Glamour Beast

To start with the positives, I can say that the monster/monsters of this film are well done and interesting in my opinion! Its power of hypnotizing humans with its pulsating neck, and the fact that the camera pulsates similarly to the creatures neck while its happening, and how the scenes repeat while the characters are under the effect of hypnotization are interesting and I enjoyed seeing them! I also felt that Hunter Schaefer did a good job basically carrying this film on her own, with a strong emotional performance and the ability to move around a range of emotions while still being believably the same character.

Something about this film I found a bit frustrating is how unexplored and not well thought out most things felt. While I enjoy the monster, many of its aspects lack explanation or reason.

Similarly, I feel like Hunter Schaefer's character felt well rounded and fully explored but everyone around her are pretty flat as far as characterization go: caring but distracted father, cruel and uncaring step mother, evil scientist (with no motive), and man seeking revenge for his dead wife. These characters mostly work fine for the film, but having more fleshed out characters AND world would have the end of the film make more sense! The film has a sweet ending and I like it, however, its all about Hunter Schaefer's character and her little sisters relationship, which is basically nothing up until the film shows one thing the sister secretly did nice for her, which does not set the ending up to be very impactful at all.

Overall the film is good and has interesting ideas, but I feel that thinking out the world, the characters, and how those could intersect and be conveyed more clearly would have created a better film.

Like many of DreamWorks other recent pictures (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish comes to mind) the film implores a slightly painterly animation style that looks stunning when in conversation with the movies well done cinematography and coloring. Another part of this movie I enjoyed is the films subtle world building. It does not cover why humanity is the way it is now, exactly how the world got to the way it is but does just enough to paint a good enough picture to not having me asking for more. I think a great part of this is how little humans are actually shown in the film and how, despite them being important to the story in a certain way they are highlighted over the themes of nature, technology, and purpose. I also thought that the main characters of the film, mainly Roz and Brightbill, are interesting and compelling characters that are fun to learn and watch.

On a more neutral note, the fox side character in this film that joins the other tow main characters feels a lot like Nick Wild from Zootopia in both personality and voice. I mind to much that there are similarities, they are both foxes after all who have a sort of well known folklore-based personality, but it does feel worth noting. Another interesting thing is that this film feels like it could be put in conversation with Wall-E in an interesting way. The ways the two films treat robots, humans, how humans affect the world around them through the creature of technology and the robots, and the way humans fit into a world following an climate change/the apocalypse as nature reclaims the planet.

I don't have a lot of strong negative feelings about the film, rather just some small critiques about small aspects. One is the conversation the film has around purpose, and the cycles of nature (kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, etc.) feel stronger in the first half, but it feels the film abandons that a bit to turn the animal community into something much closer to that of a human town, with different people having functions and roles and not killing each other, which just feels a bit odd. The film ultimately uses this to have a message of coming together as a community and being there for others, but it feels like some interesting thoughts are left behind because of this. Another small issue is that to me the animal community sometimes falls into and becomes just another anthropomorphic animal community similar to that of Over the Hedge and other animated kids movies with talking animals. Its not necessarily bad, and there's a reason these kinds of generic towns folksy type groups appear in a lot of kids movie, but I don't feel like this film does a whole lot to make this films minor characters stand out from the rest of animated kids film fair.

Over all I thought this was a really good movie, and definitely recommend watching it! I wouldn't say its a perfect film by any means but a movie that ranges from amazing to good at any point in the film is worth a watch in my book.

The first thing I will say about this film is that I do like the design of the smile demon, even if it is briefly seen at the end of the film for a single scene. As far as monsters go its weird, abstract, scary, and mesmerizing. I will also say that as far as making a horror film surrounding the ideas of concerts and popstars, this film blows TRAP out of the water. The concerts feel claustrophobic and isolating, and the way the film explores pop star personas and loneliness despite the amount of attention received is interesting!

