The King of Staten Island is the semi-biographical life story of comedian Pete Davidson. He plays the title role of Scott, a man now in his early twenties whose life was turned upside down after his firefighter father is killed in the line of duty. Scott pretty much stopped growing up at the age of ten and his act of smoking weed all day and claim to want to be a tattoo artist has gotten stale to the rest of his family.

So, Scott is stuck and he’s got a huge chip on his shoulder. When his sister goes off to college, it threatens his status quo–she’s moving into the future and he isn’t. That leaves him at home with his mother and when he does something stupid, she’s had enough and kicks him out of the house. He goes to his on and off again girlfriend (who has her own ambitions) and she’s had enough of him too. This brings Scott to mix with people and a profession he never thought he would.

I like coming of age stories like this and the cast is really good with Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, and Steve Buscemi. Directed by Judd Apatow there are a bunch of cameos of his friend circle of stand-up comics and actors. It’s a grounded movie that has a lot of heart, which I’m always a fan of. There’s a level of sincerity from Pete Davidson that comes through, especially when he goes on a rant or argues with someone because what’s coming out is what he experienced as a kid and has followed him for his whole life.

While the movie runs a little wrong (Judd Apatow), it’s paced well and the story told is a complete one. I’d say this is more drama than comedy and I think you can dig it even if you don’t like Pete Davidson.

The Witches (2020)- I’ve never read the Roald Dahl and I saw the 1990 adaptation ages ago and can’t remember much of it. The witch designs (super gnarly) are the only images I recognize. That said, The Witches is the story of a young boy and his grandmother duke it out with a coven of witches who are having a convention at a hotel to organize their plan to turn every child into a mouse.

Things you learn: witches hate children more than anything. kids smell like poop to witches, witches have 3 fingers, no toes, and are bald, and Robert Zemeckis turns to CG for everything.

This movie is obviously for children so it’s horror light. There’s a lot of cute stuff, the main boy (who is never given a name) is especially good. He works well with the terrific Octavia Spencer, their family bond is a believable one. The scary images for young kids all come from Anne Hathaway as the Head Witch. She chews up the scenery with glee and when she goes full witch. She’s often front and center of the frame, aggressively talking to the camera with her voice digitally altered for an extra sinister layer. All of her augements are CG special effects, with pointy teeth, a gigantic mouth, and stretchy limbs. That will most likely freak out young children. The rest, nothing there (unless you have a phobia of rats/mice).

The story is very simple. Once it gets to the hotel I think the movie loses some of its interest and a lot is left unexplored. My big gripe is that it’s the Anne Hathaway show. Sure, she’s the boss as the head witch, but the thirty or so other witches that are in the movie, don’t do anything. Dialog for any of the other witches is nearly non-existant. There is a great scene in a grocery store in the first act that looks like it’s going to set up that witch as an important part but she’s relegated to the background after that. You never get to see any personality from any other witch…they don’t do anything.

There is wall to wall CG in this movie. I wouldn’t expect animatronic talking mice for the hero characters in this day and age but more than half the movie takes on a digital sheen. The animation is always fantastic on these SFX but the lighting constantly looks wrong so it sticks out. There’s one part where the hero mice run down the hallway and the camera follows right behind them…turning everything into obvious CG. I think it would have been better to just move the camera around a real set and put the digital artists onto making three CG characters traversing this obstacle course look fantastic. I don’t think there’s anything to gain visually with flying around an obvious CG set that feels disconnected from everything before it.

Obviously this isn’t aimed at me so I’m digging deeper into it than anyone really needs to. It’s a simple morality take and it’s all rather dull, which is the biggest sin. I get a room full of witches and nothing to really show for it.

The Lighthouse– A powerhouse of acting with stars William Defoe and Robert Pattinson combined with visionary direction and cinema production techniques. I can’t think of a movie that is like this one.

The idea is simple but the execution is complex. Set in New England sometime around 1890, Ephrim (Pattinson) gets dropped off to work as Tom’s (Dafoe) new lighthouse assistant for a month. Tom is a veteran at his job throws his seniority around at every turn. He makes Ephraim do all of the never-ending physical labor. It’s very hard work, the weather is terrible, they are isolated from every human being on the planet, Tom is a jerk. All of this builds the madness in both men.

This movie isn’t really a horror movie, but it is disturbing. Shot in black and white, with a narrow aspect ratio (the film is almost a square), this movie looks like it could have come out in the 1950s. I think the best way to describe it is if Orson Welles made an adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story. It didn’t take long for me to wonder what was real and what wasn’t. You’re with Ephraim most of the time and everything he goes through is miserable so it’s easy to relate and sympathize with him. The same awful monotonous physical labor in an environment that looks like you can never be simultaneously warm and dry. Tom can be an insufferable man who rambles and condescends like he gets paid to do it. It’s impossible to tell how much time is passing and Ephrim witnesses Tom doing weird things at the top of the lighthouse. That damn seagull! The constant foghorn! The crappy food! Surreal and Lovecraftian things start happening to Ephraim. And why the hell won’t Tom let him up the final staircase to where the lightbulb is?

So yeah, this get weird and that makes you question everything. Why is Ephraim here? Is Tom right, is he running from something? What happened to Tom’s last assistant? Is Tom crazy? Is Ephraim going crazy because of Tom? Is anything Tom saying true? It’s almost like a race to see who cracks first.

