T.J.'s Top 10 Films of 2024

 

10. Alien: Romulus- a thrilling if unoriginal return to form for the Alien universe that proves that Xenomorphs can still be scary. 

 9. My Old Ass (Prime Video)- A pleasant coming-of-age tale with a charming hook, universal message, and bittersweet ending. 

8. Music By John Williams (Disney+)- John Williams finally gets the spotlight in a documentary that's more of a celebration than a revealing deep dive but is nonetheless highly satisfying. 

7. Nosferatu- Hauntingly beautiful and well-crafted, if a bit over-long and self-indulgent near the end (full review coming soon). 

6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga- Although much slower paced than Mad Max: Fury Road (which happens to be one of my favorite movies of all time), this film is just as unhinged and almost as fun thanks to some rad performances from Anya-Taylor Joy and Chris Hemsworth and some cool action scenes. 

5. The Fall Guy- A love letter to the film industry that is fun from start to finish, everything in this movie works well, from the central mystery to the love story to the comedy. 

4. Deadpool & Wolverine- It mostly runs on fan service, but it's excellent fan service. Fulfills all of the promises of its premise and offers a great, irreverently fun time. There's no way they didn't have fun making this and it shows. 

3. Wicked- Colorful, full of life, and everything a film based on a musical needs to be. I loved it. 

2. Will & Harper (Netflix)- Beautiful and life-affirming, this feels like the most important film I watched this year. It is one that isn't afraid to get uncomfortable and tackle hard subjects, and it's funny and heartwarming to boot. 

1. Dune: Part Two- Big, big, big, and somehow even better than Part One, it is the perfect reminder that even though we live in a world of streaming the big screen will always have its place.  

Update (1/12/25): I watched a Norwegian film last night called Number 24 that was released on Netflix in the US on 1/1/25 but originally came out in Norway in 2024. It was really good (see upcoming review) and would be #4 if I cared enough to update this list, but I don't. Sorry, Alien: Romulus, but you're cut. 

Nutcrackers (12.20.24)

 

I’ve never been interested in participating in the never-ending “is Die Hard a Christmas movie” discourse. It’s annoying, and when it comes down to it, who really cares? But for the purpose of this introduction I will put in my two cents by saying that I believe there are Christmas movies and there are Christmas-adjacent movies. The latter may take place during Christmas, they may have Christmas songs and yuletide imagery, but the spirit of the holidays isn’t present so they aren’t true Christmas movies. This might be because the main character is shooting up terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza, or it might be a result of Christmas being mostly incidental to the plot and themes. Nutcrackers is Christmas-adjacent, and it’s also probably the most predictable film I have ever seen. 

Let’s see if you can guess what happens when Ben Stiller’s character, an uptight big-city businessman who is obsessed with business-y things like business meetings and spreadsheets, is asked to temporarily take care of his freshly orphaned and highly rambunctious (yet lovable!) nephews while an attractive and single social worker tries to find them a permanent foster home. Two weeks or so before Christmas, mind you, as the film occasionally sees fit to remind you. If you have seen a movie before, or read a book, or experienced any kind of narrative at all in your life you probably sussed out the ending of Nutcrackers as quickly as I did just now. And I’m sorry to tell you that the journey to that ending is just as banal as the destination itself, with overplayed moments such as a party at the rich guy’s house gone bad to the oldest kid needing love advice from an uncomfortable adult. 

That all being said, Nutcrackers does have a sweetness to it thanks to some genuinely good performances from Stiller and the Janson brothers, the four real-life siblings who play the four brothers in the film. You can sometimes tell that this the Jansons’ first foray into film, but their mischievous cuteness is enough to make their freshman attempt at acting memorable. Stiller, for his part, is muted, solid, and effective. Their performances and chemistry generally keep things from becoming boring, even when things are at their most routine. 

But Nutcrackers isn’t really a Christmas movie. Sure, the final act of the film revolves around a performance of The Nutcracker ballet (pretty much Christmas-adjacent itself), but this is the only significant tie to the holiday, and it is one that could have easily been swapped out for any other production at any other time of the year with little to no effect on the plot. This, to me, makes it Christmas-adjacent at best, no matter how many Christmas songs they throw into the scene transitions or festive trees they place in the background. 

Overall Nutcrackers makes for an underwhelming experience, especially if one is looking for cheer that is specific to the holiday season. There’s just not enough deviation from formula, not enough meat on its bones, and not enough magic. 

Nutcrackers is now available on Hulu.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on December 20^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

Wicked (12.06.24)

 

As a wise frog once said, it’s not easy being green. The Hulk knows it, Shrek knows it. The Grinch had a pretty rough go of things even before the classic animated film colored him in, but the transformation surely didn’t help matters. Elphaba of all people should empathize with Kermit’s plight, but she should find solace in one fact—that the film she stars in is bringing in a very different kind of green. Wicked is, by all measurements both financial and critical, a huge hit, and after seeing it this last weekend I completely understand its success—Wicked is overlong, to be sure, but it is also magical, beautiful, and well-crafted from every angle.

At two hours and forty minutes in length, Wicked is just five minutes short of the entirety of its Broadway parent, which would be reasonable if not for the fact that the film is, in fact, Wicked: Part One. I actually understand and agree with the decision to split the adaptation into two halves, because although Wicked: Part One is not a complete story, it does at least feel like a complete journey for our characters. One could never bother with Part Two and still feel like Part One wrapped things up perfectly, at least as a prequel of sorts to the original Wizard of Oz. What I don’t agree with was the need to stretch the entire first act into something that is in desperate need of a trimming.

But to Wicked’s credit, the artificial bloating of the runtime is rarely annoying, as proceedings are, for the most part, very well paced. And then there’s the fact that the film is just very, very good.