My big issue with this film is how the demon functions in the main characters mind and how it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Essentially, once infected with the smile demon after seeing the previous host kill themselves in front of you, you re cursed with having on going hallucinations of either scary things happening around you or people around you doing things you aren't actually doing. This is used for scares and make the main characters feel more and more insane and panicked as time goes on since they cant trust what they are seeing or what the people around them are actually doing. After seven days, the demon then fully posses you, and makes you kill yourself in front of others to infect others. Kind of interesting in concept! My issue is that in execution, the film tries to give us a twist by having basically the middle to last half of the film not actually be reality and be a super extended hallucination. While this kind of works as a twist since it leaves you surprised and confused like the main character, but then it had me questioning "so what was the point of all that? if none of it was real why did I even watch it?" It really took me out of the world to have so little of what happened in the movie between characters mean nothing since none of it was real within the fiction. This twist does serve the ending, which is interesting and could be saying something about mass trauma of tragedies happening at concerts and similar events, but by then I am already taken out of the film, so the ending was not as impactful as I think it could have been if the movie tried to ground itself more.

It was revealed some time ago that Moana 2 was originally developed as a TV show to go on Disney+ but was later reworked to be made into a sequel film, and I feel this shows in both the films animation, storytelling and characters. The story of the film works fine as a sequel generally, but the more granular with it the more issues it has. The film feels as if its broken up into 22 minute segments, where when those pass beyond the first episode there is very little connection between them! The characters of this film are fine, if a little one note at times, including the returning characters. We have three islanders added as crew to Moana's trip and they are funny at times but largely stick to both their role on the team and their comedic bit throughout the film, making them unmemorable past their most basic traits. Moana and Maui, as returning characters also suffer from this one note-ness, which I didn't feel was an issue in the first film. Moana is cheery and determined, but without he bite back or even the level of angst she could get into in the original. Maui is even more one note, as I can't remember what arc he has over the film before losing his demigod powers at the end of the film as a sacrifice, which he gets back. Moana even one ups him on this, by literally dying by being struck by lighting before being brought back to life, so Maui's sacrifice has no weight by the time the movie ends. Lastly, the big bad of the film, who's name I can't even remember, was by far the most one note of them all! He was especially just a big storm with no lines, purple lightning and tornadoes, and no motivation whatsoever. I wouldn't say Te Fiti was a feat in writing in the original but at least she had a motive (her heart was stolen so all life was dying and she was turned evil) and film was actually saying something with her inclusion (Moana's compassion being the answer to defeating her instead of Maui's brute force).

Some small critiques I have include: the water animation is worse than the original, the exposition at the beginning of the film feels extremely shoehorned in, and ultimately, the stakes of this film feel unclear because the only problem we are told if Moana does do this journey is that her island will be empty of people. Will all of the people die if they do not reunite the oceans people? with this happen after everyone dies of old age? will this happen with more of a ticking clock like the first movie? Why does Moana need to g now, with a team of completely untrained individuals?

All in all I did not like this movie, both as a sequel to the first film or standing on its own. It feels like a complete cash grab to me and does not do the original story any justice.

As a preface to this review, I must say that not only have I been a fan of this musical since I was as young as 12, but I am also a fan of Ariana Grande, so my feelings on this film are both passionate and perhaps a bit biased!!

This film was an absolute knock out for me! As the biggest plus, I felt the two lead performances of this movie were performed amazingly. Cynthia Erivo does excellently playing the role of Elphaba, being able to carry the complex emotions of the characters while also being able to sing and carry many of the movies major musical numbers. Ariana Grande plays the role of Glinda, formerly known as Galinda, and she does fantastically also carrying the complex emotions of the character while also carrying many of the films strong comedic moments almost entirely on her back. It goes without saying, she has her own showstopping musical moments as well! Beyond the two leads, the other performances of the remaining cast are done excellently as well!

Many of the songs involve completely mesmerizing choreography, and the film uses these beautifully designed practical sets for the characters to move around in.

Some have found issues with the length of this film, which is beyond two hours and only covers the first act of the musical its based on. I, however, had no issues with the length of this as I feel the movie was well paced enough and engaging enough to make the time fly without my noticing.

Largely I have nothing negative to say about the film. Maybe some critiques will come with time as the rose colored glasses fade but I really enjoyed this film and am so excited for the second film to come out in 2025!

As far as the positives of the film: I will keep it brief. The first song of the film has some interesting choreography.

