Biosphere (2023) - Movie Review

Last time we checked in on indie titan Mark Duplass, it was with the softly soul-crushing Paddleton, and his latest production works under a similar premise. Like Paddleton, this is also the story of two best friends dealing with a particularly bleak personal scenario and finding a way to bond during the experience. Only this time, it’s not just the impending death of a single person; it’s the aftermath of the apocalypse. Duplass’ Billy and Sterling K. Brown’s Ray are the last two human beings alive, kept safe and in relative comfort in the titular Biosphere that Ray designed and built.

Prey (2022) - Movie Review

I kinda regret how much slack I cut The Predator a few years back. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s as underwhelming an action flick as it gets, but I mean more specifically for how it treated autism. Flattery doesn’t tend to age very well, and that’s basically what it amounted to in that regard: Empty platitudes that were pretty asinine when you think them over for even a second. Cut to today’s film, which was being developed at the same time as Shane Black’s little misstep, and which has an approach to representation that has a bit more thought to it than ‘you’re the next phase in human evolution’.

Barbarian (2022) - Movie Review

I don’t want to write about this film.

Not because it’s bad or boring or gave me nothing to work with for a review; y’know, the usual reasons. This is a very good movie, so far from boring that it’s unbelievable, and I have a shit-ton of thoughts on it.

No, the reason I don’t want to write about it is because this is one of those special films that is at its most effective when you go into it knowing as little about it as possible. I went into this with only the initial trailer to go on, which thankfully was more interested in drumming up interest than actually showing the content directly, and what I ultimately got was one of the most buckwild experiences I’ve had with a film all year. This is Malignant levels of nutty filmmaking, and might even go further than that film did in sheer unpredictability.

I’m in a bit of a bind here. Like with any other new film I enjoyed watching, I want to get into all the things about this that I loved seeing… but doing so runs the risk of spoiling the potential experience for the very people I desperately want to convince to check this thing out. I’ve likely gotten into this before, but the literal last thing I want to do with any of these write-ups is to ruin a film for someone else, no matter how much we may disagree on the film itself. I’m not here to dictate or denigrate anyone else’s tastes; I just want to share my thoughts and maybe get someone else to see something they mightn’t have otherwise.

With that in mind, I can either plaster a big fat spoiler warning at the top of this review and carry on as normal… or I can try and put some of that Moonage Daydream inspiration to work and see if I can successfully get into what makes this film so goddamn amazing, but without directly spelling it out. I mean, one of my recent write-up subjects for FilmInk (the fantastic One Piece Film: Red) came to me with a literal list of things not to spoil in the review proper, and I reckon that review turned out good with those stipulations, so let’s see how we go. Wish me luck.

The Northman (2022) - Movie Review

After two certified winners with The VVitch and The Lighthouse, writer/director Robert Eggers has cracked his artistic ambitions wide open with his latest. Shedding his New England aesthetics like a snakeskin, he now sets the stage for an epic historical revenge myth, co-written by himself and Icelandic scribe Sjón and itself based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth. Yes, for the classics nerds amongst my readership, this is the same legend that inspired fellow classics nerd William Shakespeare in the creation of Hamlet. This film is the culmination of just about every storytelling idea and mood Eggers has been chipping away at over his career thus far, and what results from that is a production that redefines the word ‘visceral’.

What Men Want (2019) - Movie Review

Situations like this are why I’m not as staunchly anti-remake as most others. What Women Want is an awful movie, the kind of attempt at gender analysis that does everyone a disservice and finds that lovely middle ground between hating men and hating women in equal measure. It’s really sad to think that the idea of casting Mel Gibson as the lead in a romantic comedy isn’t even in the top 10 worst decisions that went into making that pile of utter garbage.

But at the same time, the concept at its heart about being able to read the minds of the opposite sex is something that has potential for something that isn’t painful to sit through. So naturally, when this remake was announced, I admit to being a bit sceptical at first… but then I watched the original in full and realised that there’s nowhere to go but up with this story. And thankfully, this film actually does that.

On The Basis Of Sex (2019) - Movie Review

For both understandable and woefully misguided reasons, feminism as it exists in the modern conversation is not what it used to be. A branch of civil rights activism that remains at the core of some of the most vital changes in human society, it has gone the way of an unfortunate bulk of activist stances and become a hotbed for all things on the fringe of the discourse. I myself have railed against the current face of feminism, and while I know the precarious position that puts me in, I also recognise what feminism represented at its peak.

It wasn’t a way of thinking that insisted on the same pedestaling as the opposition, acting as a mirror that only reflects prejudice rather than a hammer that reshapes it, but a movement that wanted equality among the sexes. The stereotypes that bind one half of the binary do the same for the other, and until both sides are placed on even ground, both end up suffering. It is because of this, among other things, that this film strikes a serious chord with yours truly.

Widows (2018) - Movie Review

The phrase "honour amongst thieves" pretty much serves as the underlying mood behind most if not all heist films. Most of their main drive comes portraying thievery as a competitive sport. And with the placement in the realms of sport comes the preceding fixation on technical skills and strategy, with all the intensive choreography and smooth-as-butter timing that goes with it. There’s also an underlying aspect of revenge, or at the very least retribution, attached to a lot of them, with the heist being the means to get even with someone who doesn’t play fair.