The Lighthouse lives and dies on its actors. No matter how striking it looks (you have to see it, it’s hard to describe), if the actors aren’t good enough, none of it would be believable and the movie wouldn’t work. Dafoe and Pattinson commit 100% to their roles and it’s remarkable to watch. Their relationship constantly morphs and mutates. Mixed with the misery, there’s actually a lot of humor around it. Ephraim’s hardships stack up like a Three Stooges episode. He lugs a gigantic oil canister to the top of the lighthouse only for Tom to be up there waiting with a handheld oil can. ‘Why did you do that? Just use this, it’s way easier. Now take that backbreaking thing back down, dummy.’ He goes to empty the chamber pots and the mess flies back into his face. He s screams and the film cuts right away to him doing another chore. Pattinson makes this madness feel so real. He honestly wants to be a good and hard worker, respecting Tom’s authority and expertise. But a man has his limits! You can see his mind and spirit crack just by looking at his eyes from scene to scene.

Once time has slipped away and the storms get more frequent (or does it just never go away because of that damn seagull?) the two men drink like there is no tomorrow. It’s the way they bond and really the only other thing they can do for fun. This leads to dancing euphoria and fights, with one going so hilariously far that Tom gets deeply offended at Ephriam for saying he doesn’t like his cooking. ‘What about my lobster? I know you liked the lobster, don’t lie!’

Running an hour and 45 minutes long, I feel like that’s a little too much. Things do get repetitive and it feels like the main points are made soon enough to get to the “how the hell is this going to shake out” ending a little sooner. 6-8 minutes shorter, maybe? I think that’s my only complaint. This is a movie to study with repeat viewings. There are some brilliant shots in this movie and the whole production deserves a deep dive documentary to explain how it was made. There is seriously no other movie out there that looks and operates in multiple genres like The Lighthouse does. It’s not for everyone but this could flip on a few light switches in your head.

Tremors: Shrieker Island– This is the seventh movie in the series and I’ll admit they are guilty pleasures for me. The first is a classic, one of my favorite horror movies. The direct to video sequels range from good to…okay that exists. Each movie tries to bring a new element to the Graboid threat and a change of location for the monsters to rampage around is the easiest change to try and make a sequel stand out.

It’s off to the tropics for Shrieker Island where a wealthy man has bred and genetically modified Graboids for wealthy people to hunt. He puts them on an isolated island, positive he’s got everything under control. When you give a super predator even greater and unknown abilities, you can see where the conflict comes. A scientific team that is doing research on a nearby island notices the problem first and they call in series staple Burt Gummer to help stop the growing catastrophe.

I like the concept for Shrieker Island and it checks all the boxes for a movie like this. It’s not too serious, it’s got a catalog of fun characters and extras who are there to be eaten. This is director Don Michael Paul’s third Tremors movie so he knows the territory well (he’s also co-writer). There are some really nice set pieces and action shots throughout.

Obviously direct to video means a low budget. So that means you can’t do everything you want. When you do see a Graboid or a Shrieker, they look good. The new designs make sense and they look cool and menacing. The animation is generally great and depending on the lighting, the CG looks convincing. They are all CG though, which is very disappointing. And all sorts of stuff is done to cut corners to save on monster budget in favor of explosions. You never see someone get eaten. The first few movies do a way better job of this. Shriekers just tackle people from off-camera and out of frame. Graboids jump out of the ground in slow motion (there are Zach Snyder levels of slo-mo in this, really overdone) and you never see a Graboid pop it’s head out of the ground and send it’s tentacles out to grab someone. That’s the coolest part of these monsters and here, it’s some CG coming out of the water (at least it’s one of the better effects in the movie). The tunneling effect is all wrong too. It’s massive explosions of dirt that never look appropriate. I know they are supposed to be much bigger creatures but it doesn’t make sense.

Two massive faux pas: A dead Graboid is found because it has given birth. This act was introduced way back in Tremors 2: Aftershocks. They built a massive section of the worm to show how “something came out of it!” It looks gross, scary, and cool! I’m pretty sure the Graboid carcass in this movie is a pile of dirt with three sections dug out with a shovel and spray painted orange and yellow. It looks awful. If you didn’t see any of the previous movies, you’d never know what that was supposed to be. It looks so bad I couldn’t believe the characters explaining it to the audience that they knew what it was. Second, a Graboid attacks a bunker (the first Tremors!) and you never see it break through the wall! A massive explosion goes off (seriously, they must have spent a fortune on the explosions) and everyone goes, cool it’s dead. Are you sure it was even in there to get blown up? There’s no payoff. The guts of the Graboids are all wrong too! It’s well established that it’s massive chunks of orange, slimy chicken cutlet like flesh and sticky stuff, not pureed watermelon!

The devil is in the details people! Despite the annoyances, Jon Heder is in this and I will always love Michael Gross as Burt Gummer. This movie also ends with a massive change for fans so it’s a consequential movie in the series.

Apostle– Director Gareth Evans is best known for his action movies. He also directed one of the segments in V/H/S 2 so that set him up well for this horror movie about a cult. To be fair he’s never shied away from blood so he didn’t need a warm-up for where this movie goes.

After Steven’s sister is kidnapped, he tracks her down to an island where an isolated cult calls home. He poses as a potential new member of their religion, which lets him stay on the island so he can find her. The community isn’t doing well. There is a serious food shortage because the ground has gone fallow and the livestock isn’t breeding. When they do, the babies are extremely sick. The leadership of the cult also believes that Steven’s sister is a spy from the mainland and that she came with an accomplice. Once hearing what they think of his sister, Steven knows they are extra nuts, she didn’t come here on her own so where did this story come from? This puts pressure on his rescue mission, they are already suspicious and on the lookout for someone acting odd so he needs to be extra careful. With the leadership of the cult on edge, Steven unearths secrets and the community starts to unravel.

This is a wild movie! Set in Whales in 1905, the scenery and motifs are all well done and believable. The community is convincingly real as the rules and hierarchy are quickly established and you get a good sense of the layout of the land with Steven’s exploration. The strongest element of the movie is Steven being an infiltrator. This immediately gives tension to the movie that never lets up. We quickly see that the rule of law in the community is brutal and swift. Judgment comes from two men of authority who are in a power struggle…forget being an outsider, no one is safe here.

