Backrooms

"Consider if you will a furniture store owner named “Clark.” A peddler of sofas and end tables, a man you might pass in the aisle of his own showroom without a second glance. But beneath the veneer of particleboard and price tags lies a heart in ruins, shattered by words spoken in anger, words that ended a marriage and began a slow, private sentence of exile. Clark has sought refuge where so many broken men have sought it before — in the bottom of a bottle, and when sobriety demands it, in the office of an analyst. In the basement of his undistinguished furniture store, Clark will learn a terrible truth: that the interior design of grief has its own architecture. That a man's regret can grow walls, and hallways, and sinister mascots of missed opportunities. But he might also find a key that could unlock the solution to his pain. In the depths of his store basement, Clark will discover a portal not to another dimension but a portal into his own troubled psyche. 

Now witness "Mary," the brave psychotherapist, an expert trying to guide her client Clark away from his pain. When she explores said furniture store basement, she is not entering the mysterious portal into her patient’s troubled mind, ladies and gentlemen, but in fact she is stepping into… 

 …the Twilight Zone."

Disclosure Day

 

** SPOILERS! DON’T BE A BABY! **

Emily Blunt's Margaret is the achievement in Spielberg's latest extra-terrestrial opus. Blunt's intrepid weather-gal hero navigates the increasingly ridiculous conspiracy to cover up the UFOs, the most squirmy and suspenseful part of which is wondering when she's going to crack. Her journey is vast and deep, and she delivers with great emotional resonance. You need this canary in the coal mine, plot-wise, to reflect back to the audience a narrative with stakes so huge it would seem like a cheesy sequel to Independence Day in lesser hands. All of the acting throughout, in fact, is performed with great gravitas. Never a wink. Never a goof. Not even one eye roll wondering if it's all a hoax from the super meepy reporter at the end. I'm not sure if all of this really "works," but I really enjoyed it. The chases. The E.S.P. The ordinary people. The lofty goals of telling the people to shut up and "listen." Spielberg is the fine-dining executive chef and the main course is popcorn. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

I finally watched this Marvel sequel after several years. It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t trust themselves to pick a new Black Panther after Chadwick Boseman died, so they held tryouts: fill the cast with tough women and she who chews the most scenery wins the job. Ipso facto: it’s big, expensive, and fun and the drama is overflowing. I should have seen it in theaters. Alas.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Magicians are cheesy. That’s the overarching theme. Steve Carrell and Steve Buscemi nail their impossibly arrogant and clueless drips, pettily feuding per the bromance formula. Jim Carrey makes a great foil as a David Blaine-esque douchebag who believes stunts are the new magic. His comeuppance is perfect and hilarious. Carrell doesn’t quite redeem his rapey misogynist jerk, I think they leaned into that “casting couch” plot a little much. Ergo, while the idea is there, execution felt a little ham-fisted. It’s tough with magic, though. It’s just so often so excruciatingly stale.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Danny Boyle did not direct this movie. If a film student ever needs a good example of what the director does and if it matters, watch this, then watch its previous and far superior chapter, 28 Years Later. It’s hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong. You could give a master chef and an amateur chef the same cookie recipe, and there’s a good chance the master bakes the better cookie. It’s the little things. The focus. The pacing. Where to cut. The use of music. It’s unfortunate, because there are a LOT of interesting ideas in the script. All the pieces are there. The returning cast is on point. The final product just leaves a weird taste in your mouth. Too many eggs? Not enough salt? It’s hard to say.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

The first half works. Bounty hunter Mando takes contracts bringing down Imperial assholes (i.e., Nazis) as he teaches Grogu the Mandalorian ways. One can only imagine what Grogu will be like as a Force-wielding Jedi bounty hunter. (So like, what if Yoda was an assassin??) 

The adventure slows down considerably when Mando gets captured by his dreaded rival and tracker "Wok Asahat." Wok captures Mando — which is bullshit; nobody should ever be able to capture Mando — and drags him back to the Jabba siblings so they can torture him to death. Granted, he escapes, barely, and thus begins the gentle parable about caretaking. Grogu can't heal him right away, as his super Force powers would imply. No, no. Grogu must toil and struggle, implying a close family bond. This is the way. 

After Favreau and company test our resolve and attention span with the gentle caretaking, Ellen Ripley and the X-wing fighters arrive, and the Imperial ass-kicking begins again in earnest, as it should. I'm a sucker, I guess. It's always a treat when there's a new Star War.

