Bones And All (2022) - Movie Review

Luca Guadagnino has a habit of changing my entire fucking worldview with each new film of his I watch and review. Call Me By Your Name, in the years since I first looked at, has become a rather important moment in my personal history as a Queer person, and I genuinely think I wouldn’t be in my current relationship had I not watched it (just one of many experiences that make me love this job). Suspiria, along with being that rare remake that (in my opinion) eclipses the original, is a fascinating example of filmmaking as actual witchcraft, a perspective that I’ve since added to my frequently flowery ideas about the potential of cinema. Whatever he has lined up next has big shoes to fill, clearly, but he has once again delivered an absolute winner.

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions (2021) - Movie Review

I should mention right at the start that I’ll be looking at the Extended Cut, which has a completely different opening and ending to the theatrical release. Since they were both the same price for rental at the time of viewing, and this year has already proven me wrong on at least one other director’s cut, I figured I might as well check out the Extended Cut. Put simply, the key difference here has to do with the characters behind the scenes for the titular Escape Rooms, namely James Frain as the puzzlemaker for the shadowy Minos corporation, and Isabelle Fuhrman of Orphan fame as his captive daughter. I’m admittedly going off of plot synopses to parse out the differences between versions, but given the information available, I honestly think the changes made were for the better. Partly because they maintain a personalised touch to all of the escape rooms shown in the main film, and partly because any excuse to have Fuhrman on-screen is worth pursuing.

Now, as much as I could extoll how compelling the story of Fuhrman’s Claire is, her connection to the escape rooms, and how she adds to the overall theme of banding together to survive (as opposed to the ‘sole survivor’ theme of the first film), that would all fly in the face of how this is still a very niche thriller for a very specific kind of audience. And those who fall outside of that definition won’t care a whiff for the extra fluff if they aren’t already on-board for the patently ludicrous puzzle design and breakneck pace, the bulk of which remains identical regardless of the version seen.

Waves (2020) - Movie Review

Trey Edward Shults doesn’t do things small. His last film, the increasingly-relevant It Comes At Night, is one of the finest depictions of social isolation and paranoia of the entire 2010s, and that effect came about through a combination of lung-invading atmosphere and an uncanny eye for acting talent. And his latest is no different, pushing even further in visual ambition and emotional impact to make for one of the hardest hits of the year.

Escape Room (2019) - Movie Review

Well, it’s February and you know what that means: Horror movies. No, I didn’t just suffer a stroke; it’s just that the start of the year is usually when studios dump off the movies that weren’t good enough for release the previous year, and horror movies are nothing if not plentiful regardless of the time of year. Knowing that off-season horror fare usually isn’t worth writing home about (we’ll ignore the irony that I do that for literally every new film I see), I can’t say I was expecting much from this. Hell, between director Adam Robitel, whose last film was pretty plain in the visual department, and writers whose best-known work between them is an early-2010’s Nicolas Cage flick, there’s not much reason to expect more than mediocrity here. Well, thankfully, this film does have quite a bit going for it. And it even manages to achieve some of it.