The Out-Laws (2023) - Movie Review

Dammit, I knew that getting lucky with Murder Mystery 2 being kind of decent wasn’t going to last. Although honestly, I have some morbid appreciation for this because I didn’t even think they made American comedies like this any more. Both here and for my FilmInk work, I find myself regularly bringing up how modern US comedies seem to spend a lot of time just ad-libbing and riffing instead of actually moving the plot forward or doing anything interesting with the characters. Nowadays, most filmmakers have gotten it into their heads that comedy can help advance a story instead of just grinding it to a halt for little to no reason, but there are some brave little soldiers who are doing their best to keep that style alive.

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.

Vacation Friends (2021) - Movie Review

My come-up as a film critic is tied to a very specific subset of the old YouTube landscape: The caustic critic. The hyperbolic, foul-mouthed, ‘woe is me for choosing to watch this shit’ kind of entertainer, where just about every review choice was a film the reviewer didn’t like for bonus reaction fodder. Sure, some of these folx are still around, but it’s not the default like it used to be. Honestly though, even with how much progress I’ve made from when I was just a wannabe copycat trying to make it on YouTube… some of that is still in my DNA as a critic.

Part of that hyperbolic vitriol (born out of a shared ancestry from Mystery Science Theatre 3000) might lead someone to react to a comedy film they don’t like as if they’re being tortured against their will; like something that could traumatise them for life. Except I've gone through that shit without any hyperbole whatsoever. Readers who have been following me since way back when might remember when I looked at the 2015 reboot of Vacation, which to this day remains the single most painful experience I’ve ever had engaging with any form of media, let alone film. So when news hit that the directors/writers of that same film were co-writing another film with ‘Vacation’ in the title… well, cue the horrified flashbacks with The Sound Of Silence playing in the background. And while I can safely say that this isn’t nearly as egregious as Vacation 2015, that’s not to say that this is free of problems. Far, far, far from it.

Free Guy (2021) - Movie Review

After what happened with Red Notice, I feel the need to reiterate the point that I have no problem with Ryan Reynolds and what has become his schtick since reconnecting with his inner Deadpool. It’s just a matter of finding the right story to put him in, rather than just expecting his usual mannerisms to make things interesting. And that is most certainly the case with this film, as it’s basically a massive pisstake and deconstruction of modern video games, with Reynolds as an NPC that decides that he wants something more out of his digital life.