REVIEW: Freaky [2020]

Do I wipe? After steering two Happy Death Day films marrying slasher and time-loop tropes together for box office success, the question for writer/director Christopher Landon was, “What’s next?” Add Scouts Guide to the Zombies and you’d be right to assume it would be another horror comedy of some kind, but what sub-genre would be injected to give it a unique yet familiar flair? Or better yet: whose script would provide that injection with an overall sensibility he could get behind? Landon didn’t write the first Death Day film after…

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REVIEW: Pokémon: Detective Pikachu [2019]

I can feel it in my jellies. It’s almost shocking that nobody made a live-action Pokémon movie considering the card game’s heyday was back in the 1990s while the anime and video games still ruled kids’ televisions. That’s not to say the property ever disappeared. Nintendo couldn’t have turned “Pokémon GO” into an international smartphone phenomenon without strong brand recognition spanning multiple generations. But what was there to lean on narratively? The creatures themselves can’t say anything but their names and the human characters are kids trying to catch them…

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REVIEW: Ben is Back [2018]

You’re all still scared of me. There’s no way to discuss the second of Ben is Back or Beautiful Boy that you watched without also mentioning the first. Maybe I’d think differently if the order had swapped, but watching the former last seems like the correct way to do things since it allowed me to have a fresh perspective on what these types of addict films generally do wrong. Everything I thought Beautiful Boy failed to grasp about the complex subject matter was fixed in Ben is Back if only…

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REVIEW: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri [2017]

It’s hard to know what to do. It’s no coincidence that the dumbest character in Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri says the most revealing line of dialogue throughout the entire film: “Anger begets more anger.” I guess it’s because Penelope (Samara Weaving) isn’t dumb as much as she’s naïvely innocent and young. She’s still idealistic about a world that has yet to throw any great tragedies her way. She’s still elastic enough to take being laid off from work in stride because there’s always another job out there.…

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