Now, the negatives. As a musical, none of the songs were particularly memorable or interesting to me. I frankly struggled to remember anything about any of them, save for one. The one is a song where the lawyer, played by Zoe Saldana, is looking for a doctor to do the various plastic surgeries and gender reassignment surgeries Emilia is looking to have done. On her search she finds herself in Thailand where an entire medical wing (both medical staff and patients) sing at her about the joys of sex reassignment surgeries and plastic surgeries, with an EXTREMELY strong comedic tone for it. This song sticks out for two bad reasons. Firstly. the film is very dramatic throughout its entire run. There are very few comedic moments throughout and for much of the film, the story is carried with a heavy weight to it. This song however is so overly comedic it sticks out of the film like a sore thumb, not really fitting in with the rest of the film in any way, tone-wise. The second issue that I personally have with it is that this singular comedic song is assigned to the idea of sex reassignment surgeries. why was this subject chosen over other subjects or area of the film that could have had a comedic song? It feels a bit more like laughing at the trans characters in questions and these kinds of surgeries than laughing with them to me.

Another issue I have with this film is that in the film, none of the characters are particularly well drawn to me, feeling flat and usually having one or two dimensions to them.

The film also attempts to tackle a large number of social issues in its plots, but then fails to really say anything of note about them. The film talks about and surrounds a lesbian transwoman, has a large plot points around the victims of drug cartels, talks a lot about womanhood and power imbalances in relationships, but does not say anything memorable or note worthy about any of those subjects by the end!

As you can tell, this was not my favorite film. While the film certainly tries to be many things, it actually overstuffs itself with content that does not connect, creating a film that ends up saying very little.

Although this film is dream like and meandering, it does have at least the skeleton of a plot: Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver is an architect and inventor living in the futuristic city of New Rome. He has created a magical material that will revolutionize the city, but he is being antagonized by the current mayor of the city, Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito. Another important character is Julia Cicero, the daughter of Cicero and the love interest of Catalina, who is played by Nathalie Emmanuel. I don't remember much of what she did besides inspire Catalina.

One thing that I can say nicely about this film is that it has inklings of interesting ideas. A weird combo city of Ancient Rome and NYC? That's a fascinating setting that could interrogate how the United States appropriates ideas and styles from ancient Rome to make it appear that it is the successor of the Roman Empire, or it could interrogate the negative effects empires have both on those they rule over and within! Even artistically, how would romans build skyscrapers?? that would be interesting! To bad that within the film New Rome is visually just NYC or any other American city but with a Madison Square Garden with a "Colosseum" sign on the front.

Now on to the negatives, I have quite a few so I will keep this short! The film is exceptionally dream-like, with scenes happening with very little order or reason between them. I can't say I've ever been a fan of films that have this dream like logic (Mother (2017) and Men (2022) come to mind) so this may just be a personal issue.

The film's story also so obviously doubles as the story of the film maker, in a very negative way. An amazing inventor (read: Coppola) is being stopped by an evil man (Read: the industry unwilling to finance his expensive, self aggrandizing film) who isn't willing to change his ways despite the inventors great inventions and miraculous abilities (Read: Coppola's filmmaking skills I guess)? It's so deeply devoid of self awareness despite it's meta nature it's fascinating.

I also did not enjoy the way the female characters were treated in this film. There are only three that get any moments in the plot and their roles are: love interest, evil and power hungry woman, and young sex obsessed celebrity. They are so basic and tropey it feels exceptionally insulting.

I could say much more about this film but this review would turn into a novel. I can't say I enjoyed this movie much at all despite how awful it is. I can usually find some enjoyment in movies of this caliber but for this film I really struggle. I wouldn't really recommend this film to anyone, and I can't say I will ever desire to watch this film again!

Trap is a film following a serial killer and his daughter as they attend a pop star's concert. The serial killer quickly learns that the concert has been set up as a trap to catch him, and he has to figure out how to escape without being caught.

I am going to be honest, I don't have much good to say about this! The only thing I can think of is that this film has some good actors in it, who's performances I almost enjoy such as Allison Pill, who plays the wife of the serial killer, and Seleka, who plays the pop star named Lady Raven. I feel this film is made up of good to ok actors that are forced into acting I never found good because the script didn't give them anything to work with. The characters never get very interesting or particularly complex besides the main character, who's characterization is not my favorite. Like another of M. Night Shyamalan's killers, the main character of this film has a mental illness (In this case OCD), which, while an expansion of his character, does stigmatize mental health issues once more.

The plot of this film makes very little sense both in the big view as well as in smaller moments of the film. The very premise itself invites a million questions, only some of which are ever answered in the film, and even then I can't say I was satisfied with those answers. I will say, this is where I got the most enjoyment out of the film. While me and my partner were watching this film we had some good laughs asking these questions, knowing we would never get a good answer for them. How did they know he was going to be at the concert, but were not able to know exactly through he is? Why are they always leaving the concert to go backstage, and when they do why is it always so full of people?

