Shows of 2024

Why not? I mean, this movie was a no brainer to watch or to make. After Amazon'sm Candy Cane Lane, they are clearly trying to build a catalog of perinial holiday favorites and are targeting the underserved markets. Halmark has the heartfelt and romance market on lock. Realizing the Die Hard and The Long Kiss Goodnight are the only real xmas action movies, Amazon threw in some big names, a lot of high octane CGI, quick talking gags, and a plot full of holiday baddies to delight the action audience who were getting sick of big town girls finding love in their small hometowns.

Don't bother. It is all a wonderful alagory, which probably worked well in a satyrical book. The film is gorgeous to watch, but everything is perposterious. The film looks too banal and real world to let you suspend your disbeleife and you just spent the whole time asking why is any of this happening.

This minimally set play had a tight cast of four and a setting of the same number of tube lights and two cubes. Despite the minimal settings, the play was able to take you into the intense world of King Ludwig II of Barvaria. The Kings's Head Theater is equally intimate, to the point that you are almost in the play. The four actors and six roles take you through war, politically intrigue, love, heartbreak, and Ludwig's questionable sanity. Ludwig's lover and his mother were the two breakouts with Ludwig being a little lost in the show.

Are you looking for some high octane, anti-nazi revenge porn; then this has it all.

Watch a stylish crew of misfits wreck havoc on sadistic nazis, stupid nazis, sympathizing Brits, and an ilk of ne'er do wells.

If the whole thing comes off like it is trying to be a James Bond prequel, in a way it is. The story is supposedly real and James Bond auther Ian Flemming was involved in planning the mission. The end of the movie shows the real heros involved (who wouldn't want to be played by Henry Cavil!) and alledges one of this was the main inspiration for the 007 super spy.

It is that time of the year where I crave spooky movies. This is a movie about witches that has no magic to it.

I appriciated how the movie tried to update and pay homage to the original. Right from the opening credits, the movie is full of nods, winks, and plenty of fan services. It knows where it came from, but it just didn't know where to go next.

In the original The Craft, each of the four girls has her own story and development. They are three dimensional characters each on their own trajectory, which happens to bring them together. The orginal works because there is no big bad villian. Instead, each character carries her own trauma and is trying to live with it. Being teens, none of them are self-aware or doing too well with coping. The teenage experience is rife with fear of rejection, trying to fit in, feelings of powerless, and a desperate need to assert your own agency when everything feels out of reach. In other words, it is a universal experience and why so many people relate to it. The fantasy element is what happens if you gave a friend group magic powers? Bad coping only gets worse.

But there was a joy in watching the fearsome four come into their friendships, their powers, and their asserting over their situations. And like a lot of teen groups, some people go too far, some people go along, everyone get's hurt. Puberty is the villian.

In Legacy, we insert a creepy big bad. The girls immediatly jump from chanting to Marvel Universe super powers, complete with blasting special effects. I appriciate the more inclusive characters and trying to maintain a certain feminist manifesto along the way; but it never gets past the two dimensions. The three friends are barely more than stand-ins. The friendship group breaks apart at the slightest issue. Then rejoins through the power of sisterhood just as inexpelicably. There is no sense of self-discovery or growth from anyone.

A swing and a miss.

It is simplistic, yet well worth the watch. The movie is able to carry a story for approx. 90min using only animation and music. The lack of dialogue is a clever choice that makes this film easily markettable in multiple languages, while the setting is clearly New York.

In the story, a lonely dog living in a world of anthropomorphic animals, buys a robot kit and assembles a friend. Through a contrivance, the two are seperated and end up living their own lives. I found this part of the narrative frustrating. There separation was a literally chain link fence. I could not suspend my disbelief that Dog could have easily reunited. But for the sake of the story, they needed a reason why the two best friends would have to live apart and discover life goes on.

In another frustrating scene, Robot sees Dog and questions if he can intrude back into his life? Both had moved on. It was enough for Robot to see Dog doing well and not have to reconnect or intrude. It was as if people can only have one friend at a time. Instead of being a story about how people grow together and grow part, but we keep the friendships and the memories; it was a story about being able to only have one best friend at a time. So while it was sweet, it we weirdly isolating.