I am not a musical aficionado by any means, but Elphaba, Galinda, and everyone else were still able to cast an extremely effective spell on me. The music is catchy, fun, and well-performed all around. The visuals are stunning and colorful, fitting the world that Frank Baum created all those years ago, and there were some interesting and cool bits in both the cinematography and choreography that simply could not have been done on stage. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande do wonderful jobs as Elphaba and Galinda, the eventual friendship between the two characters bringing an authentic warmth to the story thanks to the genuine chemistry between the two actors.  Wicked feels big, it feels joyful, and it feels fun. It's hard to fake fun like this, leading me to believe that the people who made this film genuinely had a good time doing so, which is always infectious for audience members. I should mention, however, that the family I saw Wicked with are much bigger fans of musical theater than I am and did not seem to like it quite as much as I did, so take that as you will. But for a cranky musical theater novice like myself Wicked: Part One was a uniquely enjoyable time at the movies.

Wicked: Part One is now playing in theaters.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on December 6^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

 

Hot Frosty (11.22.24)

 

The only thing that is more annoying to me than Christmas encroaching more and more on Thanksgiving's territory each year is people complaining about Christmas encroaching more and more on Thanksgiving's territory each year. With that in mind I thought I’d give in and watch a new Christmas movie… in November. I saw that Craig Robinson was in a new one called Hot Frosty, and hey, the guy who played Alexis's boyfriend in Schitt’s Creek is in it too! Neat. How bad could it be?

Hot Frosty is pretty bad! But you might be into that for all I know?

The gimmick of Hot Frosty is fun enough on the surface. Christmas movie veteran Lacey Chabert plays a widowed lady who brings a snowman to life with a magical scarf, but unlike the many times this has happened before in fiction (and hopefully just in fiction) the snowman is hot. It’s allegedly supposed to be one of those cute fish-out-of-water romcoms where a hardened realist has her heart melted by a naïve newcomer that teaches her to love again, but the love story is bland and the stabs at comedy frequently made me want to hide my face in vicarious shame and embarrassment.

Jack (the snowman played by Dustin Milligan of Schitt’s Creek who might be hot if his hair wasn’t distractingly bad) is no Olaf or Buddy the Elf. What he knows and doesn’t know as someone who essentially just popped into existence isn’t consistent, nor are his moments of ignorance amusing. And just like with Buddy the whole “I’m an innocent baby man-child who falls in love with a grown person” thing is a bit disturbing in its implications, especially when he is getting oggled at by the elderly.

Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) seem to have a little bit of fun in their roles as the local cops, but even they can’t make most of the moments work. As for Lacey Chabert, well… as stated earlier, a quick IMDb search told me that she has been involved in a lot of Christmas movies, and I can’t imagine that her roles in those were in any way different than the character she played here. That being said she did fine.

I did chuckle a couple of times, truth be told. There was a reference to Mean Girls (which Chabert starred in back in the day) that was pretty good. And the movie is short. That’s… that’s pretty much it for the good parts of Hot Frosty. Other than that the film doesn’t rise above the most mediocre of your typical Hallmark-esque holiday fare, cast aside. If you need to know how bored I was, just know that this was the first review I actually finished writing while still actually watching the film. That’s not a great recommendation, is it?

But hey, it’s still plenty early in the season, and Hot Frosty didn’t kill my pet or anything. If you’re a connoisseur of cheesy Christmas movies you might not hate it. As my mom said when we were done, “It was a perfectly adequate bad Christmas movie.”

Hot Frosty is now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on November 22^nd, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

 

My Old Ass (11.15.24)

 

Everyone wants to be able to tell their younger self something, if only to convince themselves to trust Rufus and get into the mysterious time-traveling phone booth at the Circle-K. Potentially universe-destroying paradoxes aside, it could be quite useful. One could change the world, gain riches beyond their wildest dreams, or at the very least get a good grade on their history report. My Old Ass is of similar scope to the latter situation, and the small story contained therein feels universal because of it, not to mention heartwarming, sad, and, most ironically of all, timeless.

Maisy Stella plays Elliott, an eighteen-year-old who is eager to leave home and move on to the next phase of her life, but not before she does mushrooms in the forest with her friends and somehow meets her thirty-nine-year-old self played by Aubrey Plaza. The two (one?) do what anyone else would in this situation—they freak out, reminisce, maybe kiss a little, and ultimately do their best to exploit the situation in order to create a more perfect life for themselves in the future. Most of the advice that Old Elliott gives Young Elliott is predicable and just common sense; hang out with your family more, don’t waste a moment of life, and, most importantly, stay away from guys named Chad. 

But these are lessons that every teenager should learn, and the growth that Elliott experiences is poignant, sweet, and feels applicable to everyone regardless of their situation. This emotional journey takes up the vast majority of the film, but the simplicity and straightforwardness of the story (which was aptly penned by Megan Park, who also directed) is an asset to the film in this case, as is the limited cast and beautiful settings.

Maisy Stella does a great job as our main character, someone who is young, naïve, yet fully three-dimensional. And Aubrey Plaza (who, regrettably, isn’t in it much but I guess is still technically the main character because she’s also Elliott?) shines by giving us just a hint of that classic April Ludgate sass but by also showing off a slightly more dramatic side that I have never seen her exhibit before. They make for quite the enjoyable duo, even if they don’t really look that much like each other and even if their actual shared screen time is limited. Embedded in the story of Elliott becoming a more present and appreciative person is a love story between Young Elliott and the aforementioned Chad (Percy Hynes White), and it is also very simple while also being satisfying and sweet.

We never learn why these time-traveling shenanigans happen or what the mechanics are, but My Old Ass is not the type of movie where this matters. The time-traveling via hallucinogenic mushrooms premise is more of an excuse to explore a classic coming-of-age tale that pulls some heart strings, elicits a few laughs, and leaves a glowing impression. What would I tell my younger self? Probably to see this film a little sooner than I did.

