Mayhem

(Not to be confused with the Muppet show on Disney+. )

A vicious satire about office politics during a “Purge” type of epidemic in a high-rise office building. Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving are full HAM in this tribute to The Raid: Redemption and/or Dredd, as they kill their way to the top floor to confront the big boss (Steven Brand). Well-paced, dark, and funny, with a skillful, twisty conclusion. Well-calibrated tone; it never loses its sense of wicked fun.

Five Star Murder

Low-budget, modern-day Agatha Christie analogue set in a 5-star hotel during a hurricane. Diverse cast. Surprisingly elaborate water effects and flooded sets. Otherwise, everybody has a secret agenda, bodies pile up, there’s a McGuffin, yadda yadda yadda.

Miguel Wants to Fight

Likeable, low-budget homage to Napolean Dynamite, My Bodyguard, and Three O’Clock High. Unlike a lot of high school kids, Miguel’s focus isn’t to party or find a date, it’s to start a fight - not to exact revenge or anything, but as a rite of passage. To become a man. The days of a fist-fight being an important milestone to manhood are old-fashioned and not so dramatically compelling. But the fights themselves are elaborate set pieces lifted from famous karate movies and starring his friends. So it seems the rite of passage for the filmmakers was to DIRECT a big fancy fight scene and showcase it. “Only when you direct a karate scene will you know you’re a man.” – some Hulu guru, probably.

Men in Black: International

Tessa Thompson is good at her job. She reminds me of Anne Hathaway. The “A” student. Good at everything. She makes it all look easy and breezy, which is part of the whole vibe in a Men in Black movie. Chris “Thor” Hemsworth delivers the disrupter/loose-cannon partner well, but this convention feels out of place in the very serious, dead-pan world of Men in Black. So instead of alien Dragnet, they did alien Lethal Weapon. The world is not as “fresh” as when the Barry Sonnenfeld movie hit the market back in 1997, but it entertains on an airplane.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The sets are amazing. The monster is scary. The acting is solid. The scenes are suspenseful. There’s nothing wrong with this movie. It entertains, and it’s beautiful to behold. But as a business move, my cynical side awakens. Why are we seeing YET ANOTHER Dracula story? Why does the monster look so much like you would expect the monster to look? Why is the plot, lifted from Alien and countless other “monster on a ship” thrillers, so predictable? Except for some welcome unconventional casting, there’s something SAFE about this, so it lacks risk and originality. Is that a bad thing? Not really. But it’s not going to blow the top off the world, either.

The YouTube Effect

Directed by Alex “Bill S. Preston, Esq.” Winter, and produced by Gale Hurd, among others, this well-made cautionary tale about the evils of YouTube lands softly, counterbalancing the horror stories with some positive sweetness, too. The problem it seems is its “algorithm” that makes more videos play after your original video has ended. Apparently, you’re never more than six videos away from full-on white supremacy and right-wing conspiracies. It’s also apparent that “influencers” abuse the platform to prank people, lie about vaccinations, and make money -- getting “engagement” however they can. Nevertheless, it’s amazing that there’s this website where you can look up almost any video you would ever need, inviting cultures to learn about other cultures and allowing outliers to find their tribe. It’s really too huge of a subject for Winter to draw any simple conclusions, but it's speedy and thoughtful 'til the end.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Informative, low-budget doc is more like a PBS special. Lots of stock footage and b-Roll as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler recounts her past -- heard from a cheap voiceover recording. It’s melancholy because she was basically exploited by the movie studios and the US military, who used her radio invention without giving her money or credit. Interviews with her children and grandchildren add insight to what I’m sure is a tip-of-the-iceberg portrait of a pretty complex woman.

Tread

Based on a real incident in 2004 in which a lunatic wronged by a cabal of business people in a small town in Colorado builds a home-made tank and starts driving over buildings and shooting at people. There are some big-name producers behind this doc, which sustains itself by including an actual audio recording/manifesto from the tank-building miscreant and re-enacts the attack with a mock-up of the tank presumably built for the film. Filmmakers structure the story to make the suicidal man a sympathetic, Rambo-like anti-hero. They’re lucky he didn’t kill anybody, or it would be a very different film. Deep down, it’s what everybody wants to do right? Build a tank and drive over your enemies? Glorious, glorious revenge can be so satisfying. But I bet some of the terrorized people in the town of Granby didn’t find it all so funny.