Delayed Reaction: Spoonful of Sugar

Premise: A young woman taking experimental medication with LSD gets a job as a caretaker for a family of a young boy with some strange ailments.

This is really more psychological thriller than horror. It's as much The Hand That Rocks the Cradle as anything. There's enough haunting imagery that I won't gripe too much about calling it horror though. I mainly saw this for Morgan Saylor anyway. After doing a batshit crazy movie like White Girl, I'm on board for whenever she decides to pick an intense role. She goes all in. I mean this next comment as a compliment: She looks like someone frazzled by drugs. She's also nearly 30 but could still pass as a high-schooler in a pinch. That age uncertainty works well for a role like this where she has to have too much and too little life experience in different ways.

I've seen enough variations of this movie that nothing truly surprised me in it. It's like how there are only so many ways a boxing match can end, but they can still be exciting to watch in a movie. The direction Spoonful of Sugar goes is nice in a "who are the real monsters in this movie" way. The fact that Saylor is on drugs and hallucinating for most of the movie means it's always interesting to look at.

All in all, I was hoping it would be a bit spookier, but it mostly worked in the ways it was supposed to.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: From Black

Sometimes, you just watch a Shudder horror movie because you recognize an actress in it and want something straightforward and scary. From Black just barely met me at that level. There is nothing special about this supernatural occult film. In fact, it's overly familiar. Anna Camp isn't ideal for this role. She never really reads as a recovering addict trying to put her life back together. She's always an attractive actress who died her hair dark. At the end of the day though, I set low expectations and this mostly met them.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Fool's Paradise

Formula: Being There * Bowfinger

It takes a lot for me to come out of a movie praising Being There as doing something the right way. I really hated Being There. I think it's toothless social commentary that pats itself on the back for being prescient, when it's actually making the same point every generation makes about society. Fool's Paradise is very much Being There except that it specifically targets Hollywood.

It is the feature directorial debut of Charlie Day. Day plays a mute man who is incapable of forming his own thoughts. After he's thrown on the street due to no health insurance, he's hired onto a movie as leverage against a movie star he looks identical to. He ends up replacing that star, getting the name Latte Pronto, and going through all the stages of stardom. I mean all of them. Rise to fame. Fall from grace. Whirlwind romance. Swift divorce. Franchise films. Good press. Bad press. Getting a big-time agent. Getting passed off to a junior agent. Friendships and fallouts with big stars. Every stereotypical Hollywood beat you can think of happens to him. And quickly. The only constant is Lenny (Ken Jeong), a struggling publicist who latches onto Latte early on for a quick buck but does seem to be the one person actually looking out for him.

There's a decent amount of this that sounds pretty funny. On paper, Kate Beckinsale and Adrien Brody as different flavors of method, vapid Hollywood stars sounds pretty funny. Day has a lot of friends willing to check in for quick scenes and stupid gags. Day himself is pretty good at wordless acting. He's honed his foolishness for years.

The problem is that a movie moves from one unfunny, unclever beat to the next for 98 minutes before just ending. The strangest thing is that the movie doesn't know what era of Hollywood it's skewering. The production design often evokes an older Hollywood of the 50s or 60s. The soundstages and films he's in certainly look more like the movies churned out back then. But it definitely is set in the modern day. So what is it making fun of? I'm not even convinced that Charlie Day believes the commentary he's making about Hollywood. I came away from this baffled by the decision to make this at all. As much as I dislike a movie like Being There, I at least know what point it was trying to make. I understand what humor it was going for. It did understand the society it was satirizing. Fool's Paradise literally feels like the same kind of poorly considered, overly-noted, uninspired movie that Latte Pronto would star in. And not in the meta, self-satirizing way.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Premise: A widow goes through her daily life and becomes bored by her routine.

I remember when I first heard about this movie a few years ago. I thought it sounded fascinating. It's a movie about watching the repetition of a woman's life and searching for the small cracks as her sanity unravels. I can really get into a good slow-play. Schindler's List works because of the detail of Liam Nesson's performance slowly changing. Paris, Texas blew me away by how its slow pacing paid off huge by the end. When Jeanne Dielman surprisingly came in first on the latest Sight and Sound poll*, that pushed the movie even higher up my watchlist.

*The 100 Greatest Films of All-Time. Assembled once every decade.