My Old Ass is now available on Amazon Prime.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on November 15^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

Music By John Williams (11.08.24)

 

No composer has done as much for modern pop culture than John Williams. Go ahead and hum the first movie theme that comes to mind—there’s a pretty good chance that John Williams wrote it. Yet despite his omnipresence in some of my favorite films and franchises I did not know much about the man himself, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this. After watching Music By John Williams I still feel that way, as the documentary is really more of a celebration of the music and career of the composer rather than a deep dive into who he is as a person, but that might just be enough—as Williams himself says, there is a little bit of him in everything he writes.

Music By does go through some touchstones of Williams’ life—his birth, education, the tragic death of his first wife, etc. But once it starts focusing on his career and its impact it rarely touches on anything else. This telling is roughly linear, starting with Williams’ early days as an ensemble jazz pianist to his first composing gigs to his years of universal recognition as the guy who wrote the Jaws, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones soundtracks. Near the end of the runtime things do get a bit more scattershot, bouncing from Harry Potter to Jurassic Park to his various non-movie compositions as if dutifully crossing things off of a list as to not irritate any fans of a particular work by omitting their favorite. This makes for a rather rushed and awkward ending that could have used some more tweaking and streamlining.

There are some insights that I quite enjoyed in Music By, especially Williams’ explanation of the psychology behind the famous five-note refrain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as the more general importance of character themes and leitmotifs. Keep in mind that while I greatly enjoy and appreciate music I am by no means any expert, so the fact that I understood the occasional intricacies discussed by Williams and the rest of the talking heads speaks to their ability to dumb things down for laymen like myself without making us feel like idiots.

Ironically it is the music itself that makes this film exceptional. Is it even possible to create a bad documentary when you're using John Williams’ music? Isn't it kind of cheating? Music By John Williams could have consisted of a two-hour shot of a monkey scratching itself or grass growing, because as long as Williams’ soundtracks are in there, it really couldn’t fail.

Even so, the filmmakers went the extra mile to make Music By visually interesting, mildly enlightening, and highly entertaining. I may not know the man behind the music much better than I did before, but if he is to be believed his personality and story were behind the notes all along, subtly zipping through our zeitgeist like a potato-faced Extra Terrestrial or a handsome Kryptonian. He will live for as long as we hum his songs, which will probably be forever.

Music By John Williams is now available on Disney+.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on November 8^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

The Thanksgiving Play Program Notes

(This is the dramaturge that I wrote for the program)

It’s a story many of us heard growing up and it’s a story that we continue to tell our children to this day: The pilgrims, starving on unfamiliar shores, are aided by benevolent indigenous people who share their bounty and teach them how to properly live off the land. Turkey is broiled, potatoes are mashed, and everyone ends up having a respectful argument about politics and football.  

Only that’s not how it really happened, is it?  

The twenty-first century is, generally speaking, turning out to be a bit more enlightened than the last. Those that look forward to the future first reflect on the past to see what worked, what didn’t, and how we can do things better next time. The most important driver of this change is the world’s growing focus on voices that were belittled and ignored previously in our collective history, voices that polish our understanding to a more complete, if overall less shiny, sheen. The Thanksgiving story that we all know might have some truth to it, but whatever truths it has are delivered via monologue rather than a discussion. There is, after all, another half to the conversation.  

Written by Larissa FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota tribe, The Thanksgiving Play chronicles the story of four well-meaning theater enthusiasts who attempt to tell the most historically accurate and culturally sensitive story of the First Feast possible, but quickly find that there is one significant problem: They are all very, very white. With jobs and dreams on the line they have no choice but to forge ahead, but questions remain: How does one tell the story of the first Thanksgiving without Native representation and voices? Should the actual history of European/Indian relations be sanitized while teaching children who, let’s face it, just need to learn how to be respectful humans at this point? Is it possible for political correctness to swing so far one way that it goes all the way back to being offensive and close-minded?      

The Thanksgiving Play, which premiered in 2018 at the Artists Repertoire Theatre in Portland, Oregon before moving to Broadway in 2023, asks all of these questions and more in the funniest way possible. Through its biting satire it discusses important issues like performative activism and cultural insensitivity, showing, with a smile, that although we have come far in this twenty-first century of ours we still have plenty of ground to cover yet.  

The Thanksgiving Play opens at Keizer Homegrown Theatre on November 1st, 2024. It plays every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the last show being a matinee on the 17th. I'm in it and it is good. Go see it. Or don't. I'm not your boss.

Home - Keizer Homegrown Theatre

House of Spoils (Unpublished)

 

It’s easy to freak people out with food. Just make a character eat something moldy or crawling with bugs and audiences will squirm, or present something delicious and reveal that, surprise, it’s actually the liver of a census taker that is spruced up with fava beans and a nice Chianti. House of Spoils, a new horror film from Blumhouse Television and Amazon, serves up some creepy culinary concoctions, but other than a few banal haunted house trappings it’s not all that scary and ends in the dumbest way possible.

Ariana DeBose gives a strong performance as the main character who is known only as “Chef,” an aspiring restaurant owner who comes to find that her new digs are haunted. Chef's story is considerably more interesting when it’s dealing with the harrowing yet decidedly non-supernatural realities of opening a new business and not touching on anything otherworldly, and DeBose and her supporting cast lend a strong core to a screenplay that doesn’t deserve the effort, especially because the characters are written so thinly. The actual ghost story bits are lacking, especially the resolution, which might just be one of the most baffling things I have ever seen in a horror film. The ghost's motivation seems downright silly if I understood it correctly, and the fact that I don’t know for sure speaks to a lack of clarity that smacks of bad writing rather than an invitation to thoughtfully ponder what was just shown.