Dis you like Key Largo, then try this designer imposter. Bogart, Becall, a boat, a storm, some guns, some run, shadey pasts; all the stuff you love with flimsy connective tissue covering plot holes like cheap lingerie.

Lauren Becall's singing scenes were so bizarre. Rumor was she was dubbed by Andy Williams. Whatever it was, it didn't work. But if you want a romantic adevnture that mixed Maltese Falcon with Pirates of the Carrabean, this one is for you.

This gritty 1971 mobster movie shows up on all the lists as a classic. Michael Caine wanted to create a more realistic, dirtier portrayal of UK crime. In the 60s, many of the movies were more James Bond glamour and glitz. Michael Caine gives us a casually sadistic, amoral mobster. The movie shows a grim UK of lurid detail: poverty, industry, sad clothes, cockney accents, bingo halls, strippers, drunks, filthy pollution - and those were the highlights. The music score is minimal to non-existent. The whole movie casually strolls the viewer from depression, to cruelty, to callous apathy. I can see why people think it is a good movie, but it isn't an enjoyable one.

A fun and respectful return to a well-loved franchise. In a weird way, the handicraft aesthetic of the original helps this match the original look and feel and not feel dated. Beetlejuice doesn't look a day over 600.

The plot is more complex than required. Unlike the original, the secondary characters are not as important or over-the-top delicious. However, the three principals deliver and hit it home. It was funny to hear the cheers for Catherine O'Hara, who was emerged as a huge star since the original.

All the fan service you could ever ask for. You laugh, you cry, you cringe.

These two characters break down the forth wall for a satisfying MCU movie that lampoons as much as celebrates all the things you love about superhero escapism. While silly, it does hit emotional notes and reminds you why we fell in love with Marvel and comics in the first place. Stay for the clip reel in the credits. It is candy for the long time fans to remember that there are normal people behind these characters. they had as much fun making them as we did watching them. Think back to the first X-Men, and rememer that no one had a clue what they were doing or what this would become.

It was bueatiful to watch. The imagery was stunning. A lot of cyberpunk or future dystopian sci-fi has a look that owes to Alien or Blade Runner. They imagine a corporate future where western hegemony is blended with exotic international elements.

Because this film was primarily set in south east Asia, it created a completely different visual language. The west looked like a modern and prosperous world, run by a giant military. The east looked organic and richly layered. The robots, people, and society visually presented something much more intriguing and updated than all the movies that are mild copies of the original Blade Runner.

However, the acting, plot, and characters were flat. It felt like it was the 80 pages of a slim manga being bueatifully illustrated on a large screen, but with a story that was still as thin and 2D as source material.

I am just going to say it. This movie was way better than Dune: Part 1. It was what Dune should have been. George Miller has been able to revisit a classic 80's movie as source material and create a a cohesive yet entirely unique, stand alone movie. It was glorious all around: acting, cinematography, script, costume, location, etc. Because of the dessert, sci-fi, and action fighting; it is hard not to compare the two. Where Dune was all pretension, this was all thriller and no filler.

The movie is 2hrs of monster trucks and shocking action. None of it seems gratuitous. It tells you how insane the situation and the world is. Like some caustic rot, all humanity and goodness is stripped from people; each trying to protect what little they have. There are no heroes. There are no refugees. And in terms of staying human, it doesn't look like there are any survivors. The movie is beautiful to watch, from settings to camera work to even the action choreography.

Humphrey Bogart seems to play one character, but he does it so well.

This is a tight and tense thriller that feels like you are in the theater watching the play. The noir setting, lighting, and camera work are stunning but unobtrusive. You skulk around the setting, like someone trapped in the humid, languid air of boiling Florida Keys summer evening.

The acting, all around, it great. Edward Robinson is amazing as monstrous mob boss. He bounces between ruthless and menacing, to bragging and vulgar, to simpering and pathetic; and all back again in minutes. He portrays the sleazy bully who is the big man when he has a gun and people to follow orders. All the mistakes or problems are someone else's fault and he cringes when anyone stands up to him. If you didn't know better, you would think Robinson was modeling it after Trump.