Sadly, I hated this movie.

It's a problem I run into a lot with movies. There's a difference between doing something well and making something that's good. Jeanne Dielman is a fantastically executed experiment. At well over 3 hours, it really takes its time. Nothing rushes the film. Delphine Seyrig makes so many small choices in her performance. I applaud the execution of the film.

The audacity of time spent is not a feature I care for though. To me, it feels like the art is putting the onus on me much more than on itself. For example, if I watch 100 episodes of a bad TV show, by the end, I'll end up feeling something for the characters. The familiarity is inescapable. By the hundredth episode, if something happens to a character, I'll have a reaction. That's not a sign of great performance or great writing. That’s just the familiarity anything earns from time spent. Similarly, there isn't anything particularly interesting about the filmmaking or performances in Jeanne Dielman. It's a lot of static shots. There's little dialogue. There isn't anything particularly special about the ways in which Delphine Seyrig acts slightly more frazzled as the film continues. There are a lot of movies that could make me feel something after 3+ hours with it. That Jeanne Dielman does take that long to play out doesn't make it special. So yeah, this was a big waste of time.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Peter Pan & Wendy

Premise: The Peter Pan story...again.

I'd like to formally announce my self-nomination for the position of Movie Czar. I'll be running on a single-issue platform. My proposal is this. Before anyone is allowed to make another version of either Pinocchio or Peter Pan, they must get unanimous approval from a select committee of the grumpiest movie fans to prove that there is sufficient interest for another version of the story to be told.

For whatever reason, those two stories are the ones that all filmmakers or producers seems to have in their back pocket as a dream project. So, when these filmmakers get a blank enough check and enough wistful nostalgia, they present their take on the movie and it's pretty much the same take you've seen before

By all means, I should love Peter Pan & Wendy. I enjoy the animated movie. I think David Lowery quietly made one of the best Disney classic remakes with his Pete's Dragon in 2016. Between A Ghost Story and The Green Knight, Lowery has established himself as one of my favorite working directors. If anyone could find a good slant on the Peter Pan story, it's probably him.

Alas, I just plain didn't like this movie. It was the same Peter Pan story I've seen a dozen times before, with enough of the problematic elements sanded away to not ruffle any feathers. Alexander Molony lacks the charisma to make Peter work. To be fair, virtually no child performer can pull the role off. Ever Anderson isn't a particularly memorable Wendy either. I could see a Raffey Cassidy or a Mackenzie Foy playing her better 5 years ago. I was surprised how little fun I had watching Jude Law as Captain Hook. This should be the kind of weirdo supporting role he's relished getting in the last decade.

I'll admit right here that most of my assessment isn't that objective. Perhaps the movie plays better with younger audiences. Perhaps my Peter Pan fatigue was too much for the movie to overcome. I don't know for sure. I just know that I was too bored to ever get into this movie.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Heaven's Gate

Premise: Some land barons fight some European immigrants in 1890s Wyoming.

Most movies I talk about on here only exist as movies. Dead Again is just this two-hour movie I liked watching and that's the full story. I don't know about its production. I don't have to think about its box office or stars. I can just talk about the movie and that's it. However, there are some that can never just be about the movie. The Crow is the movie in which Brandon Lee died while shooting. All the Money in the World is the movie that had to be reshot to replace Kevin Spacey. The Interview is the movie that caused Sony to be hacked.

Heaven's Gate is one of the latter movies. It is the epic Michael Cimino passion project that nearly broke a studio and hastened the end of the New Hollywood era. It was considered such a flop upon release that after four decades of positive reassessment, it still can't shake the stink of being a disaster.

I can't really rate Heaven's Gate. I watched all 3+ hours of it from the perspective of someone who knew it went over budget and knew it was a nightmare to make. My notes for this were things like "That scene looks like a lot a money went into that", "That's so many extras for that", and "How hard was it to get that shot?"