The cast is great with Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton, Dan Stevens, and Mark Lewis Jones doing most of the heavy lifting. Writing is well done too, it’s convincing early 20th century dialog. There are flare ups of cliches and a couple goofy lines but nothing that I found terribly distracting. I didn’t see the supernatural aspect coming and I think that’s the weakest part of the movie. Not too much is explained and that leads into a odd ending that doesn’t work as well as I’d like.

The whole production is outstanding, with all of the money clearly on the screen. No corners were cut here. Evans is a fantastic director, he knows how to set a scene, use all of a stage, and few know how to handle action better than he does. The practical make-up effects are terrific. Once the mayhem starts, things do not de-escalate. This movie is not for the squeamish.

I’ve had Apostle on my Netflix queue since it came out in 2018. It took me too long to get to it, but better late than never. It’s one of the better movies Netflix has picked up, especially in this genre.

His House– This movie popped up on Netflix in time for the Halloween season out of nowhere and immediately caught traction with audiences. A brilliant concept with fantastic execution, His House is one of my favorites of the year.

Bol and Rial are a refugee couple from South Sudan. They’ve made it to England and after a few months in a halfway house, the government allows them to stay. The two are moved into a run-down home and are given strict rules. Basically, “We’re watching you…behave or you are gone.” Bol and Rial are traumatized not just from the violence they were forced to flee from. Their daughter didn’t survive the journey with them.

Using a haunted house as an allegory for survivor’s guilt, His House is a deep dive into a character study. As Bol and Rial struggle to fit in, they process their trauma differently. Rial is in denial about their daughter and feels trapped and isolated in this foreign place. Bol wants to do everything he can to move on. He’s mourned enough and wants to put the trauma in the past. If they can start a new life in England, what they went through won’t be a pointless tragedy. His guilt turns on him though, making tormenting (and tormented) ghosts appear in their new home.

I’ll leave the description at that, spoiling anything more will take a lot of the power away. His House is a smart and contemporary take on haunted houses. It explores what goes on in society, both private and public. There are forces inside and out of your home and when you don’t feel safe in your own home, are you ever safe? For Bol and Rial, wherever they go, they aren’t wanted. That is scary.

The movie has very few locations which keeps the focus tight and the pace moving. All the money was put into the haunting scenes which are all awesome. Taught, disturbing, and spooky as you can get. The SFX are really well done, this entire movie is really impressive (the editing is a standout). I recognize two of the actors, Matt Smith (a bit part) and Rial is played by Wunmi Mosaku who I just watched as Ruby in Lovecraft Country on HBO. Wunmi is fantastic as is Sope Dirisu as Bol.

His House is director Remi Weekes’ first big project (he wrote it too) and if this any indication, he has a hell of a career in front of him. I’ll be on the lookout for what he does next.

And thus ends Halloween 2020!

The Hunt (2020)- This movie got slapped with a wave of controversy for its political pitting of liberals vs conservatives in the United States. It was painted as a liberal revenge fantasy where it’s a much more clear takedown of our current political divisions and discourse.

Twelve strangers wake up in a field, are given weapons and suddenly start being shot at. Looking for answers and reasoning, the survivors of the first attack figure that they are all political conservatives and this is “Manorgate.” The rumor that’s been spreading over the internet is real: the liberal elite has created a human hunting program to kill their political and ideological enemies.

This movie takes no time in getting to the action and the point. Not a frame is wasted as it whips through its ideas in about 90 minutes. I like that this movie doesn’t preach, it gives you every hardcore left and right-wing stereotype unapologetically to show how stupid and goofy all of this is. It’s a work of satire that makes fun of everyone with absurdities and it doesn’t take itself seriously. Betty Gilpin as Crystal is the perfect anchor for everyone in the audience. She’s smart, funny, and much to the chagrin of Athena (great name), badass.

The biggest question of the movie is “how and why is this happening?!” gets a great answer at the end. This movie was way more fun than I thought it would be and really well put together. Pretty high on the gore scale and the fight choreography and fight direction are great! It’s insane in a Quentin Tarantino way.

Hansel & Gretel (2020)- Like most movies that have come out this year, Hansel & Gretel came and went without anyone really noticing it. I remember seeing the trailer for this some time ago and it struck me visually so I wanted to see it. Glad I did.

No surprise with the name, this movie is an adaptation of the fairytale. Here, Hansel & Gretel are basically thrown away by their mother and Gretel leads her little brother into the woods looking for work so they can survive. They soon cross paths with The Huntsman, who gives them directions through the woods to a town where they should find work and safety. He does tell them to stick to the path he gives them because if they stray at all, there are wolves all over the place who will attack them. Wolves aren’t the only danger living in the woods…

This cast is very small and they’re all great. Gretel is played by Sophia Lillis who has been getting a lot of big work with projects like the IT movies, the shows Sharp Objects and I Am Not Okay with This. She is fantastic as a big sister and watching her navigate the subtle seduction of the Witch is a harrowing experience. Alice Krige as the Witch is stellar as well. The combination of her performance and prosthetic make-up creates a memorable on-screen presence. Shout out to Jessica De Gouw who plays the young Witch, unfortunately, you don’t get to see much of her. When you do, she’s got some swagger!

The set design and direction really pop in this movie. The Witch’s house is simple, yet highly detailed and all atmosphere. The hidden part of the house that is revealed near the end of the second act is surreal but oddly believable (the dimensions are really weird. It’s a disturbing set even when nothing is happening in it). I don’t know big the budget was but they spent it in all the right places. The special effects sell what they need to and as a PG-13 movie, the scary bits run across a very fine line of creepy/gross and extremes. It would have been pretty easy to make this more explicit in visuals, you see just enough to make our imagination fill in the rest. The final scene with the Witch is completely awesome. Great take on this story, this movie turned out to be a spooky surprise!

