going on. But that fades away rather quickly because, oddly enough, this ends up being an ideal introduction to this film on two different fronts.

The Adam Project (2022) - Movie Review

After the bizarre misfires that showed up in Free Guy, I’ll admit that I’m a bit apprehensive about seeing Shaun Levy and Ryan Reynolds teaming up again, especially so soon. But knowing that these two are also doing the next Deadpool movie after this, I’m also hoping that this serves as a better example of them working with each other’s sensibilities. I’m not expecting a masterpiece here; just something that will restore enough faith that Deadpool 3 has a chance of working, considering I can already see a creative choice for that film that has a high chance of screwing up. But we’ll get to that when that film comes around; for right now, we have this to take a look at.

The Gray Man (2022) - Movie Review

In an ideal world where everything that works on paper functions the same in the real world, getting involved with the MCU for a time should be a good thing. Get studio attention off the back of indie productions, go mainstream and grab collective eyeballs by working within the biggest franchise in Hollywood, and then use that momentum to branch out into passion projects that benefit from being trusted with enough of a budget to make it all work. But again, that’s just the ideal, and since the Russo brothers struck it huge with what was, for a time, the highest-grossing film ever in Avengers: Endgame, they’ve been branching out into their own shit in directing, producing through their AGBO studio, and Joe Russo getting more into scripting. And now, Netflix has handed them a budget even bigger than their last wannabe-blockbuster Red Notice, and like with Red Notice, it’s raring to be the beginning of a franchise for a streaming service that… well, quite frankly, they need that kind of IP security. However, there are a number of glaring issues with what they’ve put together here.

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) - Movie Review

With how badly his last attempt at darker storytelling turned out with the woefully mishandled cop thriller The Little Things, the prospect of writer/director John Lee Hancock taking on a Stephen King adaptation is a worrying one. Films based on King’s books can be very hit or miss, and this year has already featured a particularly big miss with the Firestarter remake. But hey, it’s starring Jaeden Martell, who was a key part of one of my favourite King films with It: Chapter One; maybe this will actually work out. Well… it kinda does?

The Pale Blue Eye (2022) - Movie Review

Scott Cooper knows a good idea when he sees it. As much as I’ve been pretty lukewarm on the films of his I’ve reviewed in Black Mass and Antlers, they’re both built on sturdy foundations. With the former, it was a different take on the standard crime drama that must’ve clung to Joel Edgerton’s brain since then, seeing as his recent turn in The Stranger turned out quite similar in purpose and thematic drive. And with the latter, it was a creature feature that used a wendigo as a monster metaphor for parental abuse and the trauma associated with it; a properly fascinating direction to take such things. And with his latest, he’s found another potential gold mine in the 2003 Louis Bayard novel The Pale Blue Eye, a detective story set on the American frontier and co-starring Edgar Allen Poe, serving as much a tribute to his style of American Gothic horror as it is to his lineage as the godfather of detective fiction at large.

Of course, this also brings in the main problem I keep running into with Scott Cooper as a filmmaker: He can recognise good story ideas, but isn’t necessarily well-equipped to make the most out of them on the screen. Black Mass, in better hands, could’ve been the gangster answer to Citizen Kane with its storytelling, but Cooper kept settling for more bog-standard tropes within the genre. And in Antlers, he kept burying the best aspects of the story underneath everything else he wanted to get into, watering down the potent ideas at its core. And unfortunately, the same is true of this, which shows Cooper once again losing track of the story’s strong point in favour of… well, just more of the usual.

Entergalactic (2022) - Movie Review

Put this one next to Bo Burnham’s Inside for borderline “does this count as a movie?” picks for reviews. Whatever; it’s a feature-length production on Netflix, and I counted Crazed Gender Twisters From Planet X, which was as much of a series as this is, so yeah, this is a movie review. It’s one I got curious about when it first popped up as, while I’ve never rated Kid Cudi that highly as a rapper (Kids See Ghosts slaps tho), he’s been showing up in movies that I’ve really liked in recent years like Bill & Ted Face The Music, X from earlier this year, and even making for the best (as in the only good) part of Don’t Look Up alongside Ariana Grande. And I’m on a bit of a musical kick at the moment, so let’s see what he’s cooked up here.