I think this films two biggest crimes are it's unimaginative cinematography and its boring depiction of a concert which are intertwined. Most of the film takes place during Lady Raven's concert. The pop start seems to be popular among teenage girls, akin to a pop star such as early Taylor Swift. The arena the concert takes place in is extremely small, with a little pit and only one upper level. The cinematography does nothing to disguise this either, which I feel would be easy! Blur the background, bring the camera to the daughters height level and make everything look so much bigger! On that same note, I feel the film could have very easily made the concert feel more scary and claustrophobic. I have been to concerts and they are very chaotic and claustrophobic, especially with pop star concerts! Enhance the crowding, heighten how loud everything is, highlight the lights that flash in your eyes as spotlights move around the crowds!

Lastly, the film also suffers from just adding more and more to the plot. I felt the film could have ended at three different points in its third act.

In conclusion, I think this movie stinks. Is it a film that is so bad it's good? Possibly! I was wildly in love with M. Night Shyamalan's 2021 film Old, for exactly this reason. It was so hilariously awful to me that it has remained one of my favorite movies in that category. This film on the other hand, while it is bad, I wouldn't say it's as comically bad as Old, as I found myself more bored watching this film than when watching Old. I suppose it's up to each person, but this could be a fun film to watch with some friends and have a good laugh.

The Substance follows an aging actress who, freshly fired from her exercise show, gets her hands on The Substance, a substance that when injected has her body duplicate itself but younger, and the two bodies must shift wakefulness to one another one week at a time to remain healthy.

As far as the premise goes, the film sticks to exactly what you think it will do for the first two acts of the film. The young version is extremely successful but greedy for more time to be awake, and the older version is bitter because of her younger versions success and as well as being taken advantage of by the younger version.

As the third act of this film roles around it go in some fun directions regarding body horror and depicting delusions, which is what really hooked me on this film. Due to her greed, the younger version begins to physically deteriorate, and in an attempt to stay alive, she misuses the substance, which creates a monstrous version that is both and neither of the two previous versions of the character. This part of the film was by far my favorite, and really made the film work for me. For me, it takes everything that the film was working with before and turns it up to eleven, taking every movement and action as far as it can go.

Much to the films name, I find this film to be more form over function in its writing. The Substance is a very visceral film. It focuses on gross eating, nasty leering, tight and young bodies, and finally oozing and monstrous masses. This film makes you feel it in all of its senses. This is a trade off however, as the film has very little dialogue, and this leaves most characters largely two dimensional, including our main character(s). I do think this film pulls this off well, as most of the time it’s not that bothersome that you don’t know the characters that intermittently, besides the slow middle of the film.

I also enjoyed this films commentary on the beauty industry and Hollywood, how these high beauty standard makes beautiful women who are older seek out dangerous and an experimental procedures to stay young and in the spotlight. It also pokes fun at the vapid sexism of Hollywood, especially by the men who are in control of these industries and face no price for forcing these women down these paths. I’d say the only issue I might have with this film is that sometimes it’s satire goes so far in its portrayal; it seems to come back around to reinforcing it. The over sexualization of the younger version, and the way the camera mocks the older, disfigured version of the main characters can sometimes lean towards reinforcing ageism, although I think this is a longer and more conversation than I am willing to write in a review. If you are interested in hearing some of these kinds of ideas, I recommend this video or this video!

Apartment 7A is a prequel for the famous horror flick Rosemary’s Baby (which happens to be among my favorite horror movies of all time). It tells the story of a young dancer who is down on her luck after an injury, being taken in and cared for by the neighbors who invite Rosemary and her husband into their apartment in the sequel.

I really enjoyed the aesthetics of this movie. There are a few disorienting transitions between scenes that are visually, and the depiction of the devil in this film is both varied and beautiful. The recreations of some of the set pieces form the original are also well done in my opion, although they are only around sparingly.

This film is mostly a retread of the original, however. Terry, the main character of this film is largely a combination of Rosemary and her husband from the original. Like Rosemary’s husband she longs for success in show business and is willing to do anything to get it. Like Rosemary she is unwittingly impregnated with the antichrist, deals with the paranoia surrounding the growing issues with the baby, and has to struggle against the cultists trying to take control of her life. This film recreates certain scenes and plot points from the first film, sometimes beat for beat, which is a bit disappointing. By the end of it it also becomes predictable what is going to happen to her, especially if you have any memory of the original at all. I won’t spoil it but if you think of any character that this character could be in the original you will probably figure it out.

I will admit that I probably like this movie somewhat more than I would have just because I liked rosemary’s baby, and this film delivers on making many callbacks (call-forwards?) to the original and not doing anything insulting with the originals legacy. I would say I you liked the original it is a good but not surprising film to watch!

I can’t say I liked this movie very much!

To start with the positives: Lady Gaga does great with what she is given (‘ll talk about that in a minute). She plays Harley in a new way and is a phenomenal singer. Also, the sets for some of the fantasy scenes are fun and well designed.

Alright, on to the negatives: Where the hell does Harley Quinn go fo the second half of this movie?? She is largely written out of the plot after around the midway point. After that she appears here and there for short scenes or to make faces in the background of scenes, and in part of the disappointment that is the ending. This doesn’t make any sense to me, as the film is about them being a duo and their “shared delusion”, so why wouldn’t she prominent if not in the movie just as much as Arthor?

The film also wants to be a musical without actually committing to being a musical. Characters break into song, mostly in fantasy sequences, but not as much as a musical fan would want while also being more than a musical hater would want either!

Most of the film takes place in the Arkham Asylum and the Trial room, an both locations are pretty boring. The first film didn’t have particularly beautiful or amazing set pieces but it was varied for most of it and had some standouts (the TV show set, the GALA, the riots at the end of the film) that I think this film really lacks beyond the fantasy sequences.

The last thing I will complain about with this film is it’s ending. Instead of Harley killing Arthor, some random guy in the asylum does it. Why? Why not give this to Harley as a big character moment at the very least? It was such an anti-climax to have him meet Harley on the steps, they say very little to each other, and then take us back into the boring asylum to watch some character we haven’t seen talk before randomly kill him. What was the point exactly?

I think the main issue I have with this film is that it is so much easier to imagine an amazing film with these bones. A movie about Joker and Harley’s growing and then dying relationship with them together (maybe outside of the asylum after the first part of the film?). The movie could have gone all in as a musical, really blurring the lines between reality and fantasy in the way actual musicals can do sometimes would fit perfectly in Joker’s general tone.

I’ve complained a lot in this review, but the film was not horrifically bad. It had a serviceable if boring story that attempted to explore Arthor/Joker and the persona’s relationship to the real person even though it’s conclusion makes both movies feel a bit pointless.

Inside Out 2 is a good movie, in a similar way to Inside Out being a good movie. The movies largely follow the same beats: Joy is the head honcho emotion and at the beginning of the story another emotion starts to mess with the way she works/the whole group of emotions works, and she must go through a journey of the mind to understand a better way for to understand how that she cannot be in complete control of her human riley, and that other emotions also have their place in moderation.

I am of two minds about this film, so I’ll explain these two minds separately. The first is my positive mind: the original Inside Out always felt to me as a tool for therapy for kids, and this is a good thing. Its about simplified emotions struggling with a major life change, and it teaches children how to manage those emotions. In the first movie that is that its okay to be sad, its okay to cry and let out your emotions, and bottling up a certain emotion or trying to run away from it will not fix the issue. In the sequel, the movie teaches you how letting anxiety take control of your mind and create a new sense of self to protect yourself is not a sustainable way to live. As someone who has lived with high anxiety much of my life I really appreciate this movies approach to it. I could see myself in a lot of Riley’s anxious actions and thoughts and I thought the visualization of anxiety as someone trying to help but unintentionally hurting is much better than making her an outright villain. It’s a kind way to represent the mind, and to represent a part of someone’s self that may (and in my case probably will) be in someone’s life for a long time. I think this film could be really useful for therapists to teach kids with anxiety useful skills, or help kids without access to help manage it on their own, at least a little.

Now, to my second mind. This film was honestly to similar to the first one for me, that it feels like I just watched the second episode of episodic tv show rather than a feature length film. I also struggled to see the points of adding some of the newer characters, mainly Ennui. Envy made sense to me in tandem with Anxiety, and Embarrassment also made some sense, but other than helping Sadness did not add a lot to the movie for me. I get the joke of teenagers being bored all the time and acting like they don’t care about anything, but I struggle to find any other reason to have her in the film. The movie also did not innovate in terms of depictions of the mind as well as the first, which I felt had at least some more interesting areas that it depicted, and where better utilized by the movie. All of the locations that they showed didn’t add much to me other than the roots of the sense of self, which I thought was very pretty.