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark– Based on the collection of short horror stories for children (!) by Alvin Schwartz, SSTD is a really fun monster movie. Set in 1968, Stella and her friends (and the new guy) accidentally wake up a malevolent spirit on Halloween. The race is on to save their lives.

Executive Produced by my man Guillermo del Toro, there’s a lot to like in this movie. It’s rated PG-13 and pushes that rating to the edge. There’s no intense violence or gore, but the monsters in this movie do not take their jobs lightly.

The set up is the basic material for unleashing an evil spirit, but everything else around the movie is really well done. The acting gets better as the movie goes on, the direction, cinematography, and special effects are always beautiful. The monsters (there are 6) are all stand out page to screen adaptations (except for Jangley Man, he’s a hybrid of a few monsters). Creepy, imposing, gross, everything you could want in 95% practical movie monsters played by people under a ton of prosthetics. The soundtrack is on point too. I think this is a great gateway movie for people to work up to the more intense and “adult” horror movies. It’s like the Fear Street series of books for horror–you start with R.L Stine and go to Stephen King. You go from this movie to John Carpenter’s The Thing. I think I liked this more than IT Part 2.

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight– This is a Polish take on Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It does some things well and some things…alright. The set up to get the kids isolated in the woods is that they are all addicted to technology. They are all sent to this camp to “detox” and it doesn’t take long for the freak show hidden in the woods to swing by.

NSWT is a clear homage to a lot of 80s slasher movies. As such, it doesn’t do anything new or terribly interesting. There’s enough back story (given by a random dude who lives in the woods because that’s just what he does) to flesh out the villains and the cast is bumped off one by one through various pointy objects.

In terms of horror, the body count is pretty high. No innovative kills and the movie is edited mostly around showing any violence. If that’s due to ratings or budget, I don’t know. In elaborate deaths, such as someone getting cut in half, all you see is gore hitting the ground, or a death happens off-screen and a character turns around to suddenly see the aftermath. There are two or three explicit shots (one with a tongue) that are shown very fast that go for a hard R rating. With the lineage this movie is aiming for, I found it disappointing to see this edited like the MPAA of 1985 was back in full force. The prosthetic effects are well done though. The design done on the villains is extremely elaborate. The work on the bodies is a real stand out but the problem is that their faces are so bloated and scrunched (for some reason they are gigantic men, it can’t be fro what they are eating, I guess the implication is the infection or whatever it is), they have no articulation in them and it makes the characters look like a guy wearing a rubber mask. It takes away a lot of the intimidation when your murders look like inflated Cabbage Patch dolls.

Another disappointment is it’s not scary at all. Suspense is lacking too, which was surprising. The director tries but I think everything that happens is all too predictable. There is one standout scene in a cellar with the two main characters. Everything clicks there. The set up is great, the horror of it all works the best (some great practical effects work), the acting is terrific and it’s where a great hero turn happens.

I don’t want to sound so negative about this because I admire all of the hard work the filmmakers put into it. It’s clear they love the genre. I just think that it comes off as the side of 80s slasher movies they wanted to avoid: a copy cat movie that doesn’t stand on its own original ideas and is easy to forget.

Honey Boy is a semi-autobiographical movie written by actor Shia LaBeouf. The story about a child actor and his father was written while LaBeouf was in court-ordered rehab after a public intoxication arrest in 2017.

This is a very personal and intimate recreation of a defining time in Shia’s life. It’s an examination of a broken relationship that Shia didn’t realize had so deeply affected him until his past came up in therapy.

Honey Boy moves between two specific times in Otis’ life-1995 and 2005–ages twelve and twenty-two. When adult Otis gets in trouble (the same way LaBeouf did in real life) the flashbacks start as Otis explores why he feels the way he does now.

Otis’ father acted as his guardian while he worked on set. An angry and alcoholic man, being around James was often like walking through a minefield. At any time things could pop off. With Otis constantly around a toxic and dark person, he yearns for a calm and nurturing relationship with his father. He’s searching for solace.

This movie is smart in how it navigates trauma. With such a heavy topic it’d be easy to wallow in misery (Joker) and make this entirely brutal to watch. The movie keeps a steady pace, never beating to death on how awful James is without saying something important about it. Breaks are given to you with Otis finding joy when he can. With each scene together, their relationship is first established, examined, and then exposed. James thankfully isn’t portrayed simply as a monster for the sake of being a monster. Time is given to his history, the trail of why he is who he is.

Another important layer is that the misery leads to something–a reckoning between father and son that is messy and frankly very real. Let me put this to you as well: there’s no happy ending and clean conclusion. After all, Otis grows up and the trauma and things he picked up from his father are coming out in ways that are ruining his life.

The Talk Otis has with his dad is riveting and revelatory. Otis puts it all out there. It’s incredibly sad but necessary. Otis is forced to grow up far faster than he should, creating a confrontation that you and Otis aren’t sure how is going to go.

LeBeouf plays James and he’s doing some exceptional work. Noah Jupe plays young Otis and this kid is nothing but remarkable. I don’t know what’s going on right now, but there are some amazing kid actors working today. More than how he delivers his lines, it’s in his body language too. When James gets into a fight on the phone with Otis’ mother, Otis hangs in as long as he can before walking out of the motel room he and his dad live in. With a background of venomous screaming, Otis’ face contorts as he tries to fight back his misery. There are a few powerful moments like this.

Brilliant movie.