It's a very good-looking movie. I can see how it went over budget, and a lower budget version of this would've been pretty bad. I like the cast. It's not the first person I would've thought of for any of the roles and that works for it. It's better that it's Kris Kristofferson and not a movie star like a Burt Reynolds. I like that it's Isabelle Huppert and not Jane Fonda with a French accent.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t enthralled enough by the visuals, performances, or conflicts to stay interested for the incredible run time. There's a difference between a story needing some time to breathe and simply taking up too much time. My go to example is when I read the abridged The Count of Monte Cristo and the unabridged version years later. I adored the abridged version when I read it. Unabridged is a thousand pages longer yet I couldn't tell you a single story beat that wasn't in the abridge version. The only thing the unabridged version offered me was more pages. That's how Heaven's Gate felt to me. I truly don't understand how there isn't a 2- or 2.5-hour version of it that could be just as good. There are long movies that do need that length; one's I don't even love. Once Upon a Time in America is an OK movie, and it really does need its length. Heaven's Gate is simply bloated by ambition. Or maybe that's its reputation still informing me 35 years later.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3

Formula: Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2 + sadness

I don't know how much I buy into the idea of "Marvel fatigue". I think we get enough evidence every year or two that, if the idea if good enough, audiences will come out in droves to see it. What I'll say instead is that the MCU has gotten too big. The problem isn't even too many movies or too many characters, necessarily. The problem is that there is too much to juggle now. The thing that made the Infinity Saga work so well was that between Avengers movies, we didn't have to wait that long for another standalone installment for a character. 2 and 3 years between Iron Man movies. 3 and 2 between Captain America movies. The 4 years to get from Thor: The Dark World to Ragnarök was the exception. Since Endgame though, they've been spending so much time trying to create new franchises without sunsetting the old ones. The result is much longer waits. 5 years between Ragnarök and Thor: Love & Thunder. 5 years between Ant-Man movies. 6 years between Dr. Strange movies. 6 years between Guardians of the Galaxy sequels. Hell, we're even looking at 6 years between Avengers movies. Black Panther was only 4 years, although you could argue continuity on that one, given Chadwick Boseman's death. I don't think it's a coincidence that the largest over-performer of the post-Endgame era was Spider-Man: Now Way Home, which came only 2 years after the last Spider-Man movie.

The thing that made the MCU successful in the first place was that it applied the same serial principles that audiences were adapting to on TV and applying them to movies. So, once or twice a year, they'd give a new installment. People never had to wait that long to check back in with a character. And, it turned out the audience turnover was negligible. It's getting harder to do this though. I remember watching Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and having to remind myself what Strange's deal was. Why was Rachel McAdams there? Who are the other Strange-specific side-characters I need to remember?

All this is preamble to say that I sure wish Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 could've come out a couple of years ago*. I sure felt like I'd lost track of what the gang was up to. It didn't help that I hadn't seen the Holiday Special, I suppose.

*Yes. I’m aware COVID is also to blame for the delay.

Volume 3 is the Rocket movie. The inciting event is a powerful artificial being coming to take Rocket back to his creator - a scientist known as the High Evolutionary. Rocket gets hurt, and most we see of him for much of the movie is in flashbacks to his origin story. These flashbacks are my favorite part of the movie, however I also think they hurt the movie overall. The flashbacks introduce a bunch of cute animal experiment friends for Rocket who I immediately loved. The film finally gets to the pain that Rocket has never been open about before.

On the other hand, this puts present Rocket out of commission for a lot of the movie, and he's a key cog to make this machine work. The balance is already off with Peter (Chris Pratt) depressed about losing his Gamora (Zoe Saldana). The new Gamora is an outsider instead of part of the group. Nebula (Karen Gillan) does fill Gamora's role in some ways, but it's not quite the same. Groot (Vin Diesel) is closer to full adulthood now, which is nice. Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) are consistently who they've always been. It's weird having Rocket either not in the movie or as an emotional center of it rather than the wildcard though.

This is one of my more scattered Reactions because I really don't know what to say about the movie. It still has the same stars and creative team, so it delivers what I expect out of a Guardians movie. It's funny and in a slightly more pointed way than other MCU movies. The space action is big and fun. It's striking to compare how much better a mostly CGI world looks in this versus Quantumania. This movie is the end of the Guardians though and it knows it from the start. There's a lot of sadness in the relationships between Peter, Gamora, and Nebula. Rocket has to face demons from his past. There's a feeling in the group that maybe they've stagnated together, and it is ultimately about them going their separate ways. Unfortunately for me, I could feel that going into the movie, which makes it harder to invest in 2.5 hours of it.

