Insidious: The Red Door (2023) - Movie Review

Patrick Wilson is one of my favourite actors working today. Whether he’s fighting underwater King Arthur, stuck with late-career Katherine Heigl, or being the face of James Wan’s post-Saw horror catalogue, the man just seems to shine no matter where he goes. As such, the prospect of him making the transition to director has certainly got me intrigued, especially within a franchise that had already launched a major directing talent in Leigh Whannell. But as I look at his debut here, I can’t help but think he would benefit from having a completely different starting point, because this doesn’t really do him any favours.

Seriously Red (2022) - Movie Review

There is no such thing as being completely free from outside influence. For as much as people, especially nowadays, just love to extol how much of a unique spirit they are, and how they don’t follow any such dogma that the ‘sheeple’ do, and other such pseudointellectual wankery, we are all in one form or another shaped by exterior influences, the people around us in particular. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Hell, I've made it no secret that I’ve basically modelled myself after The Dude from The Big Lebowski, because that’s the kind of chill I want to exhibit in everyday life, and I could use the rest of this write-up to just list all the different rappers I’ve taken some kind of personal inspiration from over the years.

However, there’s a difference between taking inspiration from others to become your true self, and thinking that you need to be them to become your true self. This is something at the heart of this particular Aussie flick, all about the world of celebrity impersonators and following a dissatisfied real estate agent (Krew Boylan’s Raylene) as she decides to make her own mark as a Dolly Parton impersonator.

Peter Rabbit 2 (2021) - Movie Review

I didn’t really know what to expect out of this movie. Between the initial trailer being as middling as it was, it being one of the first films to be made to do the COVID shuffle, and the original being so wildly inconsistent, I went into this follow-up without much expectation, other than hoping it wouldn’t derail itself with food allergies again. And to its credit, it left the realistic Epi-pen shit alone this time around… but it still managed to derail itself. In monumental, rubber-necking, legitimately infuriating fashion. Slow claps all round.

Irresistible (2020) - Movie Review

2020 has not been a good year for political satire, at least when it comes to feature-length efforts. Admittedly, this genre has a higher degree of difficulty than most, and COVID fucking up the release schedule is likely delaying most of the good stuff while the disposable shit rises to the top, but there’s also the collective mood to account for as well. It has been a highly turbulent four years, and alongside the rising hostility across party lines, there has also been a rise in the need to vent about such things. A lot of the political cinema this year has had a heavy air of needing to get something off the filmmakers’ chests, but without the clarity needed to make it resonate when describing it to someone else. It is in this mode that Jon Stewart returns to the director’s chair with… well, I hesitate to call it the worst so far, but it is definitely the tamest, which in its own way is even worse.

Like A Boss (2020) - Movie Review

I’m starting to feel bad for Tiffany Haddish. Oh sure, 2019 proved to be a quite fruitful year for her on the voice-acting front, between The Lego Movie 2 and The Angry Birds Movie 2, but on the live-action front, the side of her that got pushed into the mainstream with Girls Trip? Not so much. Night School was ghastly, her teaming-up with Tyler freaking Perry on Nobody’s Fool couldn’t have possibly sounded like a good idea, and while she managed to pull through okay with The Kitchen, that was largely in spite of everything around her, not because of it. Her current presence as a comedic actress seems to be codified by her being a potential saving throw for a film that needs outside assistance, rather than actually giving her material to work with. And with her latest, it seems like we’ve reached the bottom of the barrel.

I Am Mother (2019) - Movie Review

A woman is born in an underground bunker. It is the only life she’s ever known and her caretaker, a robot named Mother, is the only other being she’s ever encountered. Enter another woman from the outside world, one ravaged by an extinction-level event, who finds her way to the bunker. As the two humans interact, what is shared between them makes the first woman question what Mother has been telling her. In light of this dilemma, what does the first woman do?