All in all, I think this is a good movie that is held back from being great by a lack of strong direction and interesting innovation to set it apart from the original.

Much like Twisters, this movie is a sequel to a good movie from a couple of decades ago that is not bad but doesn’t do anything to justify its existence.

Both this film and its predecessor have loose plots that meander from place to place until everything comes to a head in the climax. To me this worked better in the original, with the Maitland’s as a strong core to the meandering plot, since they are both interesting and also characters worth rooting for. Without these two characters in the film, the movie depends on Lydia and her daughter, Astrid, to be the central characters of the film. The issue is that these characters are largely disconnected and largely go on separate plots throughout the film. The film also has a weak supporting cast which also made it hard for me to stay engaged in the film. Both Lydia’s fiancé and Astrid’s crush are uninteresting, evil male characters with underhanded motives that make them feel pointless once the plot has dealt with them. The same is true for the secondary villain of this film, Beetlejuice’s ex-wife Delores, who has very little screentime in the film but is also framed as important and scary until she is dealt with easily at the end of the film.

One thing I did like about this film was how it expanded the afterlife a little more than it’s predecessor, and mostly did it in fun and quirky ways.

Otherwise, it was a fine film. Nothing special and probably not something I will rewatch any time soon but fun for a Halloween-spooky time at the movies.

The original twister is not a perfect movie. It has a pretty predictable romantic plot, the CGI used is pretty bad when compared to what was possible for its sequel, and I can’t say that the plot is super complex or interesting. While it does suffer from many of these issues, its also just a fun time to watch. The characters feel dynamic or at the very least exciting.

This movie is just… fine. It does nothing specifically special or interesting to me, and as a sequel, I do think it is actively less interesting than its predecessor. To me this film doesn’t do anything offensive, its just uninteresting. The supporting cast is less interesting or entertaining, the action shots, while more realistic, are less fun to view, and the whole plan that the movie revolves around feels stupid (there has GOT to be another way to measure this storm besides putting one of the sensors DIRECTLY IN ITS PATH). The movie also had way to many pointless needle drops to songs that don’t feel like they had a point in the movie.

I did enjoy that the film went harder on the deaths in this movie. They are more shocking (I might even say slasher-esque at certain points) which I did find entertaining.

Overall, I don’t think it was a bad movie, it had a plot that mostly made sense, I just was not entertained by it, and that’s probably the biggest issue any movie can have to me.

Strange Darling is a film that swings big and misses hard.

There are some potentially interesting tings going on in this film. The story is told in disorganized sequences, so we only understand the true series of events around halfway to three quarters of the movie. I find this interesting as a storytelling strategy and I think a better movie could have done something really interesting or unexpected with this. This movie however only really has one twist, which I will talk about later, and the out of order story does very little to conceal it after the first few sequences. Something else I love about this movie are some of the only supporting characters that are memorable in the film. They are an elderly hippy couple who live deep in the forest. They for some reason have speakers that broadcast some kind of bigfoot/conspiracy related podcast into the forest, which is how the main characters find their house. These characters act so strangely while every other character in this film is played (mostly) realistically. The way they are written reminds me of Beau is Afraid, which makes me very fond of them.

Ultimately this movie has a lot of negative attributes going against the very little I liked. The first is the twist. To summarize the story of the film: we are told there is a famous murderer around and then are shown a middle chapter of the story first where a man is chasing a woman who is covered in blood and panicked. The twist of the film is that the woman is actually the serial killer, and that the man chasing her is actually a cop she attempted to murder. The issue with this twist is that since the story is told out of order, you are naturally going to assume that the first glimpse of the story is misleading. As soon as you see another moment of this story it felt obvious to me that the woman was the killer. Despite this twist feeling particularly obvious, the film drags out the actual reveal of this for most of the film, constantly trying to give us red herrings to why the man or the woman could be the killer. It just felt completely pointless!

My other large issue with the film is the woman, who ends up being our killer. She feels underwritten in multiple ways. She is written in the way a sexist man would view a female killer: uses her sexuality to lure victims, plays victim to gain sympathy from those around her, and successfully falsely accuses a man of sexual assault to escape. She also lacks motivation for her murders in any way that matters. Her reasoning is seemingly arbitrary based on what a voice in her head is telling her to do, but this is explored as little as humanly possibly by the film, even when it is critical to the ending. What makes it wort of all is that the woman playing this character, Willa Fitzgerald, does a great job with what she is given! It just stinks that she was given a pile of shit to work with.