In that sense, the movie is more timely than ever. It tells the story of down and out Americans who believe in the American way. They came back from WWII worse for wear, but believed that we did the right thing because America doesn't believe in gangster bosses, bullies, or people who pray on the weak. They stand up to his lies, his self aggrandizement, his threats of violence. No one in the movie is flawless, but they show an old Hollywood fable of flawed heroes facing their demons and rejecting the temptations of false easy ways out.

This 1944 Hitchcock always is on the high ranked list, but I found it somewhat flat. Like a lot of 40's noir, it depends upon the psychology of everyone involved to be brittle or insane. It is hard to suspect disbelief.

It is a treat to watch a young Vincent Price play a boy toy that lacks his normal evil suaveness. It is jarring to hear that smooth baritone and not have it end in a cackle. But the rest of movie lacks suspense and characters that you care about. Laura's fickle man hoping makes it hard to empathize or care if one of them is out to get her. Everyone seems to be using everyone for some sort of angle.

As a movie, a story about things that could have happened, it made no sense. As an allegory, a set of symbols expressing a thought, it was terrifying. As a movie, a cool and sophisticated woman is annoyed by a man in a pet store and decides to stalk him to a rural town just to show him how unbothered she is by him. Plot twist, birds attack and the whole town descends into idiocy. People drive cars INTO fires. Women lie down and wait patiently for birds to peck them to death. Tippi Hedren attempts to escape birds by locking herself into a room that she has just discovered to be filled with birds. People use advanced escape techniques such as rolling around against walls and moaning. The threat level is bad 60s Doctor Who.

As an allegory, Tippi is an unnatural woman. She is cool, unemotional. She is urban and unapologetic. She is in the gossip columns as sexually liberated. She is distant from her mother. She bosses men around. She can drive her own car and boat. She is dressed in a strict, chic, and poison green suit. More unnaturally, SHE pursues a man up the California coast to teach him a lesson about making a fool of her.

Once out of the city, in a more natural setting, things go wrong. She makes the town people uncomfortable. The birds are the town and nature reacting to her. As the movie and birds escalate, her perfect hair and suit are picked apart as symbols of her unmaking. Somehow, she never gets any other clothes, so for the three days of the movie, she is confined to her green suit, getting more and more disheveled each day. The birds attacks are focused on this town, and on her. She is the unnatural element that must be driven away, the same way birds would attack a predator near their nest.

By the end of the movie, she is no longer the woman in control. She is a mess, her perfection stripped and humbled. She assumes the role of loving daughter to Jessica Tandy and nurturing mother figure to Suzanne Pleshette. Her hair is soft. He jewelry gone. She depends on Rod Taylor to rescue her. In the final moments, she assumes her natural role as a woman, the sun shines, and the birds quite and let her be taken away to safety. 

Ok, it looks great. Let's just leave it at that.

Denis Villeneuve seems to take overly ambitious, under realized high concept properties; and turn them into really long 90's perfume commercials. I am waiting for his Scent of Total Recall next.

In seriousness, the movie looks great. He covers over his bland treatment with a slick style that beguiles you into mistaking good lighting for good story telling. His telling of Dune is more inspired by Dune, than the original material. Unlike Cruella, which exceeds the original source, this is a much smaller and less interesting version.

Backing away from Dune's abstract space opera, heavy with social, sexual, political, religious, and historic overtones; Villeneuve attempts to make Dune a love story that reflects the current world. It may have been better if he went all the way. Paul is just a person and not the a super human proto-diety resulting from a 10,000 year breeding program. The Freeman are an indigenous people of a planet, and not just another group of humans from Earth. Paul has a choice to have a 20th century Earth love story, and is not the son of a concubine borne into a world where marriage is about securing alliances and bloodlines.