******

That brings me to Uncut Gems. A movie I’m not sure how a feel about. At the end I didn’t regret watching it but the time getting to that point was rough.

Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a high end jeweler in the Diamond District of NYC. It’s made clear early on that Howard is a gambler with a problem. After a few run ins with the people he owes money to–and seeing how he reacts to them–it becomes clear that Howard is a degenerate gambler. The high he gets from gambling is seemingly the only driving force in his life.

So Howard, like James in Honey Boy, is awful. But unlike James, Howard has no depth to him. It’s just a trail of stupid and misery from start to finish. A large portion of the runtime of Uncut Gems is a group of people screaming at each other. Just insipid insults, cursing, and nonsense yelling for what feels like minutes at a time. Put end to end, these scenes add up and it’s not good. It frequently gets exhausting and boring. I think making this a short film could have been the better way to go. The entire movie is him juggling one debt in the air to pay for the other.

That said, Adam Sandler is really good. He can bring a douche to life so I’ll give him that much.

Putting these two movies that travel on the dark side of life side by side (which I did not do on purpose) Honey Boy is the better investment of your time. It’s way richer in content and character development. The avenues to dissect and discuss aren’t even close.

I liked It (2017) a lot. It was a ton of fun and super creepy in all the right ways. The adaptation did the book justice while making the necessary tweaks to make it a bit more modern and ditch the ultra awkward bits.

So coming into Chapter Two, I was looking forward to it. The movie focuses almost entirely on the Losers Club as adults, 27 years after their encounter with Pennywise. Mike is the only one of the seven kids to stay in their hometown of Derry and he keeps the Club’s pact when he discovers that Pennywise is killing again. Mike calls his olds friends to come back to stop the slaughter.

It, the novel, is massive. It’s a good 1,000 pages so splitting it up for a movie is the right thing to do. Breaking it apart as the kid timeline and the adult timeline is the easiest way of taming this twisted story. But watching this second half felt way too familiar, like it didn’t quite justify it’s existence. It’s just more of the same, just with an older and taller cast. It’s a really weird thought because hey, isn’t that what sequels are? You keep going with what was done before. Keep what was good, move away from what didn’t and add to the world.

I never got the sense that Chapter Two found its purpose. For a movie that exceeds two and a half hours, it’s way too simple. Not much happens. The first chunk is getting everyone back together, Mike telling the gang he knows how to kill Pennywise. That leads into the second act where each person gets their “totem” to break Pennywise’s power (I guess) so the monster can be killed. The third act is obviously going after Pennywise. And that’s it. You find out what each kid did with their lives, but you don’t get to know anyone any better. The dynamic was much more interesting in the first because it’s a group of kids, all in different family circumstances, coming together to first figure out what’s going on and sticking together to do something about it. There’s way more comradery in the first and each beat with Pennywise feels new and fresh.

Plus, everything with Henry Bowers feels like an afterthought, tacked on simply because he lived through the first movie (if I remember right, Pennywise gets him as a kid in the book). He’s added as another threat which the story doesn’t need and he’s in maybe all of five minutes, so why bother? If those scenes were cut out, no one would notice or miss him. If the goal was to give Eddie more motivation for the end, there are better ways of doing it.

The big problem is that Pennywise is too familiar here. As monsters go, he’s super goofy (which I do like but it needs to be carefully managed–let’s be real, you can only prance so much), he lives to scare and then eat someone. There’s a lot of jubilation in how he hunts, stirring up fear to make him more powerful. So while he looks menacing as ever in Chapter Two, the actions are all rather predictable. It feels like too much of the same. Much like prancing, there’s a limit to how many times you can run at someone before it turns into a bit. Maybe not enough people get munched? It is rather dull to hang this on a low body count, but it would give a better perspective on how truly dangerous this entity is. Despite grandiose special effects, the scale comes off as small. Through the whole movie, only the Losers Club knows Pennywise is doing anything. The undercurrent of a threat isn’t realized well enough.

And what is with the weird reactions from the few bystanders that are in the movie? When the Losers Club first meets at the restaurant, Pennywise lets them know he knows they’re back with some hallucinations. It turns into a full scale freak out with six adults screaming in terror and Mike smashing the table with his chair. The hostess comes over and nonchalantly asks them if everything is okay. It’s like she noticed one of them looking around for a waiter instead of the entire corner of the resturaunt rioting.

On the production side, this movie is a knock out. The cast is terrific and the visuals are nuts. The special effects are fantastic with some really creative and well realized nightmare-ish scenarios. The one thing I did come away from Chapter Two is please give director Andy Muschietti a Nightmare on Elm Street movie! That’s all I could think about from the moment Pennywise came back on screen. The powers they show Pennywise doing fit Freddy perfectly and show how badly handled he’s been in his last three movies*. Muschietti knows how set up scenes and shoot for heavy special effects work. With the right script, he could bring the Nightmare franchise back.

*Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is really good, I was just disappointed with the very few death nightmares. Freddy vs Jason, Freddy was robbed in the body count. Jason kills everyone, I think they only did two nightmare sequences. The NOES remake (2010) wasted almost every opportunity to be creative. You can do anything in a nightmare which separates the Nightmare franchise from the rest and it’s been ages since someone ran with it. Tina’s death scene has been done three times. /rant

Fighting with My Family– This is a underdog story set in the professional wrestling world. This is the story of Saraya-Jade Bevis, better known as Paige to WWE fans. Starting at 13 years old, we watch her join her family’s wrestling company. When Paige is 18, she and her older brother Zak send a tape of them wrestling over the pond (they were born in Norwich, England) to the WWE’s development division. They are both called over to audition and only Paige is selected into the NXT program.