Sisu: Road to Revenge

It’s always such a pleasure to watch Nazis explode into bloody pieces, as they did with violent glee in its Finnish action predecessor. Now the villains are the Red Army, who aren’t exactly Nazis, but they dress like Nazis, so it’s okay if they explode. This symphony of mayhem directly references famous action movies and, of course, Wile E. Coyote cartoons. While the Coyote was only ever undone by his own ineptitude, our revenge-driven ("constructive resentment") Sisu hero is the absolute architect of so many spectacularly gruesome deaths and never lets his own crippling pain get in the way. To see it is to love it.

Predator: Badlands

What do you get when you team-up a gross, weird-mouthed Predator with a bubbly, blonde, humanoid robot?? Cue “Odd Couple” theme! On paper this sounds like a tired, sequel cash-grab, but it was fairly watchable. With Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) at the helm the pace is swift, the action is fresh, and the performances are light but effective. 

It's always amusing to consider that aliens on distant planets speak gibberish, leaving audiences to read subtitles for the fake language. Like, are filmmakers afraid that they’ll be accused of cultural appropriation by some virtue-signaling millennial because they’re not honoring the fake native language of the Yautja? Are they worried the Yautja elders will boycott their movie if they’re depicted as growling and grunting in English? It’s weird to think about. Someone should publish a definitive, Strunk & White-esque style guide for writing dialogue in fake alien languages. It's worth noting, too, that there are a couple of small nods to the Alien universe, honoring — however lightly — the franchise's mediocre crossover entries of the past. Suffice to say, it's a fun world-building flick with a lot of sequel potential.

The Devil Wears Prada 2

I’m ashamed to admit I was kinda confused by the plot. Plucky Anne Hathaway is brought in to save a legacy print magazine because she’s now a plucky, hard-nosed journalist. But she saves the day by finding a buyer for the magazine that isn’t her evil bestie? And the puppet-master is actually Stanley Tucci? The value of the previous movie, I thought, was that you could survive assholes in a cutthroat world by staying optimistic and plucky. I’m not sure what the takeaway is here - I’m not sure the filmmakers know, either. What they are sure about is: the wish fulfillment. There are fancy clothes in this world and you absolutely should be wearing them. Just make sure you never, ever look happy about it.

The Warriors

At a retro screening at the Academy of Motion Pictures museum, producer Lawrence Gordon explained that he took pride in the detail that the Warriors were a mixed-race gang, and how progressive that was at the time. What else is there to say? It’s a great movie for eleven-year-olds.

Ready or Not: Here I Come

Brace yourself for a bold statement: Samara Weaving is the new Bruce Campbell. Her enthusiasm for stunt work and physical comedy, her willingness to be covered in mud and sprayed with blood, and her commitment to the underlying fear and emotion of a scene — while still finding the humor — are on par with the Raimi muse and maestro of the form. During her character's horror trials, her face and eyes twist with pain, her lips tremble, and through sheer reliable technique she completely embodies a woman consumed by terror and frustration. Her willing and skilled co-stars match Weaving's manic energy, and the rising tide lifts all boats, making this a treat. It's not as surprising or original as its predecessor. That's the hazard of sequels, I guess. But it's still bloody fun.

Focker-in-Law

I watched a test screening of this November release, which I’m not allowed to write about because I signed an NDA - dutifully protecting the Focker story secrets. The last name “Focker”, you see, sounds like “fucker” and the comedy potential there is off the charts.

The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel

Centered primarily on original Chili Pepper Hillel Slovak, this rock doc still follows the tried-and-true formula of the rise and fall and rise of a band, as the band members destroy their lives with drugs. Bassist Flea comes off as the most meepy and sincere in his telling, while Anthony Kiedis reads as distant and guarded. Filmmaking is on par, as documentarians do what they can with limited amounts of archival footage and photos. There were certainly things I didn’t know about the band, so that’s a plus. But I didn’t find this very moving.

Project Hail Mary

What if Stanley Kubrick was a big softie? What if the apes in “2001” hugged and fist-bumped and HAL was helpful? That’s Project Hail Mary – Lord and Miller’s sappy-sweet Hallmark card to space movies. Ryan Gosling’s solitary space quest is filled with so much techno-jargon jibber-jabber, it’s often impossible to figure out what’s really going on. “The dilithium crystals have decoupled from the flux capacitor! If I don’t bypass it in 3.2 nanoseconds the whole ship will careen out of orbit!” Thankfully, Daniel Pemberton’s score beautifully and skillfully reminds us how to feel and when danger is lurking - filling the atmosphere with curiosity and hope. It’s a gem. It’s the bee’s knees. The astronomy and biology of it all is probably pretty accurate. But how could we know? What ends up mattering above all else is that Gosling’s reluctant astronaut is able to communicate with “Rocky” the loveable alien who is thankfully not an asshole or an acid-blood monster so that together they can save the universe or whatever. It’s a movie about communication. When our current political reality constantly reminds us of the many myopic tyrants’ unwillingness to communicate, it’s nice to fantasize about a universe that can. See it in IMAX.

The Secret Agent

Beautifully filmed, but I’m not sure I understand enough about Brazilian history to get this. Wagner Moura, a solid, engaging leading man, plays three roles across three generations: father, son, and grandson. The cinematographic razzle-dazzle involves using old Panavision anamorphic lenses to achieve a richly nostalgic 1970s feel. That with the groovy hair and the funny shirts make this look like it’s a brand new movie from the 70s. Tracking the revolutionaries, corrupt cops, and an entangled cluster of pseudonyms gets confusing — especially with subtitles — and the running time compounds that, making my eyes glaze over. So it’s a demanding view. It’s an Oscar nominee, so I watched it to keep up. But I think I missed the boat.

The Bride!

I admire risk. In art it should be rewarded. But what if the risk is bad? What if it’s ugly or grotesque? What if it’s feverish and prickly? Should it be rewarded anyway? Director Maggie Gyllenhaal calls in favors for her cast: her "Batman" co-star, her Lost Daughter lead, her husband, and her brother. Like Frankenstein’s face staples, they cobble together this flood of feminist delirium, intending to assault the audience with radicalness. “What Mary Shelley would have said if she could,” might be the misguided thesis. Sure it’s risky, and the trailer was good. But the movie is icky and dumb. So how do I reward risk? I mean: they already have my money. What else do they want?

Crime 101

Not so much a thriller as a “puzzler.” There are three protagonists: a thief, an insurance investigator, and a cop. We’ll call them Thor, Storm, and Hulk. They each have mean bosses and personal problems. And the only way to solve the plot puzzle and get the bag of diamonds is to combine as a trio and work together. Like a rotating Rubik’s cube, Tetris, or some other geometric brain teaser, committing to one thing often offsets another thing. Also, with any puzzle, there’s misdirection. And that’s when my brain starts misfiring and rewiring. Next thing you know, Thor gets rear-ended in traffic by a pretty love interest and all I can think is, “She’s in on it!” Because puzzles, right? Unfortunately, it’s not really a thrilling action movie. All of the action is happening in my poor brain as it tries to solve and write the movie. Unlike a quintessential noir (which this very much is), there’s a hopeful ending not akin to William Holden floating dead in a swimming pool. And that’s nice.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

It's a breath of fresh air to welcome back Gore Verbinski doing his signature sci-fi/comedy nuttiness. Sam Rockwell bursts in like he just teleported from a Terry Gilliam movie and spirit-guides the hapless diner jockeys on their free-form psychic adventure. This AI cautionary tale features lots of the deranged sci-fi greatest hits including ranting homeless-guy costumes, brain-dead drone children, squiggly squirmy electrical wires, and giant cats. Verbinski and company aren’t offering a lot of hope for the future here, but the journey dazzles with non-sequiturs and maniacal fun.

"Wuthering Heights"

A lot of people seem to know a lot more about actor/director Emerald Fennell than I do. As I understand it, there’s a point-of-view for her that’s part of her brand – an elevated kinky, studied sauciness. Caricatures of characters in historical novels are deployed as a delivery system into the pleasure center of the psyche as a means to sell popcorn to corset-flick cinephiles. As a Fennell novice, this reminded me of that old episode of Gilligan’s Island where Gilligan was Doctor Jekyll and Mary Anne was Eliza Doolittle. Or maybe a Simpsons episode where they’re goofing on a romance novel. It’s pretty, but less-than subtle. Fingers stand-in for lots of sexy things (if you catch my drift) and the wind machines could probably get top billing. The take-away is the experience itself, I guess. A five on the tissue-meter. Apparently, also, it’s based on a famous, old novel? It’s hard to tell.

Frankenstein

Not as emotional watching for the second time, this time on the big screen. It’s still a marvel, and beautiful to behold. The emotional part was the appearance afterwards from actor Jacob Elordi and Guillermo, who gave almost a sermon about how much he loved movies and how important they are to our culture. What. A. Guy.

Send Help

** GROOVY SPOILERS ** 

Rachel McAdams, who’s always good, slightly strains believability as a savant-dork. She’s kind of doing a Michelle Feiffer in Batman Returns “pretty nerd” thing. Why must “Linda from accounting,” her interpretation of the “Hot Librarian” archetype, also be a slob with food on her face? She manages to keep impeccably fashionable and put-together when (spoiler alert!) she’s stranded on a desert island, and she never gets food on her face again. What does feel more authentic is her obsession with Survivor and outdoor adventure in general. They used to call the archetype “Lola Granola” but now I guess it’s “Bushcraft Babe?” Anyhoo… 

Linda’s desperate to prove herself to her shitty, idiot boss and when the meticulous office work doesn’t do the trick, she’s hoping the survival skills will win his respect. She maintains her blind optimism that there is no glass ceiling or sexism in her bro-culture office. Sam Raimi and company know better. Nepo-baby-boss-boy remains an ungrateful piece of shit the entire time, as the role requires, and completely deserves the Annie Wilkes in Misery-style of treatment. The really fun scenes in Raimi’s getting-back-to-his-roots playset of doom, and there are many, spawn from McAdams’ neediness and eventual unwillingness to help this pipsqueak. You can’t wait for this guy to finally get eaten by a shark or something. Unfortunately, when the film concludes the payoff is lacking. The character’s wants, both contextual and subtextual, lack relief; dissipating with a few sight gags. That doesn’t mean the movie isn’t really, wickedly fun. It is. It just needs to leave a little dessert for the deserted.

The Rip

Doing press, Matt Damon expressed frustration that Netflix required them to reiterate the plot multiple times throughout the movie to appease the “doomscrollers.” First, I love it when writers do that. Second, in this particular movie, I can see exactly why the Netflix bigwigs would need that. This cop-shop thriller can get CONFUSING. In what could almost count as a remake of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Matt & Ben are in top form here, but the characters are all lying to each other (spoiler alert). So, it’s often impossible to really know what’s going on. Filmakers cheat a little bit by cutting away from key conversations and screwing with the timeline to withhold information from the viewer. The whole movie is a twisty puzzle, reliant upon characters overhearing, misunderstanding, and lying to other characters. It knows what it is, and “MattFleck,” as well as the strong supporting cast, understand the assignment.

Dead Man's Wire

On paper, Gus Van Sant’s true-crime kidnapping saga is a fascinating story with an amazing, unexpected result. But because of this result, tensions can only escalate to a certain point, and then plateau. It’s ironic, I guess, that the action and suspense are hampered by the facts. So, it’s an engaging tale, just not a very cinematic one. Surprising details about the incident unfold. The cops, the reporters, and a local DJ all play roles in the slow-burn chaos. But the film intends to teach and inform rather than entertain. So the “action” is middling. It’s not, in any sense, bad. But (spoiler alert), don’t expect a De Palma-style shoot-out with Pacino careening over a guardrail.

The Accountant

I finally checked-out this 2016 thriller on a recent flight, and it proved to be better than expected. I avoided it for a long time because, frankly, it sounded stupid. Some of my skepticism was real. A math-savant assassin with autism, played by Ben Affleck? I’m too used to seeing him as a superhero and/or misfit cop. There were moments when you believe his neurodivergent quirks and ticks, but other times where you can’t help but just see Ben Affleck. The same is true for Anna Kendrick. She’s so bubbly and extroverted it’s sometimes hard to buy her as an accounting genius/shut-in. But I admire risk, and casting against type could be a recipe for disaster. Nevertheless, the story intrigues, the action is taut, and the resolution satisfies. It’s trying to do something different with the assassin genre. That matters, and for that it deserves a few brownie points.

The Fountain of Youth

Open Letter to Guy Richie: 

Dear Guy, 

You are not Michael Bay. You don’t need to be Michael Bay. We have a Michael Bay. It’s Michael Bay. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be Michael Bay. I mean, Michael Bay is a successful bloke. And if Michael Bay isn’t available for some reason, you could do it, I suppose? It’s a paycheck. And, I mean, ya gotta eat, right? I don’t blame you. But should you decide to take a crack at making movies about tough-talking soccer hooligans capping each other in Brixton, and it doesn’t have any helicopters, I will support you. 

Until then: Cheers, bugger off ya muppet, bob’s your uncle or whatever.

28 Years Later

Zombies. It’s surreal to be reporting that one of the best movies of the year is centered around b-movie monsters. But here we are. 2025: The year of the prestige horror movies. Sinners. Frankenstein. Weapons. And although this is just as good as the best of the bunch, no nominations. It’s okay. Danny Boyle has his Oscar. 

Scary, dramatic, and poignant, Boyle’s zombie-verse places us in the shoes of a 12-year-old (Alfie Williams) receiving grim tutorials from his father on how to survive the post-apocalypse and kill the infected. It’s mythical. Boyle’s execution resonates with gravitas – from the casting to the music to the videography - shot primarily with iPhones in some important, old aspect ratio. Harrowing sequences – not just of the raging undead – but of mental illness, cancer, childbirth, and death itself, grip this viewer and IMPOSE admiration. This was SO GOOD.