When the film is utilizing tried-and-true horror techniques like the typical long, silent walk down a dark hallway that raises stress with every step because you just know that something is going to pop out at any second it works well enough. But tense moments such as these are almost impossible to screw up and are so omnipresent in the horror genre that it doesn't feel like I should give House of Spoils props for this, especially because I've always been someone who is easily scared. Horror aficionados might not even blink at these moments, especially because they never really pay off. Sometimes a spooky hallway is just a spooky hallway, and even when an old lady ghost is around the corner any resulting scare that might occur feels cheap. When it’s not offering spooky hallways and old ladies, House of Spoils leans heavily into the aforementioned food horror thing, which is more gross than anything else in this context. There are only so many times you can watch someone get surprised by an army of cockroaches in a soufflé before even this queasiness wears thin.

House of Spoils has a loose feminine message to it that I appreciate, even if it is vague, unfocused, and sloppy. It may be hard to be a female restaurateur in a man’s world, but this message gets lost a bit in the quagmire that is the rest of the film. If you’re looking for scares this Halloween season look elsewhere. You won’t find any in House of Spoils.

House of Spoils is now available on Amazon Prime.

This review wasn't published in the Keizertimes but you can visit anyway at www.keizertimes.com 

Mr. Crocket (10.18.24)

 

Taking something sweet and comforting and twisting it into something unsettling is a staple of a lot of horror films. When was the last time someone truly appreciated clowns as they were originally supposed to be appreciated, instead of thinking of them as creepy demons that feast on the flesh of innocents? It’s a trope that takes away our safe spaces, giving us no safe harbor to run to when the scary begins. In this tradition, Mr. Crocket turns the idea of a friendly kids show character onto its head and the result is as campy and bloody as you’d expect, but it doesn’t offer anything new or interesting while doing so.

There is a “mascot horror” trend going on in the world of video games, where independent studios, inspired by the hugely popular Five Nights at Freddy’s series, pump out cheap horror games led by creatures that should be cute and child friendly but instead have sharp teeth and kill you. None of them really have any soul and only exist to sell merchandise and go viral, and Mr. Crocket feels a bit like one of these games. It’s as if the writers looked at a list of things that children like and asked themselves “what hasn’t been exploited in the world of horror yet?” and picked Mr. Rogers. Mr. Crocket gleefully kills those he considers bad parents with subversive kids stuff, his cuddly sidekick creatures are actually Jim Henson puppets from hell, and everything is shocking and gory instead of fluffy and nice. Blah blah blah.

None of it is particularly scary and all of it is astonishingly predictable. Every horror trope is in here, from the random bystander that just happens to have the exposition needed to keep the film going to the microfiche research montage to the villain monologue that explains their entire spooky backstory. The characters are thinner than a clown who has gone too long without human flesh and the rules behind the supernatural forces are murky and vague. There just isn’t anything new here.

The acting is pretty good, especially that of Elvis Nolasco, who plays the titular character with a Freddy Krueger-esque mixture of menace and campy glee. And I do appreciate that the special effects are predominantly practical rather than digital. As someone who has always found E.T. and other practical puppets terrifying (except you, Yoda, you’re cool), I found the designs of Mr. Crocket’s “friends” to easily be the most unsettling thing about the film, even if the creativity for some started and ended with “put sharp teeth on it and make it look all decayed looking.”

As I write this two hours after watching the film I find myself constantly having to go back and check what exactly the name of the character/movie actually was. Was it Mr. Cranston? Mr. Cormick? I know it started with a C… this was my experience with the film in a nutshell. It was here, it held my eyeballs for ninety minutes, and then it was gone.

Mr. Crocket (that’s it!) is now available on Hulu.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on October 18^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

 

Salem's Lot (10.11.24)

 

I have never found vampires particularly frightening. Perhaps it is because I have always been a religious person and religious stuff is kryptonite to the bloodsucking undead. Perhaps it’s because vampires are subject to a bunch of comfortably convenient rules, like not being able to go out in the day or not being able to enter someone’s dwelling unless invited. Whatever the reason, I was not expecting Salem’s Lot to frighten me half as much as it did, at least in the first half, but as the film went on it became apparent that a whole Lot of problems were going to keep it from becoming a genuine horror classic. 

A fresh-out-of-the-coffin adaptation of Stephen King's classic novel, Salem’s Lot was actually filmed years ago with a theatrical release in mind, only to be shelved and then quietly released on Max (formerly known as HBO Max). Like a couple of bloody puncture wounds on a pale neck, this was not a terribly good omen of things to come, but I forgot about the film’s tortured past as I jumped straight into some unexpectedly spooky vampire action that was greatly complemented by some solid direction and style (thank goodness they set the story in its original year of 1975 instead of doing the boring thing and updating it to today). I am not a connoisseur of horror films by any means, but the first hour or so of Salem’s Lot was highly effective for me, with plentiful scares and an unsettling atmosphere to boot. The music is forgettable but does its job well, and the cinematography has a creative flare behind it that leads to some truly fantastic shots. Salem’s Lot, much like the titular town, looks great on the surface, but also like the town it turns out to be a bit dead inside on closer inspection.

The biggest knock against Salem’s Lot is a distinct lack of characterization and world building. The original novel, which happens to be one of my favorite works by Stephen King, is considerably shorter than most Stephen King books, but there was still so much cut out of it as to be unrecognizable. The characters are as one-dimensional as can be, particularly the bad guys, who we learn absolutely nothing about, and the ending is so different from that of the novel that I briefly forgot that I was watching an adaptation of something that I had read before. Like a vampire, Salem’s Lot doesn’t have any real spirit to it, and even the creative camerawork gets exhausting as the film continuously returns to its favorite tricks over and over again. Perhaps a mini series would have been the way to go. Or maybe we just needed another scene or two to flesh characters and the story out. As it stands Salem’s Lot is a passable summary of a much greater novel rather than a great story itself. You could do much worse, though.

Salem’s Lot is now available on Max.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on October 11^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

Will & Harper (10.04.24)

 

“Okay, just walking into the room and sitting down the way you sometimes see at the top of a documentary. Where they use the B-roll, but the person... the subject didn't realize they were gonna use it. But it's all natural.”

