Category Archives: Leave it

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.

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Drama, Leave it, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Satan Wants You, Devils

Satan Wants You and Devils are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.

Devils

Kim Jae-hoon’s Devils is a crime thriller with a premise similar to that of a body swap movie. Police detective Jae-hwan (Oh Dae-hwan) disappears for a month after pursuing a sadistic serial killer (Jang Dong-yoon), only for both the cop and the killer to resurface unexpectedly. Jae-hwan wakes in a hospital to find himself Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Satan Wants You, Devils →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Leave it, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Hundreds of Beavers, Aporia, Emptiness

Aporia, Hundreds of Beavers, and Emptiness are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.

Aporia

A year after Sophie’s (Judy Greer) husband dies, her daughter remains despondent. She is truant from school, failing classes, and she wants nothing to do with her friends or mother. When her late husband’s best friend (Payman Maadi) shows her a time machine he’s been building, Sophie decides to Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Hundreds of Beavers, Aporia, Emptiness →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Sympathy for the Devil (2023) Movie Review

Yuval Adler’s Sympathy for the Devil owes a great debt to Collateral. Michael Mann’s masterpiece bottles tension inside the cramped confines of a Los Angeles taxi cab. Devil substitutes Las Vegas for L.A. and the car of a man desperately trying to reach his wife giving birth in the hospital for a taxi driver. It also substitutes Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise with Joel Kinnaman and Nicolas Cage.

Kinnaman takes on a similar—though less expressive and emotionally palpable—disposition to Foxx. Cage, on the other hand, replaces the icy composure of Cruise with his usual Continue reading Sympathy for the Devil (2023) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Scream VI (2023) Movie Review

Scream VI, as one of the film’s own characters tells us, is a “requel sequel” — i.e., a sequel to a franchise reboot which also follows some, if not all, of the continuity of the original film(s). We have been seeing many of these in the horror genre lately (and we are scheduled to see even more), so this is good territory for a “requel sequel” of Hollywood’s favorite meta-horror franchise to interrogate. Unfortunately, this interrogation falls flats.

This film picks up where the last one left off, with the two surviving sisters of the last Woodsboro murder spree, Tara and Sam Carpenter (Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera), relocating to Continue reading Scream VI (2023) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023) Movie Review

Guy Ritchie has spent the most recent stretch of his career making passable yet somewhat anonymous and, frankly, lacking action pictures. Following the bungled Aladdin live action film for Disney, which I don’t think was necessarily Ritchie’s fault (he wasn’t the right choice for the material to begin with), he has been trying to get back to the brand of film that made him a name in the first place.

The Gentlemen was fine but not my bag. Wrath of Man has some nice sequences but is repetitive and drab. This time out, Ritchie goes for a sprawling, international espionage thriller — he’s trying for a James Bond or Mission: Impossible vibe.

The film opens with your standard issue “gathering up the usual suspects” routine. Two government bureaucrats (Cary Elwes and Eddie Marsan) discuss the crew for their next important job — something involving Continue reading Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist (1988) is a Cult Film You’ve Never Heard Of

This is installment five in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist is a cult film object from Uruguay, but it is relatively unknown in the U.S. It circulated in some film circles in South America, seemingly years after its original direct-to-video release in 1988. A documentary was made a couple years ago, called Straight to VHS (directed by Emilio Silva Torres), that documented the strange absence of the film’s director, Manuel Lamas, from public life, which has rendered details on the film’s production and its release scant.

The doc is good, although I don’t think it answers as many questions as it asks. What makes the doc and its distribution important is that Continue reading Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist (1988) is a Cult Film You’ve Never Heard Of →

All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023) Movie Review

At the risk of starting off way too in the weeds into Magic Mike lore, it was the reprise of Ginuwine’s “Pony” toward the end of Magic Mike’s Last Dance that cemented for me why this trilogy capper left me so underwhelmed. “Pony” became something of a theme song for the Magic Mike films, it being the signature song the titular male entertainer Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) dances too in the first film. It returns in this third installment, and it is certainly there solely as a fan nod. Thematically, the song holds a special meaning in Mike’s tumultuous journey through the exploitative and soul-crushing realities of late-stage capitalism, a meaning that is entirely lost in Last Dance.

In Magic Mike XXL, Mike performs a brief dance to the song when it comes on in his workshop – he begins the second film fighting for Continue reading Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

After Last Season (2009) Is (Maybe) the Most Ambitious Bad Movie Ever Made

This is the third installment of the “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

After Last Season is both notorious in certain online circles and a relatively unknown entity. Certain YouTubers have amplified its visibility over the last few years (and last few weeks, incidentally), but it still certainly hasn’t risen to the badfilm echelons occupied by the likes of Tommy Wiseau and Neil Breen.

But it deserves to be in that lowly pantheon.

The film opens in a “hospital” where a man is getting an MRI. The “MRI scanner” appears to be constructed of paper (sheets of paper also line the walls). The actor playing the technician stumbles over her line and has to Continue reading After Last Season (2009) Is (Maybe) the Most Ambitious Bad Movie Ever Made →

2023 Academy Awards, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Short Films

2023 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Film Reviews: Ivalu and Night Ride

It is round two of reviews for the Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Film category. In this edition, we look at Ivalu and Night Ride. Previously, we looked at The Red Suitcase and An Irish Goodbye.

Ivalu

“My sister…my blood.” Anders Walters’ Ivalu follows Pipaluk (Mila Heilmann Kreutzman), who wakes up one morning to find Continue reading 2023 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Film Reviews: Ivalu and Night Ride →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic, Western

Greaser’s Palace (1972) is an (Unfulfilling) Weirdo’s Paradise

This is installment one in our “Psychotronic Cinema“ series.

The films in this series are “psychotronic,” a term borrowed from Michael J. Weldon’s magazine and encyclopedia. Psychotronic covers the wide swath of cinema that is either slightly out there or entirely bonkers – horror, science fiction, fantasy, exploitation, blockbusters, flops, low budgets, no budgets, thought-provoking, brain dead, beautiful, grotesque, bloody, breezy, sleazy, and so on. At the end of the day, what is considered “psychotronic” might come down to the eye test – you know one when it crosses your path.

After watching last year’s Sr., a Robert Downey Jr.-led documentary about his father, filmmaker Robert Downey (Sr.), I was enticed into catching up on some of the director’s offbeat filmography. It wasn’t the documentary itself that invited me to see Greaser’s Palace — neither the clips from the film nor the doc’s father-son bonding moments did it for me. Frankly, the doc felt a few ticks overdone, with its black and white cinematography and Robert Downey Jr. puppeteering some of the would-be heartwarming scenes.

What works about Sr. is the same thing that works (for me, at least) about Sr.’s films, and that’s Continue reading Greaser’s Palace (1972) is an (Unfulfilling) Weirdo’s Paradise →