Adam Robitel’s Escape Room was dumped. It was shoveled off to January, the month where genre movies go to die. The first month of the year has become somewhat notorious for having poor new movie releases. To be fair to the studios, it is an awkward area of the release calendar. There is not as much foot traffic in the theaters as there is during the summer months or the November-December holiday weekends. At the same time, January is a time when prestige movies are starting to do the rounds for awards season consideration. It just isn’t a month for blockbusters.
So studios dump their genre films there—the genre films they don’t have too much faith in, it appears. Sony released Escape Room on the first weekend of January 2019. And it did a shocking amount of business. 16 weeks later, the film had accumulated over $57 million domestic. Given the film ends on a Continue reading Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) Movie Review →
“Try doing one thing that scares you over break,” says a college professor to Zoey (Taylor Russell) after completing one of those let’s-open-our-movie-with-a-class-scene lectures. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones where the teacher is somehow talking about the exact thing the movie is about, or otherwise is planting a piece of crucial information in the student’s head. The ones that never actually feel like they are real classroom discussions.
This is the start of Escape Room, a film about the trendy entertainment exhibits where groups of people are trapped inside a room and must find clues and solve puzzles to get out. But the danger of Continue reading Escape Room (2019) Movie Review →
Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) will tell you that he is your average teenager. He drinks too much iced coffee, jokes around with his friends, probably has a vested interest in meme culture. You know, post-millennial junk. But Simon also has one huge secret: nobody knows he is gay.
Luckily, Simon finds an outlet in another closeted teen at his school. When Simon sees this mysterious “Blue” post an anonymous message on the internet, he Continue reading Love, Simon (2018) Movie Review →
Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse opens on Blake Anderson from Workaholics (here simply Ron the Janitor) dancing to an Iggy Azalea trap beat. Marvelous. Ron then single-handedly starts the zombie apocalypse. Double marvelous. The dramatic irony and use of space in this opening is great. It might be the best scene in the entire movie comedy-wise.
We then see a dated-looking boy scout recruitment tape led by the comedic styling of David Koechner. Scout Leader Rogers’ (Koechner) Boy Scout Troop 264 is comprised of three archetypal scouts: the brown-nosing overachiever Augie (Joey Morgan), the apathetic burnout Carter (Logan Miller), and the reluctant leader Ben (Tye Sheridan).
When Ben and Carter decide to ditch Augie for a rave that appears to take place in a warehouse (although it is labeled as a rec center, but this is all besides the point), the two boys stumble upon Continue reading Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) Movie Review →
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