The Invisible Man (2020) - Movie Review

The Universal Monsters. A stable of cinematic creatures that served as the progenitor for the modern craze surrounding cinematic universes, which itself has found repeated non-success in the post-MCU landscape. Dracula Untold was retrofitted to be part of the ‘Dark Universe’, and the results are unsurprisingly rushed, and the less said about the Tom Cruise vanity project (well, more so than any of his others, at least) The Mummy from 2017, the better. Hell, even before then with the works of Stephen Sommers in the 2000’s, attempts to bring back the classic monsters kept shooting themselves in the foot as far as trying to create serialised franchises out of them.

But now that Universal has stopped putting the cart before the horse, and are letting individual films stand on their own for a change, we have the latest attempt to bring back the old guard. And holy shit, this is easily the best attempt yet.

Her Smell (2019) - Movie Review

After how dirty Elisabeth Moss was done with The Kitchen, I was honestly wanting to check this film out mainly because she deserves better than having just that movie as her impact for 2019. And it seems that writer/producer/director Alex Ross Perry has given her a role she can really sink her teeth into, playing a riot grrrl punk rocker who, in expected rock star cinema fashion, crashes and burns under the weight of her shot at fame. Going from a role that outright wasted her talents to something that lets the entire production spin on the axis of her performance is very gratifying to see, and the film as a whole ain’t half bad either.

Us (2019) - Movie Review

This review is going to be quite different from what I usually write on here. As much as I try and refrain from tooting my own horn, I often pride myself on being able to dissect a film in real time as I’m watching it, turning these reviews into a glimpse at how I see a given film and its ideas. However, that only works for the films that make an immediate impact, the ones where what is being communicated is good, clear and foreshadowed early so I can latch onto it. Us is not that kind of movie.

Not to say that its own communication isn’t good, clear and foreshadowed; just that, as I’m writing this, I’m still trying to figure out what the actual ideas being presented are and what they amount to. So, as I get into this movie, know that I’m basically showing my working in an attempt to make heads or tails of this whole thing, so if this comes across as confused rambling, that’s only because it is.