Hubie Halloween (2020) - Movie Review

After Adam Sandler failed to get a nomination for his work on Uncut Gems (and it really speaks to the quality of that performance that it even qualified as a ‘snub’), he went viral with threats that he would go on to make, intentionally, the worst movie ever out of spite. With how much of a critical punching bag he remains to be, it’s quite easy to make jokes about how this is likely the first time he’s given warning for his latest film being terrible… but no. No, I’m not going that route. Instead, I’m going to point out how that kind of self-aware, not-really-taking-itself-seriously humour is actually a pretty good lead-up to yet another solid starring role.

Table 19 (2017) - Movie Review

Even with the amount of hatred I’ve been able to generate over the pretty awful films I’ve covered over the last few years, I have rarely if ever been ungrateful for having sat through them myself. I say that because even the worst films still have enough good grace to give me things to dissect and write about. In fact, it is usually the bad ones that give me the most material, as blind fury is often an easier feeling to express than anything pleasant. This entire blog exists because of my own love for film and writing about film, so I'd be a bit stupid if I was entirely ungrateful for the films that give me the best material to work with. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that some of my best work has come out of the more egregiously awful films that I've sat through.

 

However, every so often, there comes a film that is so bland, so dull, so not engaging that I am left struggling to properly articulate how I truly feel about the work. We’ve unfortunately got another one of those today so, as you read this, understand that every single word on this page was wrung out of my brain with quite a bit of effort. tl;dr Sorry if this review turns out too boring to slog through.

Love The Coopers (2015) - Movie Review

Even with how Christmas is extolled as the season of cheer and goodwill, it’s also a notorious time of year for families to just explode at each other. To be fair, it does make sense for this to happen: Gather a bunch of people you only see once a year in a single house, and all those grievances they haven’t had a chance to air out before in person suddenly bubble up to the surface. Considering this, it is understandable for there to be a sizeable market for Christmas films involving dysfunctional family shenanigans. Probably the best example of this would be National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, a film that showed our capacity for both love and hate while still keeping that Yuletide charm. The closest I’ve gotten to reviewing this brand of film before would be with last year’s This Is Where I Leave You, which followed the family dynamics of the sub-genre only set them during a different religious event. Given how grouchy everyone can get when that time of year gets closer, this is just the kind of film to help bring families together… usually.

Nebraska (2014) - Movie Review

Escapism is a peculiar thing: By its very nature, it is meant to help us escape from the real world through fiction, yet it seems to affect us more the closer to reality it is. Maybe it’s because it helps give a better view of our own lives through an outside observer, or maybe it’s just because we like the idea of familiarity in an unfamiliar place, but for whatever the reason this seems to be the case. Personally, I use escapist fiction as therapy: A means for me to cathartically let free whatever pent-up feelings and emotions I have, be they anger, melancholy, giddiness, thirst for knowledge or what have you, in a way that doesn’t interfere with those around me. With this idea of therapeutic escapism in mind, let’s look at today’s film.