Family is a pretty predictable coming of age/underdog sports movie. That’s not to say it’s bad in anyway, it’s a lot of fun with a lot of great actors and characters. It follows all the beats to this genre to the letter: low odds of getting selected, sibling rivalry, training is way harder than expected, crisis of self and ability, rousing retribution, cheers at the end. Being about wrestling gives it a breath of fresh air though. There are a lot of WWE cameos and the wrestling scenes are well done. Paige’s family is a big part of this (hence the family) and is easily the strongest part of the story (Zak in particular). There are a lot of good life lessons even if they can be heavy handed at times.

Two quibbles from me. One, Dwayne Johnson is prominently on the movie poster and he’s simply the one wrestler with the longest cameo. Five minutes of screen time across two scenes. I see what you did there marketing team. Second, for the whole movie they show how wrestling is a collaborative sport. It’s not real competition but it’s performance that takes amazing dedication and practice to do. At the end, the event at Wrestlemania is shown as a real fight. Paige never meets her opponent until she walks into the ring, for example. It undermines almost all of the story beats that comes before it. Sure, doing what I want cuts down the “Rocky” like triumph for the finale to show what really happened with preparation, but there are ways to do it.

The Platform– Imagine a prison that’s built vertically underground. One cell, no windows, no hallways, no common areas, stacked on top of each other with two people per cell. In the middle of the cell, there is a hole where a platform lowers from the top. This is how inmates are fed. At floor zero a banquet is placed on the platform and each floor gets 2 minutes to eat what they want. You can imagine what’s left by floor 50…and there are hundreds of floors. It’s possible to go down on your own, you could jump to the level below you (it’s like 20 feet) but it’s really hard to go up as you’d need help from the people above you (not gonna happen).

The movie follows a man named Goreng starting his sentence. His item of choice (everyone is allowed to bring in one item, with some restrictions) is the book Don Quixote, something many of the prisoners he meets question the value of. The Platform is an interesting take on the old question: Can we all just get along? Everyone in “the Hole” is there for various reasons, some we find out are there by choice. This is a place of punishment, make no mistake about it. But the reasoning is, from The Administration that runs it (allegedly, you don’t really know if anyone is telling the truth) “the Hole” is only as bad as those inside make it. The amount of food sent down is enough for everyone. Calorie based, anyway.

The Hole, as Goreng quickly finds out, has it’s own caste system and rules based on what floor you are on. The higher you are in the chain the better you eat. People feel entitled to eat as much as they want because they are higher in the prison stack. Forget the two people directly below you, they are literally worth less than you. The people 25 floors below them? Not even worth thinking about. This system cranks out the worst of humanity and that makes hell on Earth.

Here’s the thing: people are randomly placed in the Hole. There’s seemingly no merit to it. Every two weeks (I think I’m remembering that time right) everyone is knocked out with sleeping gas and moved to a different floor. You wake up on a floor higher than you were before, the better chance you get to eat. This makes people fall into self-preservation mode without a thought. If you were starving for 2 weeks, you are going to consume as much as you can when given the chance. Knowing that you might be starving on the next move puts you on the defensive with everyone.

I love this premise and it offers what I love to do in my own fiction writing: each character is a different perspective in a pressure cooker scenario. How does a person react and why? How did they get here and who were the before this? I’m talk about any of the people Goreng meets because I think it’s important to not know about them going in, it would ruin too much.

The Platform reminds me a lot of the movie Cube that came out in the early 2000s, which I loved. I think that was the first movie I saw that did a bizarre prison concept. This scenario is hard to get right as each scene needs to escalate from the previous one at just the right speed and intensity or it doesn’t work (peaking too early being the big problem). Tough to do a good ending too, which I think this did well. Really interesting to watch and it came out of nowhere so that made it a little more special for me. You can find it on Netflix.

Stuber– When Detective Vic Manning gets a tip-off from one of his informants about a big drug deal going down, Vic races into action to try and nab a drug boss he’s been chasing for years. The timing couldn’t be worse though. That morning Vic got eye surgery and he can barely see. Vic is forced to call an Uber to drive him around town to chase leads and he ends up recruiting the driver, Stu, into a night that doesn’t go the way either expected.

Starring Dave Bautista as Vic and Kumail Nanjiani as Stu, this half a buddy cop movie was a lot of fun. It hits all the marks for this kind of movie. Two opposite people forced to work together, a lot of funny lines, physical gags, and quality action scenes. I’m a big fan of Dave Bautista and he’s just as lovable as you think he’d be in a role like this. Pairing him with Kumail works perfectly, the on-screen chemistry is natural and that makes the life lessons each learn about themselves feel genuine. While Stuber doesn’t do anything new, every movie doesn’t have to. A pleasant surprise, just be aware it’s rated R for cursing and violence. The gore isn’t over the top but a whole lotta people do get shot.

Extraction– This is easily the best original action movie on Netflix right now. I see Chris Hemsworth in military gear on the poster, I have a pretty good idea what the movie is about. And what you think it’s about, you are right: Tyler Rake is a mercenary hired to extract the kidnapped son of a drug lord in Bangladesh. It goes bad, quickly.

Hemsworth has years of experience playing a hero on screen, so this is a fitting role for him. His Thor charm isn’t here with Rake as this character is a mortal who has been put through the ringer while trying to escape his past (yes, you find out what he’s running from). Rake is much more gruff and stoic so there is less here to immediately love. Rake is extremely loyal and despite his murder-for-hire profession, clings to some morals. His time with the kid, named Ovi, is done well and offers a good story arc for all of the main characters (not a fan of the final shot in the movie though).