I do hope that this is a sign that Disney realizes it's time to contract the universe some. Not in terms of fewer galaxies and multi-verses though. I'm fine with there being a quantum realm. If they are going to keep bringing in Shang-Chis, Eternals, and Marvels, let some Guardians, Thors, and Ant-Mans retire. Or at least don't make me wait 4+ years to see what happens next with them.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Shoah

Premise: An incredible exhaustive documentary about the Holocaust.

Back in 8th grade, I had a group project where each group picked a time period and had multiple assignments to turn in. One part was that we had to have a video project. Or maybe it was some piece of multimedia. The specifics don't matter. My friends and I in our group initially thought about funny, impractical skits we could do on our topic - The Great Depression. Eventually, we ran out of time and opted for the easiest idea we could think of: we found the oldest people we knew and asked them about their memories of the Great Depression. It turns out, that was the best move we could've made. We got an A and a special award at an "everyone gets a trophy" awards ceremony at the end of the year for it. The lesson I learned from that is that it's hard to mess up interviewing old people about a sad time in history.

This is exactly why Shoah is such a valuable document. It's 9-hours of interviewing people with first-hand accounts of the worst parts of the Jewish Holocaust. There's almost no way to mess something like this up. It reminded me a lot of the deeply unsettling doc The Act of Killing (and its sister doc, The Look of Silence). Much of all these docs are about the banality of evil. It's not Schindler's List recreating the liquidation of the Warsaw ghettos. Shoah is about matter-of-fact stories of people with jobs like burying the bodies.

Shoah is absolutely "homework viewing". There's no way to entice a person to watch it on entertainment levels. It's 9-hours of interviews. The interview subjects are older and not the most polished speakers. There are no revelations about the Holocaust that you didn't already know. I do think it's a movie anyone should watch though. It's one of our great cultural artifacts. If this was the one piece of media left about the Holocaust, it would be plenty. Never has the Holocaust felt more like a real event to me than while I was watching this. This is certainly one of the essential documentaries, even though you'll never see it mimicked in a Documentary Now.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

Formula: The Edge of Seventeen - 5 years

OK. That formula is lazy of me. Kelly Fremon Craig directed both Margaret and Seventeen. And it's far from the truth to suggest she made the same movie twice. However, The Edge of Seventeen is a movie I adore. And this is a recognition that Craig has a special skill with messy coming of age stories where the adults don't seem to know much better than the kids. Hell, even her lesser 2009 movie, Post Grad, shares some of that DNA. This time though, rather than an original story, she's taking on one of the most beloved YA classics of all time.

This is where I should give my standard caveat. I have not read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I don't know much about the book beyond what I learned in I Love the 70s and other such pop culture references. I'm assuming anything in the movie probably came from the book. This feels like the kind of movie where this is all good to say up front. There's no emotional connection that I'm combatting with this or list of events I needed to check off.

Margaret is a tween girl in 1970s New York then New Jersey. Like most children her age, she's ready to hurry up and reach adulthood without really understanding what that entails. The most direct sign of this is wanting to get her period, but it also comes out in her friendships, her relationship with her parents, her exploration of religion, and other things.

Immediately, the first thing that struck me was how smart it was to keep the story set in the time when it was written. While the themes are universal, a lot of specifics of this story are not. The internet alone is a game-changer for all of this. I've discovered that I'm a sucker for a good 70s setting anyway.

I loved the casting of the movie. Abby Ryder Fortson, as Margaret, nails the tone needed for this. She's been in several major movies before, and I sensed a comfort in this that probably came from that experience. It didn't feel like a director tricking a performance out of a child actor. Her and the actresses playing her friends just felt like tween girls doing tween girl things. Rachel McAdams as Margaret's mom is obviously wonderful. For wholesome, imperfect goodness, you aren't going to do much better than McAdams. I have fewer thoughts on Benny Safdie as Margaret's father. He's fine. Not a standout, but he fits the part of Jewish father around 40 who fits into the 1970s. Kathy Bates is charming as Margaret's Jewish grandmother, even if she doesn't feel particularly Jewish*.

*I can’t tell you that it would be better to get someone actually Jewish for the part. She’s an Oscar winner and makes it work. I’ll just say she doesn’t strike me as someone who would give birth to Benny Safdie.