This is how Will Ferrell starts Will & Harper, and it is a quote that hits upon the biggest question I always have while watching documentaries: Just how much authenticity, emotional or otherwise, can be allowed in such a format when the subjects know that they are being filmed? Doesn’t the very act of observation dilute the truthfulness of the observations? This was what was on my mind when I first jumped into Will & Harper, but this skeptical attitude melted just as quickly as this hardened, world-weary heart of mine did, because this particular documentary hits different. Beautiful, heartbreaking, hilarious, and important, Will & Harper, the story of a cross-country road trip between two old Saturday Night Live buddies as they attempt to recontextualize their friendship after one of them transitioned, just may be the realest thing I have seen in years, cameras be damned.

Harper Steele, a former SNL writer who began her tenure on the long-running sketch show at the same time as Will Ferrell, transitioned fairly late in life after much strife and heartache, and like many transgender people she was afraid of how her friends, family, and America as a whole would treat her after she became who she had always been. Ferrell, an open-minded guy who nonetheless still had some questions, suggested the road trip idea to hash it all out. What follows is sometimes uncomfortable (not everyone they come into contact with is as open minded or accepting as Will Ferrell), often heart-breaking (Harper doesn’t mince words when it comes to her mental health and identity struggles, both pre-transition and post), but it is mostly just nice, for lack of a spicier word. True friendship knows no gender, and these two people have friendship in spades.

 

Although serious in its subject matter, Will & Harper also boasts plenty of laughs, which is natural considering the comedic backgrounds of both of our subjects. These lighter moments are welcome, and to the credit of our SNL alums (as well as director Josh Greenbaum and editor Monique Zavistovski) these laughs are never allowed to cheapen or minimize the serious moments; it would have been easy to make jokes to lessen the sad, infuriating, or awkward parts, but these are just as much part of Will & Harper as the joyful ones. It is an important film for people who have transgender individuals in their lives or just wish to understand the world better; as Harper says several times, there is nothing wrong with asking questions, and we can't be afraid to do so, no matter how uncomfortable asking these questions might make us.

When it comes to documentaries, it doesn’t get any more real than Will & Harper.

Will & Harper is now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on October 4^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

Uglies (09.20.24)

 

There is no shortage of excuses that people come up with to justify hating one another. Political affiliation, race, class, gender, religion; all can lead to artificial divisions that make the world a worse place to live in. Uglies, a new Netflix original based on the bestselling young adult novel by Scott Westerfeld, presents a dystopian society in which peace is obtained by simply making everyone prettier via extreme cosmetic surgery. This incredibly naïve solution is not the primary reason for the lack of violence and strife in the pretty world of Uglies, as we inevitably find out that something more sinister is at play, but it does represent the biggest flaw in the film: Distilling complicated issues best left explored in novel format into the lowest common denominator.

I have never read Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, but it’s hard to imagine it having less nuance than the film that is based on the first volume. Be yourself, true beauty comes from within… that’s about as deep as the lessons in Uglies gets (and the second point is slightly undermined by the fact that they hired the very pretty Joey King to be our main character, as Netflix, Hollywood, and other movie making hubs are apparently allergic to actual ugly people). The film could have offered something very interesting, like a discussion of how conforming to Euro-centric beauty standards eliminates individuality and cultural identity, or how damaging social media saturation can be to people in their formative years (an issue that was undoubtedly absent in the original novel, as it was originally published in 2005 before social media became ubiquitous). Nope, being yourself and recognizing the beauty within is about it. Uglies is one of those films that thinks it’s much smarter than it actually is, and the streamlining necessary to convert a book into a movie certainly doesn’t help.

I am harping about the deeper meaning of Uglies (or lack thereof) largely because there is not much else to it. Joey King does fine as the main character, although it is a bit off-putting when she and many of her fellow actors do the whole bubbly teenager thing, considering that most of them are around 25 in real life (not a new issue, I suppose, as adults have been playing teenagers since Danny corrupted that unfortunate Sandy girl). The CGI is often poor, the green screens apparent, and the flying skateboards ridiculous (as are silly phrases like “rusties” and “the Smoke” --I’m sure these were more acceptable on paper than in live-action, or maybe I’m just an old man who hates whimsy). As for the script, well… let’s just say I’ve seen more subtlety in a… not very subtle thing. I don’t know, I’m bad at similes and I don’t think this movie deserves a good one.

Full of missed shots and even more missed opportunities, Uglies is destined to fade into dystopian YA adaptation/bad Netflix original film obscurity. I, for one, have already forgotten it.

Uglies is now playing on Netflix

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 20^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

The Instigators (09.06.24)

 

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death, taxes, and me appreciating Matt Damon in everything he is in. Is it really any wonder that the cinematic U.S. constantly spends billions of dollars trying to retrieve him from places, whether it be in German-occupied France or Mars? Naturally I wanted to watch The Instigators for no other reason than to send good vibes Matt’s way if he was captured or something, but it turns out these vibes weren’t really needed—sure, he and Casey Affleck are in constant danger of getting arrested and killed in this comedy heist film, but the stakes feel ridiculously low because The Instigators never manages to make me care about anything that’s going on.

Sure, the characters share some perfunctory backstories with each other in one scene to explain why they want to rob Ron Perlman’s character. But this is all the audience gets; it wasn’t until I was an hour or so into the film that it even dawned on me that Affleck was supposed to be the loudmouth funny one and Damon was supposed to be the comically stoic one. Not even these broad archetypes were clear because the jokes just aren’t that funny. I did not connect to anyone on an emotional level because one scene is not enough to tell us who the characters are, and I did not care on a comedic level because the jokes aren’t amusing enough to keep me invested just by themselves. And if the main characters are one-dimensional then I don’t even know what the supporting characters are… according to Wikipedia zero-dimensional space is a thing and “a graphical illustration of a zero-dimensional space is a point,” but I’d argue that the perfect example of zero-dimensional space would instead be Perlman, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames, and the rest of the exceptional supporting cast doing… whatever it is they do in this movie.

