Spencer (2022) - Movie Review

Well, this should be interesting. Another biopic drama from the director of Jackie, a star turn from Kristen Stewart that has gotten her legit Oscar buzz for the first time in her career (I’d wouldn’t normally bother mentioning such things, but with how long she spent as a critical punching bag, it’s more than deserved by this point), and it’s written by the mental giant behind one of last year’s worst films in Locked Down, and 2019’s Best Worst Film in Serenity.

Oh.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad. (RIP Meat Loaf)

Locked Down (2021) - Movie Review

I was raring up to like this movie quite a bit just from genre association alone. A rom-com/heist flick made and set during COVID lockdown, after films like Host proved that there’s pathos to be wrung out of the timeliness, with a plentiful cast of actors I’ve grown to love over the last few years; what could possibly go wrong? Well, in short, just about everything, but I’m not exactly in the mood to show this thing the mercy of brevity.

Serenity (2019) - Movie Review

I’m not going to beat around the bush on this one: This film is fucking insane. I see no point in writing a poncy introduction to lead into that simple fact because this is an oh-so-very special kind of insane. The kind that only comes into being through just the right mixture of all the wrong elements in all the right places. The kind that makes the audience just how much of the film is meant to be taken seriously, if it’s meant to be taken seriously at all. The kind that turns a merely bad film into the stuff of bad film legend. It is the frontrunner for Best Worst Movie Of 2019, and if something else comes out that can challenge it, I fear I might end up in a padded cell just for looking at it.

Allied (2016) - Movie Review

While the popular conception of the period drama is usually confined to stuffy and immaculately dressed stories set in Victorian England, it’s actually far wider in scope than that. It basically applies to any film that is set in a specific time period that isn’t the present: Ouija: Origin Of Evil technically counts as a period piece. In staging the days of old, filmmakers need a certain level of fidelity to the era in which the story is set in order to do what all good films should be capable of and making us believe that what we are seeing isn’t something that was shot a year or two ago.

Sure, some films use that disconnect between the setting and time of release to rather compelling effect like the intentional anachronisms in A Knight’s Tale. But that’s an exception to what would ordinarily be considered the rule: If it’s set in a particular time period and the film relies on the specificity of that period, then adhering to it is probably a good idea. So, what happens when one of the most forward-thinking filmmakers still working today sets out to make a period romance?

Burnt (2015) - Movie Review

Of the many, many things that I don’t possess nearly as much expertise in, or feign to have expertise in at least, as film, food would have to be one of the bigger ones. I have little to no interest in cooking shows that don’t includes the words “Iron Chef”, my taste buds have dulled from so much fast food that I wouldn’t be able to taste each of the secret herbs & spices even if I was actively told what they were, and I cannot for the life of me take the more cut-throat kitchen dramas out there seriously. Maybe if I spent long enough in the more hoity-toity restaurants of the world, then maybe seeing chefs completely lose their shit would make a bit more sense to me. Or maybe if I had watched a lot less of Gordon Ramsey’s signature freak-outs when I was growing up; that might've helped too. So, with all this in mind, I’m probably not the ideal audience for this kind of film. But it’s not as if this is the first, nor will it be the last time that this will happen, so it’ll be regular snarky business as usual.