On a screenplay level, the movie effectively covers an entire school year in well under 2 hours without anything feeling short-changed. It juggles many subplots and characters and leaves everything resolved that needs to be. In particular, the big moment at the end hits exactly as it should. This is a very sweet movie.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Judy Blum Forever

Premise: A documentary about Judy Blum.

Sometimes I wonder what I did throughout my childhood. I know I had interests. I wasn't some niche interest kid. Yet every year or two, it seems like there's some documentary that comes out about beloved children's entertainment that I wasn't part of. I didn't watch Mr. Roger's Neighborhood or Sesame Street. I also don't recall reading much if any Judy Blum. The book titles certainly sound familiar, but they were definitely not my go-tos. I guess I was more of a Beverley Cleary kid?

Much like the recent Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street docs, Judy Blum Forever meets its assignment. It covers the breadth of her life and career. It finds enough significant moments and highlights all the key accomplishments. It also does a great job showing the impact her books had on others. Even though I have little personal attachment to her work, I came away from the movie understanding why it was worth making a doc about her.

While the doc does understand the assignment, I wouldn't say it went for any extra credit. It's the exact doc I expected. There wasn't much to it that was inventive or unexpected. The depth of its impact will be directly proportional to how much you care about Judy Blum going in. That's hardly a bad thing though. Sometimes all you want is a documentary that is nice and straightforward.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Chevalier

Formula: A Knight's Tale + Amadeus / Shaft

There's a subgenre that's popped up a lot lately. I call it a "Wikipedia movie". The idea is that there's an event or person you can stumble upon as a Wikipedia article (or something similar) and think "wow that's really interesting." I tend to use "Wikipedia movie" as a pejorative, because when a movie works, I don't think about it. Where it's most often applied is when I do the test of whether I would've gotten just as much out of reading the Wikipedia article as watching the movie.

I imagine you can guess what I'm about to say.

Chevalier is a Wikipedia Movie. It's based on the true story of a black man, Joseph Bologne, who worked his way to the height of 18th century French society. He was a true Renaissance man who excelled at everything from composition to fencing. In a just world, we'd maybe remember him the way we remember Benjamin Franklin or Leonardo da Vinci. Alas, in large part due to his race and status at birth, he was wiped from much of history. I get how one could hear about him and assume there's a movie in there. I still think there is one. I just don't think Chevalier does it very successfully.

The movie follows a familiar rise and fall story. Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is born of a slave mother and wealthy white man (her owner). While his father wants nothing to do with him, he does recognize his skill at the violin and sends him off to a French boarding school. There, he becomes the best at virtually everything he tries which earns him the favor of Queen Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton). He's a striver who inevitably hits the ceiling of where society will allow him to go. Between a failed attempt to become lead of the Paris Opera and an affair with a wealthy white woman (Samara Weaving), he watches all his status disappear. Eventually, he learns to embrace his black heritage and fight with the people in the French Revolution.

Where the movie loses me is that it can’t decide how anachronistic it wants to be. It's not A Knight's Tale, which fully pretends these are modern characters in a non-modern world. It's not The Patriot which is only trying to be an action movie with occasional nods to what actually happened*. Chevalier relies on me to pretend I'm in Bridgerton when things are going well and 12 Years a Slave when they are going badly. It's a rough tonal shift and it really took me out of the movie.

*My go to example in The Patriot is when we find out all the black people working on Mel Gibson's land in South Carolina are free and choose to work for him. That's a preposterous explanation. That character would absolutely be a slave owner, but because The Patriot ultimately isn't a movie that's concerned about being accurate, it says what it needs to to keep the audience on the protagonist’s side.

The movie was always watchable because Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, and the rest of the cast were good. I especially liked Minnie Driver showing up, fresh of the set of Phantom of the Opera. And it has some good 18th century costume and production design.

The general consensus of the movie has been pretty positive, which surprised me. I do kind of get the feeling that a lot of that is owed to people being interested to learn that there was this historical person more so than they were interested in the actual movie. Again, a hallmark of a "Wikipedia Movie". Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize why I'm in the minority on this.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Insomnia

Premise: LA Police Detectives are called to a remote Alaskan town to solve a murder.

While I've seen all of Christopher Nolan's movies, Insomnia has been the one I remember the least. It's not as stylish as his other movies, nestled between Memento and Batman Begins. The most important thing about it is that it's the movie that proved he could work above an indie budget.