The banter between Damon and Affleck can only be described as “Bostonian,” and this back-and-forth occasionally provides energy in the otherwise boring and painfully lifeless story, even if it never reaches the level of laugh-out-loud funny. And although it’s nice to understand the entirety of a heist film for once (usually the genre shows an addiction to needless complexity), the story is almost too basic in its straightforwardness. There are no interesting twists, no unexpected reveals. We get from point A to point B on a mostly flat line, and by the end I just wanted to shrug and move onto something else.

The Instigators is not unwatchable with its talented cast (they do their best with what is given to them) and fast-ish pace (it might be boring and lifeless but at least it’s not  slow, boring and lifeless), but it is not something that showcases anything impressive either. If only we could have saved Matt from this mediocre script, but I guess you can’t win them all.

The Instigators is now available on Apple TV+.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 6^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War (08.30.24)

 

Perhaps no other time in American history has been quite as romanticized at the Wild West era, and that is not surprising. Cowboys are cool; just ask my 200+ hours logged in Red Dead Redemption 2. Anybody who knows anything about the gunslingers of this bygone time of lawlessness and freedom knows the names Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, but they might not know the story that made them famous. Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is that story, and although the documentary itself has some issues it is nonetheless carried by its interesting subject matter and solid performances that make it respectable entertainment.

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is a six-episode docudrama narrated by Ed Harris, and boy does it ever lean heavily on the “drama” part. The reenactments and interpretations of actual historical events are plentiful, often eclipsing the “docu” half made up of your usual historian talking heads and voiceovers, and most of the time these moments are quite effective at making the history easily digestible for everyone, although I do wish that it used more authentic visuals such as actual photographs of Tombstone and its famous residents. At other times these reenactments can be hilariously histrionic, turning what may otherwise be a legitimate retelling into a hodgepodge of Western film clichés where everyone walks side by side in slow motion while coolly smoking cigarettes and the delineation between good and evil is clear as day. Wyatt Earp may be a mostly faithful reconstruction, but there is no doubt that it is also a slightly sanitized and highly streamlined version. The Wyatt Earp here is a hero who has never done anything wrong rather than the actual human being that he was, and instead of being a dangerously unhinged and volatile drunk, Doc Holliday simply comes across as a rascal. The streamlining is necessary in its way, as there is only so much time to delve into minutia and nuance, but it bumps up against another issue: Sometimes it feels like the show is dumbing things down for its audience, a fact that is especially apparent with its overuse of onscreen text and insistence on repeating things more than once.

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is entertaining despite these flaws. The aforementioned melodrama is more of a product of the writing and direction than it is of the acting, which is good but won’t win any awards. And although the reenactments are everywhere they never overstay their welcome as the story keeps chugging along, a fact that speaks to Wyatt Earp’s good pacing and editing. Overall, Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is an enjoyable documentary to watch simply because the story at its core is so interesting with its multiple shootouts, legal dramas, and connectivity to the larger story of the American frontier. It provides entertainment and it provides a solid, if basic, understanding of what went down at the OK Corral and beyond, which is enough, I reckon. Yee-haw and all that.

All six episodes of Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War are now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 30^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

Alien: Romulus (08.23.24)

The titular beast from the Alien series is one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time, but as with everything, familiarity breeds—well, not exactly resentment in this case, but it does facilitate a definite diminishing return when it comes to scariness. And if nothing else, the five Alien films since the original have fostered familiarity. Alien: Romulus attempts to make H.R. Giger’s xenomorph scary again, and while much of the material seems recycled from what came before, I’m just happy that we finally have another Alien film that doesn’t blow chunks.

Directed by Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead), Alien: Romulus takes the series back to its roots of crew members on a spaceship being hunted down and slaughtered by freaky creatures after the previous two films attempted some pseudo-cerebral world-building that ground the franchise to a halt. The return to form is effective, as are most of the scares, but none of it feels original; in many ways Romulus feels like an amalgamation of all the series’ greatest hits, from overly familiar character archetypes to suspiciously similar sets to winkingly repeated lines. The freshest facet of the film is the relationship between siblings Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson), their sister-brother dynamic causing heightened anxiety because you really want them both to live, much like Ripley and Newt or Ripley and Jones the cat from previous films. Plot-wise things don’t really diverge from the familiar until the third act or so, at which point things finally feel new and surprising; there is one new addition to the Alien mythos here that is genuinely unsettling, and it’s just too bad that it took so long in the film to come along.

The acting in Romulus is quite good, particularly that of the two aforementioned siblings (Jonsson has a fascinating duel role of sorts, and I would not be surprised if the character of Rain catapulted Spaeny to stardom just like Ellen Ripley did for Sigourney Weaver over forty years ago), but the script these actors have to bring to life is noticeably poor in certain parts. The dialogue got an unintentional chuckle out of me a couple of times, with standouts such as one character responding to a terrible story by simply stating “that’s terrible” and another one frantically explaining, seemingly just for the audience’s sake, that elevators don’t work without gravity. I also think I missed an important line or two because of various accents and a lack of diction, particularly during a big exposition dump halfway through, but that’s okay. I still understood everything. It’s not like “alien kills people” is a difficult plot to follow.

The xenomorph is the perfect killing machine and doesn’t need to evolve, so maybe it’s not surprising that the franchise surrounding it has not evolved much either after all these years. Alien: Romulus may not reinvent the wheel, but it does do what it was made to do, and that is make people afraid of space again.

