BRIGHTBURN [Film Review]

This is the worst kind of action-horror film there is: it takes an intriguing idea and does absolutely nothing interesting with it.
Straight out the gate there is zero exposition in terms of setting up the story. Instead the film starts with a meteor crash on a farm and then fast-forwards 12 years. Our protagonist, a young lad named Brandon, is apparently a prodigy who is also an outcast at school (nevermind that we hardly see any scenes of bullying or other instances that would shape his personality). Soon, however, young Brandon is donning a creepy cape and cowl and carrying on in a most viloent manner. Where he gets the idea for the costume is lost on me as we never see him reading comic books, watching superhero movies, or the like. Not to mention that the kid literally becomes evil overnight with no reason other than a creepy glowing spaceship hiding out in the barn.
The violence is ho-hum. The gore sparse. The suspense is lacking. Hell, there isn’t even a single good jump-scare moment lurking within the film’s 91-minute running time. Not to mention that just about everything that happens is utterly predictable.
Add to this a bevy of one-dimensional characters, such as the clueless mother who refuses to believe her son is evil even though everything points to him being so, the “you’re just imagining things” aunt, the generic dad and uncle, and the small town sheriff who knows something is amiss but really doesn’t do anything about it.
In regards to the rest of the story, the entire film exists in a vacuum of vagueness were everything is inferred and the audience is left to assume and then accept what is happening onscreen by filling in the gaps of the plot themselves. My quasi-intellectual self told me that perhaps the film was meant as an allegory for adolescence, but if that’s the case the filmmakers failed miserably.
To top it all off the gratuituously trite and rather lackluster ending leaves things wide open for sequels (here’s hoping that poor Box Office performance will squash that plan, though one cannot discount some streaming service picking it up for an ongoing series).
In the end the whole film feels like an extended elevator pitch for a potentially better film that never got made.

Rating: 1.5/5

JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3: PARABELLUM [Film Review]

The third installment in the John Wick saga falters and slips following in the footsteps of its predecessors. While the two earlier entries in the series contained their fair share of violent action, they also hid a buried a sense of subtelty and mystery lying just underneath all the gun fire and blood spatter. Here, however, it’s all about one over-the-top action sequence after another, after another, after another... Sure, the early action sequences bristle, but there’s nary a break in the mayhem over the course of the 130- minute running time which means that by the second act you’re easily as exhausted as Wick looks throughout the film itself. In short: the seemingly non-stop barrage of bullets and fisticuffs soon escalates into a mind-numbing game of one-upmanship in the form of number of guns fired and asses kicked.
To add to the action-on-auto-pilot vibe we get tossed some serious miscasting (Angelica Huston as a Russian mob matriarch and Halle Barry as a former assassin-turned-Morocco hotel manager), a kind of groveling John Wick casually begging for foregiveness and his life at every turn, and the complete destruction of the mystique of the underworld created in the first two installments. The end result is a film that pales in comparison to either of the previous entries in the series.
This isn’t to say JW3 a complete waste of your time. The first act is visually kinetic, both in terms of choreography and cinematography; it’s teeming with slick imagery--NYC drenched in rain and neon-- plus some engaging and creatively gonzo fight sequences.
Things start to fall apart, however, once Wick leaves The Big Apple and journeys to the assassin mecca of Morocco. Once there, the inevitable ensuing gun fight is long, laborious, and filled with “magic bullets” (Barry’s character never once reloads her gun during the extended battle!). If that weren’t enough, Wick ends up wandering in the desert and is eventually granted an audience with the head of the High Table in a scene cribbed from Lawrence of Arabia; this segment of the film is obviously intended to be somewhat existential, but instead is rather hokey.
By the film’s end everything is on overkill, even down to the Enter The Dragon-by-way- of-The Lady From Shanghai-influenced final fight, which, while visually intriguing, ultimately feels lackluster and anticlimactic (not to mention just a tad too long). It’s all capped off with an ending that blatantly screams “John Wick 4 Coming Soon!” (the fourth chapter was recently greenlit, btw) as opposed to the more enigmatic endings of the two previous films.
All of this said, I have half a mind to go see it again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything lurking between the flying bullets and broken bodies.

Rating: 2.5/5

Missing Cat or Missing Snack?

My initial thought on seeing a "Missing Cat" poster in my neighborhood:
"I'm sorry, but when you live in the mountains your cat ain't missing, it's been digested."

School's Out. Like, Out Out - Assassination Nation film review

Critics are really divided on this film.

On the surface, I loved it. 

It pretty much borrows from every conceivable genre of film imaginable, from girl gangs to home invasion to Italian horror and giallo (mostly borrowing Mario Bava and Dario Argento's flair for saturated color drenched cinematography). 

It's smart, dumb, funny, teeming with shock-and-awe violence, cool meta moments, and snarky, attention deficit disorder-styled mayhem. It's exploitive and brash, and while there is obvious (and rather blunt) socio/political commentary, it can also succumb to mundanity in a flash. 

In short, it's a John Hughes-styled teen flick on crystal meth and psychedelics.

