Category: Movies

Everything to do with films!

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Review: ‘The Devil All The Time’ is a bleak story anchored by great performances

Tom Holland / The Devil All The Time

There are a lot of no good sons of bitches out there. This is the message that Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård) imparts to his son immediately after brutally beating two men who had made lewd comments about his wife.

Willard teaches his young son Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta) that the world is full of no good sons of bitches, and that using violence against them is not so much a question of if as it is when. Years later, an adult Arvin (Tom Holland) finds himself surrounded by no-good sons of bitches; he remembers his father’s lessons.

The Devil All The Time is a story of generational pain and violence in 1950s Ohio. It is bleak, and unflinching, and also incredibly uneven. If it weren’t anchored by two brilliant performances I’m not sure that I would recommend it. Luckily, it is, so I am.

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Home Video: Three Great Tom Holland Films (That Aren’t Spider-Man) and Where to Buy, Rent, or Stream them

Tom Holland / The Devil All The Time

Tom Holland has a new film debuting on Netflix this week, Antonio Campos adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All The Time. Holland is a megastar thanks to his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man, but in his 8-year career, he has been in several great films. Let’s talk about three of them.

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Review: ‘Class Action Park’ is a fascinating look back at a piece of 80s Americana

Class Action Park

Amusement parks are thrilling places. The rides create an artifice of danger, one that is scary but never actually scary as thought you might actually be injured or killed. Or, at least, that’s what they are supposed to do.

Action Park, built as a summer season companion to a ski resort by ethically unscrupulous developer Eugene Mulvihill, did not create that artifice; it literally put people in danger. Directors Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III new documentary Class Action Park looks back at the story of the park and the scars inflicted on the survivors.

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’Dune’ Trailer: Stop what you’re doing right now and watch this

Dune

If you have been paying attention to cinema these last few years then the name Denis Villeneuve should be an exciting one to you. His particular aesthetic sense for visual narrative has made him one of the most well regarded director of the day.

If you’re a fan of science fiction then the name Dune should also excite you, being that Dune is one of –if not the– most influential and important science fiction novels of all time.

“Denis Villeneuve has been making a Dune movie” is maybe the most exciting sentence I have read or uttered this year.

Here’s a trailer for it.

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Review: ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ is awkward, uncomfortable, and purposeful

I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Charlie Kaufman films have a particular feeling to them. Weird isn’t the right word. Unique is a good one. Idiosyncratic is another. Netflix has a string of movies they’ve released where they seem to have backed a dump truck full of money onto the lawn of a filmmaker and then set them loose to make whatever they’re going to make. For better or for worse, in these cases, we seem to end up with films that are very much their filmmakers’ films.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a very Charlie Kaufman movie. Starting with the simplest of setups –a young woman and her boyfriend take a road trip to his parent’s house during a snowstorm– and slowly but surely expanding to ruminate on ideas of self, relationships, memory, fantasy, quantum physics, family, and great poets, among other things.

If you’re into Charlie Kaufman, this movie is definitely for you.

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Review: ‘Mulan’ is a mixed bag

Mulan / Liu Yifei

Mulan should have been a slam dunk for Disney. A remake of a well-loved 1990s animated classic, it features a cast of both rising and legendary Chinese and Chinese-American stars, a director with a solid track record in Niki Caro, not to mention the bank account of the House of Mouse behind it.

The film, released this weekend straight to Disney+ because of, you know, the plague, is certainly a gorgeous one. It’s also well-acted and adds some new elements to the story, but ultimately is held back by some baffling editing choices.

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Poster Gallery: James Gunn’s ‘The Suicide Squad’, Wonder Woman ’84, Black Adam, and The Batman DC Fandome Posters

The Suicide Squad

While I was busy covering Fantasia Fest DC had an event to announce their upcoming slate of projects. There was a ton of news out there that you’ve probably seen, but I really like these posters.

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Fantasia Review: ‘You Cannot Kill David Arquette’ is a sweet, silly, and entertaining documentary

You Cannot Kill David Arquette

When you think of David Arquette, you probably think of the lovable goofball from the Scream movies. I can say this confidently because that’s what most people think of him after he was typecast as that after the Scream movies.

“I’m just tired of being the joke“, he says while atop his horse, Scooter, wearing a purple cape while vaping. Arquette feels, all at once, the loveable goofball you’re already thinking of and a slightly lost soul who wants a little respect. Introduced to professional wrestling through the 2000 film Ready to Rumble, he found a community that seemed ideally suited for him. A sport, a theatrical sport that appealed to his goofball nature.

But after a disastrous entry to the sport, in which he won the WCW World Championship to promote his movie, he lost the respect he so desperately needed. Eighteen years later, his career never having reached the heights it could have, and maybe should have, he decides to try to reclaim that respect.

This is a good movie, people.

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Fantasia Review: ‘Patrick’ is a sweet story of coming into ones own.

Patrick

There’s something to be said for being naked. Everyone knows it, but naturalists live it. They spend all their time naked, or nearly so, while living their lives. These are normal people with normal lives; they just live in the nude when they can.

Patrick is the story of a mild-mannered handyman who lives with his parents in a nudist campground. He’s content, if unambitious, to continue fixing things and, in his spare time, build beautiful handmade wooden furniture. Patrick is a wizard in his woodworking shop, where he feels at home.

And then his father, patriarch of his family and owner of the campsite, suddenly passes away. Suddenly he has unruly tenants to deal with, a lothario rock star as a guest, a sly developer trying to bully him into selling the campground, and worst of all: his hammer is missing.

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