Ghosted (2023) - Movie Review

Films like this feel like practical jokes. Like, hey, there’s people out there who pay real close attention to the names attached to movies, so let’s bring a bunch of them together. We’ll get the guy who directed Rocketman, the writers of the Deadpool and MCU Spider-Man movies, and we’ll get Mindy Marin to work her usual magic and cast all kinds of hot acting talent for it, led by Chris Evans and Ana De Armas. Apparently, the strategy worked, as this set a new record for debut audience numbers on Apple TV+. Of course, first appearances aren’t everything, and it takes little more than a light breeze to scratch the paint off of this bafflingly awful product.

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.

Blonde (2022) - Movie Review

Even in a year that gave audiences the media hurricane of Don’t Worry Darling, this will likely go down as the most controversial film of 2022. Over the last few months, I’ve heard no shortage of horror stories about CGI fetuses and how exploitative its depiction of Marilyn Monroe’s life is. Since it is one of the bigger titles of the year, I knew I’d have to get to it eventually… but understandably, I’ve been a bit apprehensive about it. But hey, it’s got Ana de Armas continuing to spread her wings as a lead actress, and I quite liked the last film I saw from director Andrew Dominik in One More Time With Feeling (not to mention Nick Cave and Warren Ellis doing the soundtrack for this as well); maybe this will be another case where I find something good where others didn’t. Well… maybe I did? Even after I finished writing this, I’m still not sure.

Deep Water (2022) - Movie Review

After a twenty-year hiatus from filmmaking (save for a brief stab at screenwriting in Alex Pettyfer’s Back Roads), one of the few directors that could actually get his head around erotic mainstream cinema, Adrian Lyne, has returned. And true to his sweaty and mentally fucked-up trappings, it’s an unsettling take on the idea of romance, but there's a fair bit of rust showing through as well.

The Night Clerk (2020) - Movie Review

This is something I’m likely going to get into more detail with a review I can already see approaching early next year, but just to get it out in the open: I don’t have an inherent problem with non-autistic people playing those on the spectrum. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Asa Butterfield, and Ben Affleck aren’t on the spectrum (far as I know, at least), and yet their respective depictions in Mary & Max, X+Y, and The Accountant still resonated with me.

Being able to depict something that close to my heart in a truly empathetic way means the world to me, regardless of the status of the actor doing it, and while I get the problem with the lack of IRL autistic representation in these movies (it’s been happening for so long, it’s become the norm to the detriment of working autistic actors), that on its own isn’t the issue. It just adds salt to the wound when the film’s understanding of the condition is already as fucked as it is in films like The Night Clerk.

Knives Out (2019) - Movie Review

Films like this… intimidate me. As someone who writes about every new movie I watch, I certainly don’t make it a habit of hiding my true feelings in regards to pretty much anything I’ve written about here, whether I love it, hate it, or walked away unfathomably bored. But my come-up as part of the wider YouTube angry critic scene has definitely influenced how I approach all of those features. If something is bad, I hold no qualms in outlying every single way it has failed… but what about the opposite? What about those films that are just so engaging, so well-crafted, so endearingly good?

Surely, a film that is entirely positive is an impossible thing; no film is perfect, and even with films I love, I usually bring up even the most minor of issues to keep things balanced. Then there comes a film like Knives Out where, no matter how hard I strain my grey matter, I struggle to find fault in what it presents. I don’t know if this film is indeed perfect, but holy shit, it's so damn close that there's nary a difference.

Knock Knock (2015) - Movie Review

Every so often, the Hollywood scheduling system looks at the crap that gets screened and bestows a boon on the viewing public with a double feature from an acclaimed director. 2013 was an amazing year in this regard as we got not only two releases from David O. Russell with Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, but also the ‘supposedly’ final two theatrical releases from Steven Soderbergh with Side Effects and Behind The Candelabra. But then, there are times when the scheduling results in a dual release from a… less reputable director. This is unfortunately a latter case as we are discussing another film by Eli Roth. I once again don’t want to completely badmouth his abilities as a director, as the guy definitely has talent in certain areas. However, his insistence on filming his own scripts is his biggest flaw; the guy has character sensibilities that make Mark Renton look like Oskar Schindler. For as much credit as I was willing to give his last film, it still makes me feel slightly ill thinking back on it. So, is this film as bad as that… or is it, by some terrifying miracle, even worse?