To preface: I have only watched the first Alien movie. Apparently this movie is set between Alien and Aliens, so I didn’t need to watch the sequel to understand this movie, and this turned out correct! I may have perhaps missed some intentional parallels beyond those that are in the public consciousness (Such as “Get away from her, you bitch!”)

Besides that, I liked this movie! I thought it was a fun Alien adventure with characters I liked (The standout for me being Andy!) and a good visual style. It certainly reinvents the wheel with regards to Alien,feeling similar to the first film in terms of plot structure and large beats. According to my partner it is also similar to Aliens in this sense. I think the visuals and the set pieces were very good in this movie, with my standout visual being Andy, physically frozen and resetting himself while bathed in the red emergency light while the face huggers were attacking the two boys, and the tunnel at the bottom of the ship covered in what I can only call “Xenomorph bio-goo”. The Human-Xenomorph hybrid thing was also well designed and something I want to look more closely at when I get the chance. I saw one reviewer say this movie is style over substance and while I wouldn’t agree with that totally, the style is a part of this movies strengths in my opinion. Also, I am jut a classics nerd so fun allusions to Romulus and Remus and all that were fun.

I liked this film! While I don’t think it does anything wild or uniquely interesting with the series it’s a part of, I enjoyed the moments where the main characters contemplation on her impending doom are saddled next to the world falling apart around her. I felt Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn’s performances were good! And I felt the main character of the film had a satisfy arc that was nice to watch. I would recommend watching this one, especially if you have already seen A Quiet Place (the sequel is not needed to watch this one!)

I can’t say I liked this movie much. For a partial comedy film, I only laughed to one or two jokes (The first being when Deadpool says “We’re at a bit of a low point” and when Chris Evans is revealed to be playing Johnny Storm instead of a Captain America variant if you were curious). The characters felt pretty flat to me, as did the plot. Besides the generic sets like “street” and “forest” this film had a similar issue to Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantomania where it felt like everyone was standing on a not very convincing CGI set talking at each other. Some of the fight scene were fun but none where particularly interesting to me. Many of the heartfelt moments felt overwrought next to the comedy of the film, although I did appreciate a good amount of Hugh Jackmans performance.The first antagonist of the film, Mr. Paradox was very boring to me, as he felt like they just put season 1 of Loki’s version of the TVA as the villain into one boring character. The second villain of the film, Cassandra Nova, was somewhat more interesting to me but never really grabbed me in the way that I wanted her to. Overall, I would not recommend watching this film unless you love the MCU or love random comic character cameos.

I think the first thing I can say about Longlegs is that the film is absolutely dripping with suspense and tension. Throughout most of the movie the audience is looking in the dark corners of the screen while also trying to map this mystery as it is slowly laid out for the audience. I also think the characters of this film were very interesting to watch. The main character of the film, Lee Harker, is someone I enjoyed following. Based on her behavior in the film, I read the character as autistic, although this is never said outright. I do think this adds an interesting dimension to her character, as she navigates working with allistic FBI agents as well as interacting with her mother, who also appears to be autistic. Lastly, while I don’t always enjoy a Nic Cage performance in a horror film (a Color Out of Space, Mandy) I found his performance is the strange and sadistic Longlegs to be fun to watch even if it was a bit over the top. Speaking of Longlegs, I found him to be a fun antagonist for this film with a murder scheme both convoluted and interesting!

The film loses me a bit in the ending. While not a deal breaker, I do think it could be more original and have a more climactic ending. To put a long story short, Long legs is a dollmaker that has Lee’s mother deliver dolls haunted with Satan to unsuspecting families, and the dolls slowly possess the family members into being murdered by the father in the family. I think I mostly find this disappointing because the film ends up being “another haunted doll film” as my partner put it, and I do think that trope has been played out in horror films in the last few decades. I do also think the tension the movie creates throughout the movie could be utilized for a more climactic ending. While I do think that stopping the final murder from occurring makes sense, It feels as if we were building to something bigger, but I suppose I don’t know what that would be besides “the end of the world” described in Revelations, which I suppose could be too bombastic. The ending not being my favorite is not a dealbreaker for me though, and I do admit that it does work for the movie even if I think it could have had one that worked even better