The movie itself is standard fare for a crime movie. Al Pacino is excellently exhausted throughout the movie. He's dazed the whole time. This was Robin Williams in the peak of his villain era. For years, I would confuse this and One Hour Photo. This movie is great evidence of how unready Hollywood was to make Hilary Swank a star. She wins the Oscar in 2000. Her immediate follow-up movies are ones like The Gift and this where she plays supporting characters. It is strange to see her as the hungry young officer when she's already a couple years removed from a Lead Actress Oscar.

This is easily my least favorite Nolan movie, because it's the one that it feels the most like anyone else could make. Still, they don't make crime dramas like this very often anymore, so the movies ages quite well.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Ghosted

Premise: After a great first date, a man finds out the woman who ghosted him is actually a secret agent. And now he's mixed up in her latest job.

Can we just keep Chris Evans and Ana de Armas away from streaming productions for a little while? I haven't even seen de Armas on a movie screen since No Time To Die. Short of cameos or voice-work, the last time I saw Evans in a theater was Knives Out. I don't know how many times I can say it, but there's something different about a movie made for theaters. Notice how the first movie Evans and de Armas did together, Knives Out, was a beloved hit. The next one, the incredibly expensive The Gray Man, was widely panned, mostly for feeling generic. I can't prove it, but if that movie would've been made with theatrical in mind rather than Netflix streaming, it would've been made differently and played differently.

Ghosted is arguably even more generic. And I don't like saying that. I tend to be a fan of movies like this (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, True Lies). I like both leads a lot. They are great for an action movie and their combative relationship in Knives Out makes me think that could be tweaked for romantic chemistry. It just doesn't work in Ghosted though, and most of it has to do with Evans. De Armas since Knives Out has become one of Hollywood's go-to badass women, so she fits perfectly into this superspy role. Evans has proven he has two successful modes. The majority of his career has been as one of the great assholes (of both the lovable and detestable variety). Single-handedly because of Captain America, he's also great at entirely earnest roles. In both cases though, he's in at least what he perceives to be high status. Ghosted has the weird task of convincing the audience that Evans is a somewhat pathetic everyman. It's reductive to say he's too handsome to be an everyman. Many, many actors have done it. Rather, Evans hasn't figured it out yet, and it really shows in this.

The best way I can describe it is this. I remember during his press tour for Lightyear, Evans took a couple promo shots at Disney Land. Shortly after those we released, he got on his Instagram to point out that some people thought he was photoshopped into the pictures because his pose was exactly the same in both. Evans assured everyone that the photos were real, and he has to thank his impeccable posture for the confusion. That is not the story of someone ready to play an average dude.

That is the core issue of the movie that derails so much of the rest of it. The weird cameos don't help though. I know the idea of having Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Ryan Reynolds, and Jon Cho pop up briefly was to be a fun wink to the audience. They ended up having the opposite effect. It felt like the movie begging the audience to associate this with how much they enjoyed Evans in the Marvel movies. And the Reynolds cameo was particularly bizarre. It was so pointless to everything else happening at that point in the movie. The fact that it wasn't cut out played into a perception of desperate star-chasing in the movie: the idea that the best thing this movie could do was fit another big name into the credits and not worry screenplay, editing, or general flow of the movie.

I've gone on about this movie long enough. It's a major case of "I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed." While it's a harmless movie, it so easy to find similar movies that are just plain better.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Evil Dead Rise

Formula: (Evil Dead * Scream 6) / Scream 5

I don't remember the last time I was this nervous going into a movie. The 2013 The Evil Dead remains the only time I've ever nearly passed out from watching a movie and the only time I ever walked out of a movie midway through*. While there were specific circumstances surrounding that, I can't ignore the association I had with the Evil Dead and passing out. So, I made sure to be well rested, got a coke and copious snacks, and tested my luck with Evil Dead Rise.