If Villeneuve clearly broke with the world setup by Frank Herbert and its rules, then maybe a movie about a reluctant messiah who wants to live a simple life with his true love would have worked. Instead, everyone just comes as stilted and unreliable. There is no emotion. You don't care. Everyone comes off as either psychotic, emotionally void, or just always angry.

In trying to modernize the story, he minimized it. He lost the grandeur that makes the novel so enduring, and failed to replace it with a story where you care.

This is one of the least tense mysteries I have ever seen. And that, my foxy little whores, is wonderful!

Halfway through the movie, it is pretty obvious what is going on. The question goes from who to why? Then after watching the lives of the people in the village, it goes from why to why not?!?

The settings are great. The acting superb. The script is tight. The story is small and quiet, but that underlies how explosive it is. The most offensive thing in the movie isn't the obesities given voice by all wicked little letters, but the silence otherwise enforced on women. Each woman is put in her place, given her role to play, her boundaries to stay within. They needn't talk, because their lives and answers had been written for them. She was the town bad girl, so is always to blame. Another is the dutiful spinster daughter, too meek to notice. One is female cop, a sad travesty deserving of pity more than mocking. So on and so forth, we watch the post Great War society try to pack people, and women, back into roles that were as destroyed by the war as any building.

We watch, knowing just how lost that world is and how futile it will be to try and pack women back into it. But mind you, this is based on very true story; where a nation watched in horror as a women penned silly, vulgar posts to people that would be buried in any comment section today.

Remember that time Lionel Richie went onto QVC to sell one of his albums, and it did gang busters with the "heritage" crowd - which is a nice way of saying folks who were buying music in the 80s?

Well, this movie is kind of the sequel to that. Without Michael Jackson to tell the other half of the story about how the song was written, it is very Lionel Richie forward. He takes center stage, sets the tone, tells the story, and brings in a-lister stars along the way to add some color.

Spoiler alert, don't read if you don't want it ruined.

All of Us Strangers is being reviewed as a movie that deals with the trauma of being gay in the 80s, which is certainly present in the movie; but I don't think it is the core issue. Adam, our protagonist, is a writer. Not a "real" writer, he explains, but someone who writes scenes for scripts. Adam lives in an imaginary world of what-ifs, scenes replayed and re-edited over and over again.

In his loneliness, he imagines a reunion with his parents who both died when he was 11. Adam is an unreliable narrator. Does he leave his home to visit his childhood home? Does he talk to the living ghosts of his parents? How much is his imagination? In a conversation with his mom he tells her how he imagined all the things they did when she didn't die. They went on holidays. She asks if they ever made it to Disneyland. He says yes and describes the week they spent together, the weather, the fights.

The core trauma of the movie is the unbearable loneliness and escaping into a world of imagination. Adam is gay in the 80s. His mom worries, "isn't being gay a lonely life?" Everything in the 80s was how homosexuality was a sickness. It wasn't love. They are dangerous and unhappy people. With AIDS, the act of human contact when from just stigmatized to possibly suicidal. In this world, Adam learned that he was unlovable. The only place he can find connection is in the moments he scripts for himself.

The movie's bleak and etherial soundscape keep everything eerie and almost clinically distant. It tries to provoke emotions, and you can feel scenes deliberating punching for heart strings; but they all land flat because of the hazy distance of everything. It never quit hits joy, connection, or lose. It feels like numbed nostalgia. If anything, I left with profound melancholy.

Well, if you are looking for a toe tapping downer, look no further than the decent of the wild days of the roaring twenties into the madness of fascism, which seems a little too close to home these 20's. The revival was astounding in the round, where the stage and the playhouse are transformed into the Kit Kat Club. Not all of the actors were even and there are some standouts (looking at you lady lady and your man). Unfortunately, the male lead was not one of them. He was drowned out the manic cast that made him feel like he was from a local production of Oklahoma that got off at the wrong stop.

Probably the most pop accessible ballet ever. The setting and costume design are next level, making it fun to fall into the experience. The plot and characters themselves more towards panto than ballet. But like all of his works, there are a hundred things happening at once and you could follow any dancer on stage for an entire story for the who show.