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.

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

Sick (2023) Movie Review

John Hyam’s Sick does one thing; thankfully, it does that thing pretty well.

Hyam’s previous film, Alone, was a similarly straightforward piece of genre formalism. Both films share the same singular goal: shoot people in peril. Unlike Alone, Sick comes with horror genre royalty in its byline. Kevin Williamson’s first feature screenplay since Scream 4, Sick is a cabin in the woods style slasher in the time of Covid. It is April 2020, and two college students (Gideon Adlon and Bethlehem Million) decide to quarantine together at a fancy, isolated cabin. And, as anyone who’s seen a horror film will already be well aware, no one is truly alone in an isolated cabin at night.

The first hour of this 84-minute film consists almost entirely of young people being stalked violently by an anonymous, knife-wielding killer. Unlike the other Williamson property this brings to mind, though, Sick is Continue reading Sick (2023) Movie Review →

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

A Man Called Otto (2022) Movie Review

Six years ago, almost to the day, I reviewed A Man Called Ove, the Oscar-nominated Swedish film from Hannes Holm. It’s a startling concept, that I reviewed this six years ago, because I can’t imagine my abilities as a writer were up to snuff in the first few years of this site’s existence. Not that they are exceptional now, but I make do. It is fitting, perhaps, that I began thinking about my review of this English-language remake by reconsidering my initial review, given how retrospection and time factor into the themes of the material here.

But time also functions in a different way here. As in the question, why has Sony decided to remake this 2015 film for 2022 release and angle it for a late awards season push? I suppose on paper it adds up. Celebrated actor Tom Hanks taking on the role of Continue reading A Man Called Otto (2022) Movie Review →

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

The Pale Blue Eye (2022) Movie Review

The Pale Blue Eye, Scott Cooper’s latest, sees a homicide detective (Christian Bale) teaming up with a young Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling) to solve a series of murders at West Point in 1830. Based on a novel by Louis Bayard, the film is something of a fictionalized origin story for Poe’s writing career while also serving as a gothic murder mystery in its own right.

Bayard’s Poe believes himself to be haunted by his mother’s ghost, and his pedantic nature sets him in opposition to other cadets at the military academy. His alienation relative to his peers eventually puts him in suspicion as the body count around the academy stacks up.

Melling’s performance as Poe is Continue reading The Pale Blue Eye (2022) Movie Review →

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

The Whale (2022) Movie Review

Darren Aronofsky is no stranger to provocative and difficult cinema. He has made a career of it. From the bleak downward spirals in Requiem for a Dram to the chaos of the frustratingly opaque mother!, the filmmaker likes to experiment with morbid, carnivalesque subject matter. Often, this experimentation involves the torment of the film’s characters.

With The Whale, it should be said, Aronofsky and writer Samuel D. Hunter aim to inflect Charlie’s (Brendan Fraser) torment with a profound empathy. But this is also where Continue reading The Whale (2022) Movie Review →

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

The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: Best Night Ever (2013) and Superfast! (2015)

This is the sixth and final installment in “The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: How Two Men Single Handedly Destroyed the Parody Genre.”

In pursuing this project, I did not set out to unilaterally pan the Friedberg and Seltzer oeuvre (as much as the hack, clickbait adjacent title might suggest). Sure, I find almost all of their work indefensible. But I endeavored to get closer to the heart of who these two writers are and what they wanted to get out of their filmmaking. Unfortunately, this is difficult knowledge to gain, considering they are on the record as being almost entirely off the record. The duo almost never give interviews, and, aside from a great Matt Patches piece at Grantland, I could not find a source where they were seriously interviewed.

All the same, I wanted to move beyond the easy insults that have been hurled their way. I wanted to move beyond the perception of them as Continue reading The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: Best Night Ever (2013) and Superfast! (2015) →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Loath It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: Vampires Suck (2010), The Starving Games (2013)

This is the fifth installment in “The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: How Two Men Single-Handedly Destroyed the Parody Genre.”