*Some context. I did see The Evil Dead at an earlier showing in the day while I had a hangover, so I wasn't in the best state going in. I was actively enjoying watching the movie. However, at one point, there's a sequence with some needles, I think, and I could feel the blood leave my head. I got up to buy a soda, because I figured it was some kind of blood sugar thing mixing with my aversion to needles. Halfway to the concessions, I realize I was not going to make it. I was getting very lightheaded. So, I ducked into the bathroom nearby. I went into a stall where I proceeded to lay on the ground for a minute (I think) for it to pass. Thankfully no one else came into the restroom at that time, because that would've been super awkward. Once I came to, I got up and decided it was better to just walk home instead of trying to press through. So, there's some context, but yes, the headline is "The Evil Dead made me pass out".

I'm not the biggest Evil Dead fan. I've seen them all and I liked them. They aren't top tier horror for me. I do enjoy the playfulness juxtaposed with vicious violence. The movies manage to be scary while also acknowledging that this is fun for the audience. So far (ignoring Army of Darkness, which barely the same series), The Evil Dead has worked in a very specific premise: young people in a remote cabin in the woods. Evil Dead Rise moves it to the city, and I wasn't that sure it could work there.

The way Evil Dead Rise gets around this problem is by recreating the cabin feel in the middle of a city. It's set in an apartment building. It's a condemned building with only a few tenants left. There's an earthquake, which makes the stair unsafe and knocks out the power. So, functionally, the movie takes place in an isolated floor of a mostly empty building: the closest thing to the remote cabin setting.

The basic plot is what you'd expect/want from an Evil Dead movie. Someone finds the Book of the Dead. An evil force takes over someone who proceeds to kill a bunch of people. Instead of a group of young people this time, it's a family. The mother (Alyssa Sutherland) is the one who becomes the Deadite. The protagonist is her sister (Lily Sullivan).

The movie delivers. Sutherland is nice and creepy as the Deadite. This leans a lot into making the Deadites taunting malevolent forces. It's basically a game for the Deadite. Writer/director Lee Cronin mixes plenty of scares in though. Cronin definitely gets that the gnarly imagery and buckets of blood are what made this franchise so beloved.

I guess I didn't pass out from the movie, so you could call the movie a let-down? Perhaps it means it's less intense. I thought it was a solid entry in the franchise though. I hope it doesn't take another decade for a sequel, because this is one of the horror franchises best suited for endless sequels.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Renfield

Formula: What We Do In the Shadows / Fear

Like the zombie movie, vampire movies aren't going away. They just aren't. For whatever reason, that specific permutation of that specific idea has stuck, and there will always be another vampire movie on the horizon. Sadly, I don't see where the next big invention in the genre is coming from either. You know, the "fast zombies" moment people point to with 28 Days Later. The last invention for vampires was maybe the brand of comedy vampires of What We Do In the Shadows or teen vampires in The Lost Boys. Until someone finds that breakthrough, the best we can hope for is an excellent execution of a familiar idea.

Renfield is a familiar idea. Literally, it's about a vampire's familiar. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has been Dracula's (Nic Cage) familiar for a century or two. They now live in the modern day. After decades of repeating a cycle where Dracula is discovered, nearly killed, and gets his strength back with Renfield's help, Renfield has realized this is an abusive relationship. So, he tries to get out. Dracula doesn't like this. Oh, and they get tangled up with a crime family at the same time. It's not the cleanest premise, but it mostly works.

This probably sounds familiar. There are certainly shades of the What We Do in the Shadows TV show in particular. Nic Cage has already done a vampire comedy (Vampire's Kiss). Nicholas Hoult was in Warm Bodies about a decade ago, which hits the same tone.

They could've done a lot more with this premise. A good vampire comedy these days has the feeling that the filmmaker is working through a checklist of observations about vampires over the years. I hate to keep referencing it, but that's why What We Do in the Shadows works. It's dense with jokes, like Taika Waititi has been thinking about vampire movies for years and come up with endless ways to puncture the idea. In Renfield, the main move is to make vampires incredibly violent. That's about it. There are a bunch of comic fight scenes that all lean on over-the-top violence. Don't get me wrong. That was funny. It just wasn't enough to hold my interest throughout.

It's an easy enough watch though. Cage delivers what he promises with the performance. Hoult taps into a comic obliviousness that he's mastered in recent years. There are plenty of fun supporting performances like Awkwafina as a real cop in an unreal world and Ben Schwartz as Jean Ralphio if he was a crime boss's son.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Rec2

Premise: Rec technically ended on a cliffhanger, so here's a bunch of answers you maybe didn't need.

