A Fall From Grace (2020) - Movie Review

Well… since I’m still in isolation, looks like I’ll have to subside my hunger with VOD and streaming. Not entirely sure why I decided to go with this release in particular, but now that I have a better idea in my head about who Tyler Perry even is as a creative, I feel like I can approach this with more certainty than I did A Madea Family Funeral. See, when Tyler actively sets out to make a comedy, his weak-ass sense of character and comedic timing makes the more overwrought, melodramatic aspects shine through more so than the supposed selling point. But when he tries to make a thriller, you start to wonder why he ever had trouble making people laugh.

Use Me (2020) - Movie Review

We’re stepping into the Aussie indie files once again, and you know that things are gonna get surreal when I see the guy who gave me the screener for this film within the first five minutes. A mockumentary-style thriller set within the underbelly of online humiliation fetishism, the film follows director Julian Shaw in his efforts to make a documentary about Ceara Lynch, a professional ‘humiliatrix’, and the finer details of her line of work. However, as he finds himself deeper and deeper in her world, what begins as an expose on fetishes turns into a much darker voyage into the unknown.

Jay And Silent Bob Reboot (2020) - Movie Review

“Just for the fans” can be a real kiss of death when talking about any form of media, but movies especially. In the mainstream, finding-those-who-share-your-fandom-has-never-been-easier landscape, there is a lot to unpack around the idea of making products for an already-established fanbase. It can range anywhere from ‘let’s keep our customers happy’ to ‘what they say they want and what they actually want aren’t the same thing’, and pretty much every point on that scale has its ugly side.

But it needn’t always be a bad thing. Sometimes, it can be as simple as showing gratitude for audiences that have kept up with your work for years, even decades, and wanting to let them know that you see them. Avengers: Endgame from last year is an excellent example of that in the more positive sense, and while not really on the same wavelength, I’d argue that this film would be another.

Hot Mess (2020) - Movie Review

With how much I never managed to get into shows like Girls (or really anything to do with Lena Dunham), and how this ‘indie comedy-drama-romance-thing about twenty-somethings trying to find their place in the world’ mumblecore premise is pretty old hat by this point, I wasn’t really expecting much out of this one at first. And after a weird case of mistaken identity, a fit of inactivity, an expired screener link, and wanting to override missing a FilmInk screening by doing all the work I could in one day (this and the previous two reviews were written concurrently), I found myself sitting down to watch this. And hot damn, am I glad I did.

Citizen K (2020) - Movie Review

Alex Gibney is one of the strongest documentarians working today. He’s basically the embodiment of the more investigative, journalistic side of the art form, diving head-long into incredibly intricate and invariably depressing subjects, managing to unearth gold more times than not. We last caught up with him with the 2015 Scientology documentary Going Clear, a film so effective that I still can’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without feeling slightly ill. And with his latest, he’s getting into a topic that might be even dicier than going through David Miscavige’s dirty laundry: Putin’s Russia.

The Big Trip (2020) - Movie Review

Yep. It’s another one. There must be some inherently masochistic part of my brain that is still willing to sit through these things, as there’s no rational reason why I should be here today, presenting a write-up for another bloody talking animal movie. I used to justify this as part of my larger want to expose myself to every new film I can, so that I could potentially find some gems that I wouldn’t have watched otherwise… but it is growing increasingly rarer for that to yield positive results with this subset of movies. So, for my readers who haven’t grown bored of me trotting out this cloud-of-powder-in-the-shape-of-a-dead-horse just yet, time to take another turn on the world’s ugliest carousel.

Military Wives (2020) - Movie Review

A bunch of middle-aged people get together to form a hobby group that gains enough notoriety to be featured in a TV show and/or documentary, which in turn gets turned into a dramatised film. This is one of those situations where I find myself reflecting on just how many times I’ve covered stories like this on here and how, with barely any exceptions, they usually just fall into the realms of ‘meh’ for me. Best case scenario, I end up being pleasantly surprised, albeit still not all that jazzed about it, and worse case, it turns into another Poms where I end up questioning what the filmmakers even think of their own audience. And with this one… honestly, I didn’t end up feeling either of those.