Silent Night (2023) - Movie Review

John Woo, the action filmmaker that just about every other action film or even parodies of every other action film over the past forty years owes some artistic debt to, has returned to Hollywood. While his work State-side never really managed to reach the artistic heights of his heyday, as memetic as films like Face/Off and even Mission: Impossible 2 have become, I’m still calling this a moment of potential celebration because… well, it makes the most sense why 2023 would be the year that he would come back. In the same time frame that John Wick, a franchise that simply wouldn’t exist without John Woo’s iconic approach to action thrills, reached its creative apex with Chapter 4, getting more of that grandeur direct from the source is quite the offer.

Entergalactic (2022) - Movie Review

Put this one next to Bo Burnham’s Inside for borderline “does this count as a movie?” picks for reviews. Whatever; it’s a feature-length production on Netflix, and I counted Crazed Gender Twisters From Planet X, which was as much of a series as this is, so yeah, this is a movie review. It’s one I got curious about when it first popped up as, while I’ve never rated Kid Cudi that highly as a rapper (Kids See Ghosts slaps tho), he’s been showing up in movies that I’ve really liked in recent years like Bill & Ted Face The Music, X from earlier this year, and even making for the best (as in the only good) part of Don’t Look Up alongside Ariana Grande. And I’m on a bit of a musical kick at the moment, so let’s see what he’s cooked up here.

X (2022) - Movie Review

Sex and horror are strange bedfellows. As types of entertainment that exist outside of the mainstream’s safe zone, they’re inexorably linked, but they also have an uncomfortable relationship with each other. One of the most referred-to stereotypes in horror movies, and particularly slasher movies, is that if a character has sex on-screen, or has ever had sex in their fictional life, they are going to die. Films like the Friday The 13^th series, where it seemed like Jason Voorhees had a sixth sense for people fucking nearby (an idea that became literal with Jason X).

Now, while there’s a general understanding that, yeah, that’s the actions and motives of the villain, so it’s not implicitly meant to be a viewpoint that should be adhered to… well, when it gets to the point where that stereotype of ‘sluts die’ is something that gets brought up consistently not just with discussions of older films, but is brought back in a lot of modern meta-horror features as well, you have to start wondering if that repetition is to acknowledge how regressive that worldview is, or to reinforce it. See also: The black man being the first to die in a horror film.

Don't Look Up (2021) - Movie Review

I wanted to like this. I want to like just about everything I watch, but especially this. After Adam McKay found an interesting new direction with ensemble-cast satire based on real-world events with The Big Short, and then slipped in my favour after Vice, I wanted to see him come back on top. This kind of production, a close-to-the-bone allegory for the modern discourse involving man-made climate change and what it’s doing to the planet, is something that could use a bit of levity to clear things up. A splash of comedy to help drive home how important the issue is, and how important it is for us to take it seriously. But that’s not what we get. In fact, for as iffy as I was about Vice, I am all kinds of done with this fucking thing.

Need For Speed (2014) - Movie Review

Even with Hollywood as it is today, reaching for anything and everything to turn into the next big blockbuster, there is still a major stigma attached to one source material for adaptations: Video games. Maybe it’s because of the inherent nature of games to be less about the plot and more about the interactive experience, maybe it’s because the majority of video game movies are absolute garbage (with the exceptions of the original Mortal Kombat, Prince Of Persia and maybe Hitman), or maybe it’s both. Regardless, there is a heavy expectation whenever one is released that it will be bad, made even heavier if the source material is less focused on plot than its neighbours. Today’s film is just such an occasion.