Despite how prevalent they are, horror sequels are really hard. The audience already knows the game, so the options are ‘escalate’ or ‘pivot’. A pivot tends to piss off the audience, so almost all sequels opt to escalate: do the same thing, only more. That's pretty much the tactic of Rec2. Since we already know about the virus, it's about increasing the number of characters, getting more cameras, and heightening the stakes. I remember there was a religious angle to the original movie, and Rec2 really leans into it. It's damn near apocalyptic. That did less for me.

I do like that there are basically two groups not in communication with each other until late. Since we don't get the surprise of finding out about the quarantine, the surprise is figuring out what this other group was up to. I've always been a fan of stories that change based on one's perspective, so that was a nice addition to this.

Otherwise, this didn't work as well for me. The religious angle felt like too much of a puzzle: “There's an evil force so we just have to find the right good force to counteract it”. Whereas the first movie had more of a defeatist view: “Well, there's this virus. What can we really do?” I still might see more of these because I have a near infinite capacity for more found-footage movies, but I do now recognize this as a franchise of diminishing returns, not deepened impact.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Catherine Called Birdy

Premise: A young woman in the Middle Ages doesn't want to be married off to an old man.

Lena Dunham laid out her mission statement early on in Girls. In the first episode, Hannah walks back the statement "I want to be the voice of my generation" to "I want to be a voice in a generation". This is what made most of the discourse that followed around the show so funny to me. It was often judged as a show saying something about life as a whole in the early 2010s, when it's actually a show about very specific people with a very specific experience. Applied more broadly, I'd say Dunham is at her best when writing about characters who don't fit in and don't appreciate the comforts they enjoy. The titular Girls all had safety nets which allowed them a lot of opportunity to be idiots.

She's applied that same skill to Catherine Called Birdy. This is one of those movies that was initially lost in the streaming content deluge. Then it kept coming up in "Do you know what else I liked, actually?" comments. Given some of the complaints about Hannah in Girls and the absolute success of Catherine in this, I now wonder why Lena Dunham hasn't been writing teenagers since the beginning. The same things that work for teenage Birdy are so much less palatable in the adult Hannah.

Catherine Called Birdy is a success because it is happily anachronistic. Catherine is a modern girl. She has a privileged life but hasn't yet had to face the unfortunate compromises that come with that life in that time. Bella Ramsey is a lot of fun as a tomboy who wants to hold back womanhood as long as she can. Ramsey is a great Lena Dunham proxy in that - I can't put this any nicer - it's easier to naturally root for her. When Dunham writes for herself, she likes to lean into the least flattering parts of her character. Ramsey is better at finding ways to make the same actions rootworthy. And that's what this movie needed.

I can't say anything specific about the plot did much for me. It's really the overall sense of humor and Ramsey's performance that did it for me.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Pleasure

Premise: An aspiring porn star moves her way up the industry, for better and worse.

Look, we're all adults here. We know why I saw this movie. And I'm not alone in that. I was first aware of this movie from the digital Sundance Film Festival in 2021. It was the only movie I couldn't get a pass to. In the year of CODA, the first movie to run out of passes was Pleasure. We're all sickos, I guess. And since then, this has been a movie I've wanted to check out. Was it worth the fuss?

What's most interesting about Pleasure is how much access it got to the big brands of the porn world. They were able to use some of the biggest brands and cast a lot of authentic performers to play the roles. The movie does a good job of showing the business side of the industry and how it blurs a lot of lines. Sofia Kappel's Bella does dream of stardom. She does put herself in questionable circumstances. Yet, there are times where it isn't clear who is using whom more.

The arc of the movie is everything you've seen before. Humble beginnings. Maneuvering to get on top. Defining moments where she can either do what's right or do what's best for her. And when she gets to the top, she realizes it isn't everything she hoped it would be. The only thing separating this movie is the specific industry that it is set in.

It's a tough movie to pull off because people will come at it from all sides. Some will think it sanitizes the porn industry and ignores the ugliest parts of it. Others will say it demonizes what is typically a business just like any other. It most succeeds in striking a balance. Beyond the paint-by-numbers plot, my main issue was that it's never really clear why Bella wants this. Almost from day one she seems hesitant about it; unsure. I couldn't tell you much about the character or what drives her.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend