Movies I wish I had skipped. This could be for any number of reasons: the film was made sloppily, the narrative didn’t engage me, or I simply could not connect with the film in any way for whatever reason.
In The House with a Clock in Its Walls, poor man’s Jacob Tremblay, Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) moves into his Uncle Jonathan’s (Jack Black) house in Michigan following the untimely death of his parents. The house, decorated at the gate with year-round pumpkins, is filled with clocks. One of these clocks resides within the walls.
Get it?
Jonathan is a bearded man who wears kimonos and top hats, aka a warlock. He eats enough cookies (and nothing else) that he is, optimistically, pre-diabetic. His platonic roommate Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) is defined by her love of purple. And his nephew, Young Sheldon, is precocious beyond what is healthy for a child. He quotes dictionary entries for fun. That’s what we’re working with here.
The Predator is proof that 1980s action movies cannot be made today. Cult favorite Shane Black and his writing partner Fred Dekker have concocted a sequel-reboot stuffed to the ears with the worst of ’80s action tropes. But at least there’s an alien in it, right?
“In 1980s Detroit, Ricky Wershe Jr. was a Street Hustler, FBI Informant and Drug Kingpin—all before he turned 16,” boasts the poster for White Boy Rick, the true-crime drama courtesy of director Yann Demange and Matthew McConaughey’s hair. Because if any actor could use a mullet for its full creative potential…
The eponymous white boy is portrayed by Richie Merritt, a newcomer to the screen. Merritt is a high school student, unlike Ricky, who has dropped out of school to Continue reading White Boy Rick (2018) Movie Review→
A political nomination, triplets on the way, a terminal diagnosis, a constantly chiming cell phone, and a pistol. These are the nodes determining the tizzy that is The Party, a black-and-white dark comedy from Sally Potter.
Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just received a new position within the opposition party. To celebrate, she hosts a small get together with friends.
At least, they appear as friends.
Husband Bill (Timothy Spall) sits dour in a chair, only stirring to move the needle on his turn table. College friend April (Patricia Clarkson) is quick to Continue reading The Party (2018) Movie Review→
Peppermint is essentially the same film as Eli Roth’s remake of Death Wish from earlier this year, only slightly less visually flat and generally more interesting. But don’t misunderstand. Peppermint is not a great movie. It is merely better than one of the most lackluster action films of the year.
The Nun is the latest entry into the The Conjuring franchise. After a standout appearance in The Conjuring 2, the eponymous demon nun (Bonnie Aarons) is given the standalone treatment. In this iteration, it is Romania in 1952. In the catacombs beneath a rural convent, two nuns approach a door sealed with a wooden beam. Carved in that lock, in Latin, are the words “God ends here.”
On the other side of the door…
Is an evil nun. Can’t imagine it’s a spoiler to mention that.
This cold open, aside from not making a ton of sense given the demon nun Valak’s end goal, establishes the foggy, gloomy atmosphere of the film. One of the nuns, as she runs from Valak, Continue reading The Nun (2018) Movie Review→
Kin may secretly be the most infuriating movie of the Summer.
It starts out innocuous enough: a stereotypical depiction of Detroit, in which everyone we see is either struggling financially or making ends meet through crime. Eli Solinski (Myles Truitt) is suspended from school after a fight and spends his days doing chores for his adopted father (Dennis Quaid). His brother Jimmy (Jack Reynor) is en route, just out of prison.
Jimmy is the root of all of the family’s problems, it seems. He owes money to the people that offered him protection in prison. When Taylor (James Franco) catches wind that Jimmy may not have the $60 thousand required, he Continue reading Kin (2018) Movie Review→
It is 1977. Croydon, London. Enn (Alex Sharp) and his two punk friends sneak into a club and subsequently search for the after party they weren’t invited to. Instead, they stumble upon a much different party. A much stranger party. Men and women, clad in leather suits that accent their genitals, mill about. People in blue body suits dance robotically. People in yellow body suits enjoy their individuality and physical form.
Imagine an intellectual property for children re-purposed for adults but written for the sensibilities of a child. In a nutshell, that is The Happytime Murders, the hard-R reskin of the Jim Henson muppet IP. The film is not created by children—it is directed by Henson’s son Brian and written by indie filmmaker Todd Berger—but you wouldn’t know it from the scripted jokes.
The first 20 minutes of Mile22 has a promising setup. The cold open is an efficient and tight action sequence, in which James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) and his skeleton crew of ghost mercenaries breach the isolated home of bomb-building terrorists. It is not the most elegantly-staged of set pieces, but it does the job in relating to us the characters that we will be following for the next 90 minutes.
Following the cold open, we move to an undefined East Asian country, where Silva and his team are working on an errant police officer, Li Noor (Iko Uwais). Li arrives at the U.S. embassy with an encrypted hard drive. Once detained, the hard drive immediately begins deconstructing itself, a ticking clock that gives Silva a limited time before Continue reading Mile 22 (2018) Movie Review→
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