In this penultimate installment, we will examine two of the late career parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer: Vampires Suck and The Starving Games. As I see it, Friedberg and Seltzer’s career can be separated into two distinct phases. There are two reasons why I think about it this way.

For one, there is an easy delineation one could make between the writers’ 2000s output and their 2010s output. As I outlined in previous articles, the 2000s saw a healthy resurgence of the spoof movie, but by the end of the decade it was starting to become clear that the poor quality of these films were catching up with them. Through the 2010s, parody films grew increasingly less popular at the box office.

As such, Vampires Suck serves as a crucial turning point in Friedberg and Seltzer’s career. It was the last of their films to Continue reading The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: Vampires Suck (2010), The Starving Games (2013) →

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

The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: How Two Men Single-Handedly Destroyed the Parody Genre

This is installment one in “The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: How Two Men Single-handedly Destroyed the Parody Genre.” The series, a career retrospective on the works of parody film writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, aims to put their heavily maligned work into perspective. Why were their films equally successful and hated? And why did the pair disappear from Hollywood? Moreover, can anything good be said for the directors, whose films are widely considered to be some of the worst of all time.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer achieved their first credit as a writing team on Spy Hard, the 1996 Leslie Nielsen espionage spoof. Their names appeared in the credits for the hit horror parody Scary Movie. Then, they went on to write and direct some of the worst comedy movies of the 21st century. Date Movie. Epic Movie. Disaster Movie. Meet the Spartans. Vampires Suck. The Starving Games.

Let’s not dwell on these parody clunkers, though. Not yet, at least. Let’s begin with Scary Movie, a very successful film that had a hand in reinvigorating the parody genre for a new generation. It launched a franchise. It launched the career of Anna Faris. It was truly influential in steering the broad comedy into the 21st century, at least in the short term.

Scary Movie was an ambitious pitch. Not because it was a parody of the entire slasher genre with the audacity of having a name as blunt as Scary Movie. But because it is a beat-for-beat broad comedy re-enactment of Scream, which had already Continue reading The Friedberg-Seltzer Massacre: How Two Men Single-Handedly Destroyed the Parody Genre →

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

Glorious (2022) Movie Review

Imagine being trapped in a road stop bathroom with a Lovecraftian creature that has the voice of J.K. Simmons. Congratulations, you have found yourself in Glorious, the cosmic horror indie where there’s no toilet paper or paper towels but enough gooey surprises to satisfy some.

Rebekah McKendry’s film cloaks a character drama underneath the cosmic tellings of its mysterious visitor (whose name is as difficult to spell as it is for protagonist Wes to say, so I’ll just hold my tongue). As the ethereal mythology of Simmons’ creature is divulged, Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is weighed down by memories of his ex-wife. All the while, Wes must decide whether to continue trying to escape or help the thing on the other side of the stall door.

The first act of Glorious comes off like a character trying to have a conversation with Continue reading Glorious (2022) Movie Review →

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

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) Movie Review

Bodies Bodies Bodies, on its surface, is a movie I should instantly fall in love with. It is a light horror comedy riff on the whodunit with a cast so stacked with great young talent that I almost couldn’t believe it when it was announced. Drop the cherry on top that it is an A24 picture, and my fears that this was a half-thought-out satire churned out as a genre programmer went out the window.

Churned out genre programmer Bodies Bodies Bodies is not. As for the satire, I must admit I was unimpressed. Early buzz from critics and audiences alike is Continue reading Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Leave it, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

2022 Fantasia Festival Movie Reviews — Megalomaniac, Incredible But True, The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra

Megalomaniac, The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra and Incredible But True are screening as part of the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 14 – August 3.

Megalomaniac

Megalomaniac is the bleakest film I’ve seen at this year’s Fantasia (and I also watched Speak No Evil, so that’s a high bar to clear). In the case of Speak No Evil, I could better stomach the Continue reading 2022 Fantasia Festival Movie Reviews — Megalomaniac, Incredible But True, The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra →