Transfusion (2023) - Movie Review

With how many films I get through every year, marketing material and trailers in particular don’t really have an effect on me nowadays. Most of the time, trailers just serve as snapshots for stuff I know I’ll be looking at at some point anyway, so they don’t serve the same interest for me that they would most general audiences. But then there are situations like the marketing around this film, and the subsequent response that the film proper has gotten, and I feel the need to address the discrepancy.

See, the trailer for this film presents it as some kind of crime thriller with shootouts, the kind of thing you’d expect Neeson to have helmed a few years back. But instead, the actual film is more of a slow-burn drama about family, masculinity, and how far men will go to preserve one or the other.

The Vigil (2020) - Movie Review

Well, this is a nice surprise: A horror flick released during lockdown that doesn’t make me think literal cabin fever is the better option. Not only that, this is quite a refreshing feature within its sub-genre of supernatural horror. Mainly, because it's one of a rare few that taps into superstition outside of the Christian camp.

Honey Boy (2020) - Movie Review

Shia LaBeouf. Actor. Performance artist. Meme in human form. Multidisciplinary plagiarist. Jack of all trades, master of none, not even himself. The man I’ve been calling ‘Shia LaBullshitArtist’ for as long as this blog has existed, out of respect for Daniel Clowes, the Anomalies crew, and pretty much everyone else Shia has ripped off over the course of his career. Is it clear enough yet that I don’t exactly have the highest opinion of this guy as a creative?

Or, at least, I didn’t use to. Between his place as the lead actor in the earlier Michael Bay Transformers movies, the way Hollywood kept trying to push for him as the next big thing with little success, and how much he basically imploded over the course of the 2010’s, he’s pretty much secured his place as everyone’s favourite punching bag. But after seeing him in The Peanut Butter Falcon, in a performance so fucking resonant that articulating my gratitude resulted in some of my best critical work to date, I’m more willing than ever to give the guy his fair due. And once I get into the contents of his latest, hopefully you’ll see why.

Rambo: Last Blood (2019) - Movie Review

Rambo is one of the most classic action franchises of all time. It is seriously weird thinking about just how influential the first two entries are, setting the tone for a lot of action cinema to come out of post-Vietnam America. The first remains one of the most brutal depictions of PTSD to make it to the big screen, and the second basically set the blueprint for every jungle-set military action-thriller to come after, up to and including the also-highly-influential Predator.

The third film… exists, and even as someone who takes pride in recollecting pop culture minutiae, I can barely remember anything about it. Then there was Rambo ’08, which boosted the gore standard in a way that, given what it was depicting, must’ve hit close to home considering it went on to inspire real-life Burmese freedom fighters. Following any of that up was gonna be a hard ask, and what we get here is… complicated.

The Predator (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: While on a mission, sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) sees an alien ship craft-land on Earth. After he is shuffled off to a military prison bus to keep him quiet about his discovery, biologist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) examines the body retrieved from the ship... and it escapes from the facility. Quinn will have to team up with Casey as well as the other soldiers on the bus in order to stop this Predator from turning the human race into game.