I am planning to see it a second time...

RIYL

Heathers; The Purge series; A Clockwork Orange; Kill Bill (either volume); vintage Brian DePalma; vintage Dario Argento

MANDY [Film Review]

A bit long-in-the-tooth at times, Pano Cosmatos' sophomore feature film is never less than visually stunning. His use of color is ripped straight out of the Italian genre master's handbook (think serious nods to both Bava and Argento), not to mention his use of intrinsic and bombastic prog rock-cum-metal influenced music.
While on the surface this is a rather simple revenge story, it is teeming with fantastical elements. In fact, for me, it really felt like Cosmatos was channelling John Milius' classic minimalist sword/sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian, both in terms of its story and the old school medieval violence. I mean there are demons, a charismatic cult leader, his mindless and obedient servants, there's pagan rituals, and heavy metal sword fighting (albeit, in this case it's axes and chainsaws).  Scratch the surface, however, and underneath it all one can easily construe that this is a condemnation of religion and the violence that has surrounded it for years; how people take beliefs and twist them to their own purpose all in the name of a higher being. But if that kind of philosophical slant ain't your cup of tea, no worries. The film is chock full of some good ol' ultra-violence, not to mention some gonzo humor.
And Nic Cage? Sure, he's made a latter day career out of doing over-the-top characters in direct-to-video B-movie schlock (think Mom and Dad), but here he takes the cake. When he's not chain smoking, chopping wood, or cuddle/spooning with his lady (the titular Mandy), then he's covered in blood, killing deranged biker gangs, and engaging in chainsaw dueling frenzies of mayhem.
His adversary, played to the hilt by Linus Roache, is a nefarious blend of weasely androgenous petulance. He is a narcissistic slimeball who teeters on the brink of empyrical sacrosancticity; he is creepy and sniveling and always malevolent.
Throughout the film there are obvious visual nods to The Road Warrior and the Evil Dead trilogy-by-way-of-Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the aforementioned stalwarts of Italian horror cinema, plus a heavy debt to the psychotropic films of the '60s and early '70s. In the end, though, this is pure Cosmatos; a deja vu laced pastiche of all the best parts from myriad core genre films done as a loving homage to those influences and rendered in a manner that also manages to come off feeling and looking fresh and vibrant.
If there is any washback, I would say it comes in the form of the rather slow and long set-up; the first act is a bit too introspective for my tast and easily could have been edited down a bit. But that's just me, impatient as f#$k to get to the insane action and nuttso violence.

Rating: 3.5/5

RIYL: Baskin; Beyond the Black Rainbow; Harlequin (aka Dark Forces); The Neon Demon; Only God Forgives; Susperia; the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky; Conan the Barbarian

Blindspotting [Film Review]

Imagine a buddy cop movie (think the first Lethal Weapon film), but the buddies aren't cops, rather they are a white hood rat and a black soon-to-be ex-con. Toss in some over-the-top commentary on gentrification, slick visual elements (split screens, hyperintensive flashbacks, neon tinged night shots, etc.) and you've got a sweet slice of urban drama.
While far less absurdist than Sorry To Bother You (both films take place in Oakland, CA, btw), Blindspotting is no less hard-hitting on the socio-political-economic commentary. It is an excellent critique on what it means to be black in an increasingly gentrified community. The anti-hipster stance is militant, but also hilarious as fuck. The film strikes a nice balance between laugh-out-loud moments and tension drenched sequences that are as harrowing as they are thought provoking. The insights of a being a grown man in the hood were rendered with richness and deft nuance. Gritty like vintage Singleton and Lee and Hughes Bros.

Rating: 4.5 / 5
RIYL:
vintage Spike Lee; the spoken word musings of Danny Hoch; Boyz N The Hood; Menace II Society; Lethal Weapon if you edited it down to a short film that encompassed just the interactions between Murdoch and Riggs

Sorry To Bother You [Film Review]

Boots Raley's debut feature unfurls like a Terry Gilliam film as filtered through the lens of Spike Lee circa 1987. Or vice versa.
Absurd.
Brazen.
Hilarious.
In-your-face.
Plus it contains a wallopping W.T.F.?!?!?!? moment to end all WTF moments (it was like being knocked on your ass sideways after getting smacked in the face with an engorged donkey dick. Literally.)
It reminded me of Idiocracy, Brazil, Do The Right Thing, and a totally fucked-up Outer Limits episode. Additionally there is a noticeably heavy influence from Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufmann, and Spike Jonze.
The film contains blatant nods to Get Out, Gondry, Nickelodeon game shows gone awry, and probably a ton more references that I missed (there is a lot going on in this film in the background, so much so that I plan to see it a second time if I can).

Rating: 4.5
RIYL:
the early films of Sapike Lee (Do The Right Thing, She’s Gotta Have It, etc); the early films of Terry Gilliam (specifically Brazil); the early films of Michel Gondry; pretty much anything that Charlie Kaufman has written; the films fo Mike Judge (specifically Office Space and Idiocracy); the films of Spike Jonez; The Lobster