Four Kids And It (2020) - Movie Review

The titular It of this film isn’t the legendary cosmic monster who dresses like a clown. No, this one might be even weirder than that. This It, voiced by Michael Caine, is a sand-dwelling creature that looks like Yoda fucked Chewbacca’s dad and somehow gave birth afterwards. He grants wishes by inflating himself with magical stomach gases, but can only grant one wish a day, except when he can do more because the plot needs him to.

Already, this sounds like the kind of crazy you can only find in media made for children, also known as one of the main reasons why I still give kids’ films an honest chance well into my 20s. Unfortunately, the lunacy isn’t confined to just the story specifics; this entire production is off its face.

Astro Kid (2020) - Movie Review

 

From the writers and producers of the bizarre talking animal superhero movie The Jungle Bunch, this film is the latest from French studio TAT Productions, which is dangerously close to outright saying “This was made by garbage”. Originally named Terra Willy (renamed because I’m assuming they didn’t want parents to think this featured grisly emasculation), it’s about a boy who gets stranded on an alien planet and, with the help of his robot Buck, tries to survive long enough to get rescued.

Death Do Us Part (Zoo) (2020) - Movie Review

John (Ed Speleers) and Karen (Zoë Tapper) are stuck in a loveless marriage. After they discovered that Karen was infertile, and their last child stillborn, they haven’t stayed together out of love but complacency. Mindlessly shuffling their way through life, propped up on copious amounts of drugs and alcohol to be even remotely interested in this existence, all while they both stay on the cusp of a divorce but ultimately unable to take that plunge. You can see why, once the zombie apocalypse breaks out across the world, their lives haven’t really changed that much.

The Shed (2020) - Movie Review

We’re dealing with some low-stakes, low-budget horror fare with this one, but that shouldn’t automatically be seen as a bad thing. Shoestring gore can be a beautiful thing when done right, and in all honesty, if you want an example of why budget isn’t everything, horror is a pretty good place to start. And with this in particular, we have a high school horror drama where a bullied emo kid discovers that a ravenous vampire has taken up residence in his backyard shed. Let’s see how far we can get into this review without bringing up a certain franchise all about high school and vampires.

The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020) - Movie Review

Man, it’s good to see Geraldine Viswanathan still at work in the U.S. I admittedly haven’t kept super-attentive with her recent filmography as I probably should be (gotta support Aussie talent, especially with the note she broke out on), but once this movie hit my radar, I found myself in a rare position of actually looking forward to a rom-com. With how often I poke fun at the genre and its many, many hallmarks, I’m guessing that my heart filed a restraining order against the rest of my body years ago.

The Secret Garden (2020) - Movie Review

Films like this are frustrating to write about, possibly even more so than films that are outright boring. Although weirdly enough, they’re both frustrating for the same reason: The challenge involved with writing about them in a way that’s worth reading. With boring films, it’s managing to get across how little of an impact it made on me as a viewer without resorting to just repeating the word ‘boring’ 500 times. With films like The Secret Garden, it’s figuring out how to explain that all the pieces for a satisfying movie are here, and it seems to have done what it set out to do… and yet somehow didn’t. Read on, and I’ll do my best to explain.

The Assistant (2020) - Movie Review

Films like this have the capacity to sneak up on you if you’re not careful. Ostensibly, nothing really happens in it, at least by the metric most films are measured by. It covers a single work shift of Jane, an assistant at a film studio. Over the course of its 80-minute-and-change running time, we see her do menial office work like getting coffees and fixing the printer, and there’s no substantial character change that takes place; this isn’t the kind of movie that ends with a big rousing moment for our heroine when she decides to pursue a better career or hooks up with her dream guy or anything like that. But within that framing, and anchored by Julia Garner’s performance as Jane, this film is fucking terrifying.