Alien: Romulus is now playing in theaters.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 23rd, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 (08.09.24)

 

Like most nerds, I like Batman. Most people do, if one takes the shear amount of times the character has appeared in print and on the small and big screens as evidence of his popularity. But I’m kind of getting tired of Bruce Wayne and his rogues, if I’m being honest… after all, there’s only so many times one can watch a trust fund orphan dress up like a rodent and beat up mentally troubled people on the streets without getting a bit bored. Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated show on Amazon Prime, is in many ways an exceptional Batman experience  that goes out of its way to offer something different. But despite this I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we have already seen all of this before.

Caped Crusader has a lot of the same DNA as the popular 90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, which makes sense, considering that DC’s animation maestro Bruce Timm is the mastermind behind both. The animation is very similar, as is the respect that the subject matter is treated with—it does not dumb things down, despite the fact that kids are among the target audience. They're both shows that adults can enjoy as well, particularly Caped Crusader, which is a bit more violent and considerably darker than its predecessor.

Caped Crusader does some cool things with the Batman mythos, reimagining some characters, genderbending others, and setting the whole thing against the backdrop of a vaguely 1940s era of Gotham City. The noir approach that Caped Crusader takes is appreciated, the serialized tales of crime and murder really leaning into the detective facet of Batman’s nature.

But at the end of the day, Batman: Caped Crusader is still the same old Batman stuff. Bruce is humorless and dour, Alfred is concerned and frustrated, Catwoman is sassy and flirtatious. Despite all of its attempts to be different Caped Crusader is still what we’ve seen over and over again since Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character in the late 30s, and I wasn’t able to appreciate the craftsmanship of the show that much as a result. This is not a problem with the Caped Crusader as much as it is a direct result of media saturation. Why not do a Wonder Woman cartoon instead? Or maybe a lesser known DC comics character like Midnighter or Zatanna? There’s only so many times you can run back to the Batman well without the thing running dry. I don’t subscribe to the idea of super hero fatigue in the media; I think that as long as there is innovation the genre can be as long lived as action films or comedies. But man, Batman: Caped Crusader just exhausted me.

But it’s a great show! This is the Dark Knight at his best. But the fact is that we have so many examples of the character at his best that the sum of those feels lesser because of it.

Batman: Caped Crusader season 1 is now available on Amazon Prime.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 9th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Deadpool & Wolverine (??.??.??)

Some actors and roles are just made for each other, and Ryan Reynolds and Marvel’s Deadpool are one such pair. Snarky, irreverent, and hilarious, the merc with a mouth was always a natural fit for Canada's second-best Ryan, so nerds everywhere rejoiced when it was announced that he would continue in the role even after FOX was bought by Disney and the fictional universe that his version of the character existed in was discontinued. Deadpool, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first permanent transplant, would get a third film, but this time it would take place in the world of Iron Man, Captain America, and other fan-favorite Avenging heroes.

Deadpool & Wolverine, a threequel that also sees the return of Hugh Jackman’s iconic version of the latter character, is less of an exciting look forward at what’s ahead for the MCU and more of a fun look back at what came before it. Strictly speaking, the film isn’t perfect; the simple plot on its face isn’t terribly interesting and has numerous holes, the villain is cool and excellently portrayed but only has the vaguest motivations, and there are some noticeable pacing issues that effect the momentum of the film. But I would be lying if I said that Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t also provide one of the most fun movie-going experiences for me in years.

From start to finish I was grinning like an idiot, enjoying every joke and every well-choreographed moment of ultra violence (D&W is the MCU’s very first R-rated film, and like its predecessors it thoroughly earns this rating) as the mercenary and the mutant slice their way through waves of bad guys as well as each other. The dramatic moments work as well, the writers and actors once again proving that they know what makes these characters so memorable and enduring—Deadpool isn’t just a live-action Loony Tune but a thoroughly messed-up and disturbed individual who hides behind humor and wants to be better, and Wolverine is the best there is at what he does but would rather be anyone else.

The MCU has always had the problem of alienating new viewers who don’t want to watch a few dozen films as homework to understand what is going on in the current film, and I’m sorry to say that Deadpool & Wolverine is, as a celebration of not only the MCU but also the FOX X-Men universe that came before it, probably the worst offender yet. Though I absolutely loved each and every reference and cameo (indeed, they proved to be the best part of my viewing experience), I can comfortably say that most of them will probably go over the heads of all but the most hardcore viewers. I can’t tell you if that is a deal-breaker or not, but I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun watching Deadpool & Wolverine if I wasn’t already a MCU groupie in it for the long haul. It may not be a perfect movie, but it sure was fun!  

Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters. 

This review has not been published in the Keizertimes yet and may not be ever at this point, but here is the link anyway-  www.keizertimes.com/

Simone Biles Rising (??.??.??)

 

I don’t know if you noticed, but the year 2020 was really weird. One of the events where this was particularly apparent was the Tokyo Olympics, where athletes performed to empty bleachers and were required to put medals around their own necks if they were lucky enough to win. But even with these COVID oddities there was one particular moment that stood out—the moment when Simone Biles, arguably one of the best gymnasts of all time, decided to sit out most of her competitions after a handful of botched performances with little to no explanation why. At the time, absolutely everyone had an opinion on what had happened, and now, on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Biles herself is setting the record straight once and for all in Simone Biles Rising, a triumphant and inspiring documentary that sheds light on not only her own troubles but also the need for better mental health accommodations in the world of professional sports and beyond.

Simone Biles Rising is refreshingly candid as it delves into just what went down in Japan and what Biles has done since to take control of her mental and emotional wellbeing. Her problems are often so relatable and understandable that it is sometimes easy to forget that this is an international superstar we are talking about and not just some “normal” person with a regular 8-to-5 career. A lot of this comes down to Biles’ likeability as a person, and a lot of it has to do with the documentary crew never failing to ground the pomp and glamor of the Olympic stage with interview clips of those who know Biles best, such as her mother Nellie and her husband Jonathan Owens, whom she married in 2023 (and who played for the Packers, but I suppose I should forgive him now that he’s with Chicago). Somehow the documentary made it easy for me, a guy who has never done so much as a cartwheel, to see myself in and sympathize with her position.

