Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) - Movie Review

In response to the myriad of fan theories about the secret meanings behind the Beatles’ music (backmasking, “Paul is dead”, that kind of shit), John Lennon wrote the song Glass Onion, which would be included on the group’s self-titled White Album. It’s basically a troll set to music, referencing other Beatles songs to give fuel to the people who think that they intentionally put in all these cryptic messages in their art... when in reality, it meant pretty much fuck-all. Many layers, but all of them see-through right down to the core: a glass onion.

Harriet (2020) - Movie Review

Religion is a neutral ideal. Over the lifetime of this blog, I have been finding myself leaning further and further away from the staunchly atheist views I held as a teenager; hell, for all intents and purpose, film is my religion, and my position as an ordained Dudeist, for me at least, is an extension of that mindset. Not that I’ve just stopped noticing religion wielded as a cudgel to serve its own ends; I’ve reviewed quite a few examples of that in action, and I wasn’t up for that shit then or now. What I mean with that first sentence is that I don’t inherently see people with religious ideals as a bad thing; it all comes down to the results aimed for and gained through those ideals, same as any other. And honestly, it’s through that lens that this film in particular interests me.

Antebellum (2020) - Movie Review

Bear with me on this one, because I’m feeling a bit apprehensive about writing a review for this particular movie. As I have been making a regular habit of mentioning around here, I am a suburban white dude from Sydney, Australia, and while I don’t shy away from discussing rather grisly topics over the course of these reviews… gotta admit, being able to do justice to the American original sin that is slavery has always felt like one of my blind spots. I mean, I’m as far away from knowing the first-hand black experience as it’s possible to get, and I have certain fears that my takes about a given film to do with the topic might end up trivialising this aspect of that experience. And that's something I really want to be careful about when discussing Antebellum, which mishandles the topic worse than any other film I've covered on here.

Welcome To Marwen (2019) - Movie Review

This film was supposed to have gotten a theatrical release this year. I’ll be damned if I saw any evidence of that, though. We went from fairly frequent trailers for this to just… nothing. Until it popped up for home video release, this might as well have not even come out over here. While the current Hollywood structure is turning this scenario into what looks to be a regularity (what with Disney shelving so many of Fox’s releases after buying them out), this still doesn’t make sense.

This is Robert Zemeckis, one of the vanguards of American cinema and a filmmaker who has always been on the cutting edge of what film technology is capable of; how did his latest feature end up being left at the wayside? Well, while I’m certainly not going to make the argument that this film never should’ve have seen release, I will admit that I at least understand why this film would have been… deprioritised, as it were.

UglyDolls (2019) - Movie Review

You know it’s a bad start when “This was originally going to be a Robert Rodriguez kids film” seems like a best-case scenario. The fabled one-man film crew may not have the best track record when it comes to family films, but when put next to director Kelly Asbury, whose work varies from ‘decent compared to what came before’ with Smurfs: The Lost Village, and outright atrocious with Gnomeo & Juliet, at least he had the first two Spy Kids films under his belt. But then again, I doubt that anyone would be able to salvage this thing, because the list of problems here is hefty.

Hidden Figures (2017) - Movie Review

One of the relatively smaller drawbacks of the Oscar season is that you end up finding certain releases that make a little too much sense in terms of why they were made. Between how space exploration has been framed as an example of where and why humanity should unite under a common cause, and anything involving racial prejudices makes for easy Oscar bait, it’s no wonder that this film exists. Of course, it’s not like I’m not complaining about this; we’re just reaching the end of February and I’ve already seen a handful of films that have pretty much no reason to exist. Films with rather obvious intents aren’t inherently bad things, so long as the people behind them can make those intents ring true in the work proper. So, with all that said, which side of the Oscar bait line does this land in?

Moonlight (2017) - Movie Review

I digest films the same way I digest food: Quickly and without it even touching the sides. I make it a point not to toot my own horn where I can, but when I comes to films, I often pride myself in how quickly I’m able to process films as I watch them, a skill that has grown significantly over the last 7 years. With all that said, in a way, I hate films like this; there’s a reason why I mainly stick to mainstream films on this blog with the odd indie/foreign release here and there. Films of this nature go against my sort-of instant gratification approach to media, and for the first time this year, it’s a film where I am still trying to sort out my opinions on the thing as I’m writing it. So, join me on what I’m sure is going to be a long, winding and occasionally navel-gazing attempt to break this film down in my usual style.