Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) - Movie Review

With how badly his last attempt at darker storytelling turned out with the woefully mishandled cop thriller The Little Things, the prospect of writer/director John Lee Hancock taking on a Stephen King adaptation is a worrying one. Films based on King’s books can be very hit or miss, and this year has already featured a particularly big miss with the Firestarter remake. But hey, it’s starring Jaeden Martell, who was a key part of one of my favourite King films with It: Chapter One; maybe this will actually work out. Well… it kinda does?

Countdown (2019) - Movie Review

Well, someone must’ve overheard me when I was complaining about how outdated Sextuplets was, because this horror film falls into the same category. However, this isn’t a matter of questioning whether the idea behind it was ever good, but rather questioning whether the idea is good now. Speaking personally (as if I ever do any different around here, but regardless), I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use the phrase "there’s an app for that" unironically or outside of a game of Cards Against Humanity. Or, at the very least, it's been many years since that last happened. I can’t find any hard data to prove that this is a script that has been kicking around for a long time, but looking at the end result, I would not be surprised because this is some serious reheated leftovers.

Blockers (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: On the eve of their senior prom, Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon) make a pact that they will each lose their virginity on the night of the prom. However, Julie's mother Lisa (Leslie Mann), Kayla's father Mitchell (John Cena) and Sam's father Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) discover the pact and set out to stop their daughters from making a terrible mistake. But as the night carries on, they start to question who is truly making the terrible mistake in this situation: Their children or themselves.

Me And Earl And The Dying Girl (2015) - Movie Review

You know the phrase “You can’t judge a book by its cover”? Well, in keeping with our innate fear of that which is strange and/or different, this is something we still do, myself included. Namely, every so often, a film title will pop out and make me go “Um… no.” purely on how the name sounds. This isn’t even a matter of a name sounding weird; after all, I looked at The Human Centipede initially because it sounded so bloody weird. Rather, because some films invoke images of lame that will no doubt irrevocably paint my opinions. Today’s film, based on the title alone, had better be a cinematic remake of Earl Sweatshirt’s epaR or I will be colossally disappointed. Then again, this has gotten some rather lofty accolades since its initial release, and I am in the middle of my year-end catch-up of as many other releases from the past year as possible, so it was inevitable that I would look at this film at some point anyway regardless of my misconceptions.

Paper Towns (2015) - Movie Review

The DUFF (2015) - Movie Review

I’m going to guess that this is because I didn’t go to high school in the U.S., but labels were never really a thing when I was growing up. Sure, there were certain cliques but we only really had three of them in my year: The geeks, the smokers and everyone else. Yeah, I was a definite geek and I had great friends within that circle but I was never completely driven away from everyone else though; I would frequently talk with the others and while I made a few frenemies along the way, I was relatively comfortable with everyone in the year. If I did have a label that I wasn’t aware of, aside from the nickname “Vol-Cain-O” that I earned due to my short temper, it would have probably been "entertainer", "show-off", or maybe "sideshow attraction"; I loved being the center of attention and trying to make people around me laugh. It didn’t always work out that way, and I would occasionally get laughed at but in retrospect I’m at least glad I got some kind of reaction. With this in mind, movies about high school life never really clicked with me aside from the rare outlier like Ben X. Well, we’re already on the subject of hipster-ish choices for movies, so let’s get started.