Mental health has never been a priority in any competitive endeavor, and this is something that Simone Biles wants to see changed. Rising is a fascinating look behind the Olympic curtain and also a call for all those who are suffering from unresolved mental afflictions to seek out help when needed and to also know that they are not alone in their suffering. If Simone Biles can break down in front of the world and come back stronger, we all can.

Simone Biles Rising isn’t just an exploration of the past and present, but also a fun and exciting preview of what is to come. Biles will once again be competing in the Olympics this year in Paris, and I can’t wait to see how the true ending of this documentary plays out in real-time. Win or lose, Simone Biles will be going out on her own terms.

There are currently two episodes of Simone Biles Rising available on Netflix, with more coming in the fall.

 

This review has not been published in the Keizertimes yet and may not be ever at this point, but here is the link anyway-  www.keizertimes.com/

Brats (07.19.24)

 

If you lived during the 80s there is a very strong possibility that you knew of the Brat Pack. A loose coalition of similarly-aged actors at the forefront of a teenage Hollywood revolution, members of the Pack starred in a handful of groundbreaking films that defined a generation, from The Breakfast Club to St. Elmo's Fire to Pretty in Pink. But apparently the phrase “Brat Pack” was reductive, and if you didn’t know that then Andrew McCarthy, himself an alum of the rowdy crew of misfits as well as the director of Hulu’s new original documentary Brats, will spend an hour and a half of your life telling you so.

Ostensibly a documentary chronicling the careers and lives of the titular Pack, Brats is much more of a therapeutic journey for McCarthy as he grapples with the label that was thrust upon him. The chip that is always present on his shoulder is the true star of the documentary, presenting itself even when it makes for awkward viewing (the interview with Emilio Estevez is particularly painful). Some of the other Brats clearly didn’t see the big deal he was making of the label, no matter how many times McCarthy insists otherwise, and in many ways the documentary feels like a thesis statement in search of validation, rather than a conclusion reached naturally through supporting evidence. Andrew McCarthy believes that the phrase “Brat Pack” derailed his career, which is, on its face, a thing that can be sympathized with, and it may even be true. But it’s hard to take his complaints too seriously when he is interviewing his fellow Brats (some of which have had very respectable careers post-80s, such as Rob Lowe and Demi Moore) in their giant, beautiful houses. Many kids would have killed to be in the Brat Pack at the height of their fame, and here you are complaining that things didn’t go exactly your way because of a relatively harmless nickname? It’s self-indulgent and, dare I say, a bit bratty.

Brats has some occasionally interesting moments outside of McCarthy’s labeling complaint, such as when the issue of racial representation (or the lack thereof, to be more accurate) in 80s coming-of-age films arises, or the discussion of the importance of music in the Brat Pack films, but these moments are always superficial and skin-deep. It always comes back to the phrase “Brat Pack” being bad, and it’s just very hard to care. To paraphrase Rob Lowe, the person who seems to have the best perspective on these things, this isn’t a cure for cancer we’re talking about here; we’re talking about a handful of classic films and the nitpicks of the very lucky people who made them. Brats is the ultimate exercise in whining about first-world problems, and this hardly makes for interesting viewing. If you’re not already a fan of these films you won’t care, and if you are then Brats might just leave a bad taste in your mouth. I say skip it.

Brats is now available on Hulu.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on July 19^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

A Quiet Place: Day One (07.05.24)

 

When John Krasinski made the transition from acting to directing and writing he surprised expectant fans by debuting not with a quirky comedy but with a novel and effective horror film, A Quiet Place. Drawn to the simple idea of a father giving everything to protect his children, the scariness of the film was always secondary to the Office alum, but what started as a tense little story of a family trying to survive in a world of aliens with an intense desire to maul everything that makes the slightest sound eventually did what most successful films do: It became a big ‘ol series. Yet despite this the second film did not lose its intimate and personal nature, and the prequel/spinoff, A Quiet Place: Day One, follows suit, much to its benefit. 

Those expecting answers to just who these aliens are, how they arrived, and what their life goals are will be disappointed. Like the previous two films Day One focuses on the experiences of everyday people who know just as much as the audience does when the decibel detesting demons drop, and it never really moves beyond our main character Samira, who is played wonderfully by Lupita Nyong'o, and her new apocalypse buddy Eric, portrayed equally as well by Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn. By focusing on Samira and her already-tragic story Day One retains an appealing heart throughout, a factor that would have been very easy to overlook for a film with a much larger budget and body count than its equally effective forbearers. 

But Day One is still a very thrilling experience, especially because director/writer Michael Sarnoski seems to understand two very important things about the horror genre—One, having a pet in the mix (in this case Frodo the cat and Eric the not-unlike-a-puppy) always raises tensions to bloodcurdling levels, and two, Lupita Nyong'o has one of the most convincing scared faces in Hollywood. Like its predecessors the film isn’t exactly scary per-say, but it is intense, and like A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II it requires some suspension of disbelief simply because of its premise (why aren’t the aliens attracted to the noises that other aliens make, for instance?) And watching the film in theaters is a particularly unique and enjoyable experience, as there is nothing quite like sitting amongst a group of people who are subconsciously trying to make as little sound as possible lest the illusion being shared be broken (I have never finished a movie with so much popcorn left over... that stuff is really loud when it wants to be). 

A Quiet Place: Day One is otherwise perfect for popcorn—a fun movie that makes for great summer viewing. Anchored by a simple yet heartwarming story it is a thriller that thrills, and fans of the other two films should definitely catch it in theaters before it’s gone. And try not to worry too much about the cat... I promise that Frodo is more resourceful and capable than most of us would be in that situation. 

A Quiet Place: Day One is now playing in theaters.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on July 5^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com