Since action movies live and die on their action scenes, I’m pleased to report that Extraction delivers on all of them. Incredibly well shot and paced, there are multiple stand out sequences. The crown jewel is the long “one take” chase scene shortly after Rake rescues Ovi from his captors. It’s at least 10 minutes long and is packed with more highlights than I can possibly mention here. Complex is putting it mildly as it looks like you are the camera man, running behind, along side and in front of all the action. Going in and out of cars, up and down stairs, scooching through narrow hallways, flying through windows, all the while bullets, knives, and fists are flying. You have to see it. Plus, that scene is right after a close quarters fight where Rake takes out a pack of guys all by himself, something I didn’t think the movie would top. I’d put the action choreography up there with The Raid. I’m impressed.

Birds of Prey is a riot.

Harley Quinn is on her own after breaking up with Joker and a flood of threats come for their revenge now that she doesn’t have Joker as her partner in crime. While ducking and dodging around Gotham, Harley disrupts Black Mask’s (a.k.a. Roman Sionis) well lubricated criminal operation and that puts his employee Black Canary (a.k.a. Dinah Lance) on a collision course with her. That makes both women collide with a young pickpocket named Cassandra Cain, Detective Renee Montoya who is building a case on Black Mask, and new-on-the-scene assassin Helena Bertinelli (The Crossbow Killer Huntress).

The best part of the Suicide Squad movie, the brilliant Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn to steer this ship by the elastic band of your shorts. Everyone’s lovable comic book maniac brought to life is once again a treat to see. The story is told by her so there’s a fair share of schizophrenic pauses in the narrative to fill in parts of the tale that Harley suddenly realizes you need to know to get the context of what’s going on. An unconventional technique in Hollywood movies, this can throw people as it jumbles the timeline of the movie and makes you question the narrator. I think it works really well. From head to toe, this is Harley and as a fan of the character, I appreciate the effort to realize her like this. She’s far from stable and I think the movie does a good job of showing that off while keeping her likable and even relatable.

Along with Harley’s eccentricities, her movie has a unique look and feel. Going beyond this being a completely female-driven cast, which doesn’t happen too often, the cinematography rides the line between reality and comic book. Wild sets, a color palette that frequently changes from desaturated to colorful insanity and distinct looks for all the major characters. This movie is a looker for sure.

I’m a big fan of this cast. We need more Rosie Perez in our lives. Jurnee Smollett-Bell plays a great straight man as Black Canary to Robbie’s Harley. Chris Messina (Zsasz) and Ewan McGregor (Sionis) are another great duo. Zsasz is portrayed as a more civil psychopath compared to his comic book self here, which is similar to what they did for him in the TV show Gotham. McGregor’s Black Mask chews on every bit of scenery he can get his mouth on; fitting for a murderous, pompous, mob boss. The biggest comic book difference is with Cassandra Cain, who is completely different (comic Cass has a wild background and has been through a few personas over the years). Ella Jay Basco does a good job to start off this new misfit, I expect a lot more from her in future films. My biggest disappointment is with Huntress. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is awesome but she’s barely in this! I want to see her so much more! She’s really funny when she’s on-screen but aside from a quick run-in with Harley near the beginning, she doesn’t meet the others until the last 15 minutes of the movie.

That brings us to the awesome action. Choreographed by the brilliant man behind the John Wick franchise, every action scene is like a street fight with some flashy acrobatics added for flair. It’s pretty close to Jackie Chan style fights where the environment is a key part of every battle. Since just about everyone Harley fights is taller and weighs more, her fighting style is geared to disable and then take down her opponents as fast as possible to keep them from getting a chance to touch her. Hits have a fantastic sense of impact and it gets pretty brutal at times. The whole movie is beautifully shot. No out of control camera work, tasteful use of slow motion, nice wide angles, and minimal cuts make everything easy to follow. The final car chase scene is short but super sweet, I can’t say enough good things about it.

This is one of my favorite DC movies to date. It’s a fun story, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, the cast looks like they had a blast, and it scratches my action itch. Suicide Squad 2 with director/writer James Gunn is up next for Harley. Margot Robbie was a major force in getting Birds of Prey made and I hope she gets to do more of what she wants in this playground. This was a minimal taste of the Birds of Prey characters and now that they are introduced it would be great to see them get integrated into other projects in the DC movie universe as well a sequel that Harley doesn’t need to be the focus of.

Toy Story 4– As good as this movie is, it feels like this has to be the last Toy Story movie. There’s nothing left to do with these characters. Thankfully, I think with the way it ends, everyone who makes it agrees with that idea.

Andy’s little sister, Bonnie, is off to kindergarten and on her first day, she makes a new toy, Forky out of bits and bobs of junk. Woody, the perennial control freak, stows away in Bonnie’s backpack to make sure she’s okay. In spotting for her, he basically co-creates Forky and Woody takes this confused misfit under his wing to shepherd him into this new, important role of a child’s toy.

The movie hits all the familiar Toy Story beats. Identity, purpose, family, and love. Cue another road trip for a series of rescue missions, new toy characters, and escalating shenanigans. It’s been a while since I’ve seen 1-3 but it felt like the autonomy of the toys was out of control in this one. They barely try to hide that they are alive to people. They move around and affect so much out in the open it’s nearly impossible that no one notices them.

As much as it sounds like I’m casting shade all over the place, it is a really good movie. Yeah, it’s familiar, but it’s doing all of it really well. There’s a lot of funny moments with a ton of heart and a great message. The new (Ducky and Bunny!) and reoccurring characters (Bo Peep!) are great. I also really like what they do with the antagonist, Gabby Gabby. A big step up from 2 and 3 where those were way darker and less redeemable. As a whole, this entry feels way more optimistic and dour than 3 (which is my least favorite in the series).

It’s rather obvious to talk about how good Pixar animation is but it has to be said how stunning this movie looks. Especially the backgrounds. They figured out some new technology with lighting and the way they make the movie look like it was shot with real-life cameras that continue to bring this craft to the next level. Great finale to a beloved series.

Venom– This entire movie rides on the shoulders of Tom Hardy, it’s pretty amazing to watch him hold the whole thing together. The last time Venom was in a movie, it was way back in Spiderman 3, which was awful. Shoehorned into a sloppy movie was a meaningless move so it barely counts as a cinematic appearance. So here we have a stand-alone movie for Venom, not even a mention of Spiderman, which is a bold and rather dangerous move. With no web-slinger to immediately draw people in, it was a gamble that more than diehards of 90s comics would show up. Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is our main man, so that part of the comics was kept intact. Venom is all origin–how the symbiote landed on Earth and how it manages to attach to Brock. This turns into an anti-hero story where the vicious creature takes a liking to its host and decides to help save Earth and stick around.

With no Spiderman, they needed to cast some serious star power as Eddie Brock to get eyes on what would otherwise be a direct to home video animated movie. Going with, and ultimately Tom committing 100% to this script paid off. Venom made a shocking amount of money at the box office, nearly a billion worldwide. Hardy makes Eddie Brock his own character, giving him a weird accent and a very distinct mannerisms.

When Venom infects Eddie, Hardy gives a wild physical performance that completely sells that his body is being taken over. The first bursts of Venom’s powers are wild and powerful and when he completely takes form, the monster looks awesome. It’s funny, weird, and kinetic energy from there to the end of the movie. Action is very good until the finale. The apartment brawl evokes the creativity of a Spiderman fight and the motorcycle chase is really unique and fun to watch (much better than what was done for Black Panther’s street chase). Despite the overall carnage of the finale, it’s not effective because it’s clearly one shiny black CG blob mushing into a grayish CG blob, at night, on a CG set. It’s frequently too hard to see what’s going on or it has no weight to it. It’s hard to feel engaged despite a good villain set up.

This turned out better than I thought and I’m curious to see where they go for the next one. As much as I liked it, I can’t say it’s worth watching more than once. And if you don’t like the genre, there’s nothing here to change your mind.

I, Tonya– In the early 90s, the women’s figure skating world in the US was led largely by three competitors: Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding, and Kristi Yamaguchi. In 1994, just weeks before the Olympics in Norway, Kerrigan was attacked at practice for the US Nationals by a man hired by Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. Kerrigan was the defending national champion and a favorite for the Olympics. I, Tonya is the bio-pic of Tonya’s life leading up to that point and few years after.

Harding is played by Margot Robbie and the movie mostly sticks to her perspective. I really liked the storytelling technique used as it’s different from most documentary and investigative pieces you usually watch. Real interviews of the principal participants (Jeff, his friend Shawn, Tonya’s mother LaVona) are recreated by the cast members to fill in the narrative between life events. Each one of them more or less giving their story of what really happened. As you watch Tonya’s childhood until she’s 15 years old, Tonya’s life is told in the traditional way and then Tonya and Jeff start breaking the fourth wall. You’ll be watching them argue in their home, for example, and then Tonya will stop, look at the camera and speak directly to you (“This did not happen”) and then the scene will snap back into motion. It makes the picture feel more like someone is letting you watch their memories and they are interjecting when they feel like they need to make sure you stay on their side. It’s an interesting approach and fosters the constant notion of the unreliable narrator. How much of this is true? How much of this actually happened and if it did, did it really happen like this? Tonya, Jeff, and LaVona have a lot to say about things. LaVona at one point jumps in via an interview segment where she basically feels left out of the story and wants back in…and she does.

What’s shown is years of chaos. Tonya was physically and emotionally abused for years on end starting with her mother. LeVona started Tonya in skating at the age of four and put the weight of the world on her daughter’s shoulders to be the best in the world. Working as a waitress, LeVona put all her spare money into paying for Tonya’s skating career and you guess how many times she would bring that up anytime Tonya “talked back” to her. Tonya had a natural talent for figure skating and she grew by leaps and bounds with the proper training.

Tonya never fit into anything, an outsider who struggled to be noticed and appreciated. Her dad left her mom when Tonya was young, she grew up poor, she was never accepted into the figure skating world. She didn’t look the part, act the part, talk like the other girls. She was counter to the very stuffy and wealthy culture of competitive skating. She painted her nails wild colors, chose rock and metal music instead of classical to skate to. She never had the money to buy the proper costumes, so she made a lot of them. One of the best parts is when they show Tonya hunting rabbits with her dad and they make a fur coat out of the pelts. All the 9-year old girls around her had real mink coats and just to try to fit in, she did what she had to do. When that got her sneers and side looks, up went her middle finger. What drove everyone really nuts is that this misfit couldn’t be ignored or dismissed on her skills. She could compete with anyone, a 1988 first-place finish in Moscow marking the start of her making her mark. In 1991 she won her first National (the US Championships) and put her name in the history books as the first woman to land a triple axel in competition. None of her peers would even try to do it. She made into the 1992 Olympics, placing 4th behind Nancy Kerrigan.

And then the “incident” in 1994 happens. I, Tonya depicts Nancy Kerrigan’s attack largely outside of Tonya’s input and control. More guilty by association than anything else (she ended up pleading guilty to hindering the investigation). What is clear, is that she was surrounded by blithering idiots.

This was a hell of a movie that is crafted remarkably well. It constantly moves in terms of story, drama, emotion, and direction. Margot Robbie is awesome, as is Allison Janney playing LaVona. I knew nothing about the details, I only remember seeing the footage of Kerrigan right after she was hurt and Harding showing the Olympic judges her broken skate laces in Norway. It’s up to you to decide if you think Tonya is an awful person (or a liar or both) after watching this. I think I, Tonya is a good example of someone being put through the wringer of a life they were born into. The journey is often marked with ugly and uncomfortable struggles.