Tommy receives an invitation to win $1 million by playing a game where he must outwit hunters attempting to kill him. He realises the hunters can only attack him when he’s alone, but none of his friends and family believe the game is real.
Lots of streaming films came out this week, Netflix released Lift, Amazon Prime Video released Role Play, Shudder released Destroy All Neighbors and Hulu released Self Reliance. Luckily Self Reliance is a lot better than Lift and Role Play.
For one thing Self Reliance is actually trying to say something, even if that something and its ideas don’t fully come together in the end due to a very rushed and unfocused ending. The performances are actually quite solid Jake Johnson who is also the director, writer and one of the producers of the movie gives a charming performance that’s actually quite funny at times. Anna Kendrick is also charming and while not one of her absolute best performances she does really make it work, her chemistry with Johnson is very solid leading to some strong moments where the two bounce off of each other quite well.
As a director Jake Johnson shows a lot of promise here, there’s some genuinely funny moments that uses the movie’s main premise quite well and the characters actually do feel like a group of friends at times. The movie on the surface has a thrilling sounding premise but the movie’s main focus is the humor which works most of the time, I definitely think if some scenes were more thrilling they would work far better than the end result.
Unfortunately Self Reliance is held back from the final moments of the movie, it’s a very weak ending that honestly feels rushed, the movie builds itself to be a lot more than it really is in certain scenes only to end on a whimper of ending. It’s unfortunate because this was very close from being something really solid, everything else that came before the ending was genuinely fun and while not anything to write home about still manages to keep the viewer’s attention.
Overall Self Reliance isn’t a bad movie it’s just one that could have been so much better with more time in the oven.
A master thief is wooed by his ex-girlfriend and the FBI to pull off an impossible heist with his international crew on a 777 passenger flight from London to Zurich.
Lift is directed by F. Gary Gray director of Friday (1995), The Italian Job (2003), The Fate Of The Furious (2017), Men in Black: International (2019) and a few others.
Lift is yet another addition to the long line of an overproduced Netflix Original movie that does absolutely nothing throughout it’s runtime, this is basically if you took Ocean’s 11 or any of the other movies in the series for that matter and made it unengaging, dull and horribly written. Plus when you throw in every single heist movie cliche in the book and doing absolutely nothing fun with them you have yourself a very forgettable movie.
The performances are serviceable but there is absolutely nothing to the characters, they are incredibly one dimensional with little to no personality. Kevin Hart is bland in the leading role, Hart’s comedy isn’t very funny to begin with but somehow the script gives him even less to work with than usual. The best performance is Gugu Mbatha-Raw who while not anything noteworthy at least tries to bring some sort of development and the chemistry between her and Hart isn’t bad it’s just very underdeveloped.
The team of characters as I said get very little in the way of development, we are given a few facts about them and a few scenes of them interacting with each other which of a lot of the time is little quips that are trying to be funny but completely fall flat. Much like some of Netflix’s other overproduced action movies such as Red Notice and Heart Of Stone, there is absolutely nothing here that hasn’t been done before. This is the very definition of a movie that’s put on a streaming platform that the viewer watches and completely forgets about within a few hours.
Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.
Poor Things is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos a director who has constantly shown time and time again that he can deliver some absolutely fascinating films such as Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015), The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (2017), The Favourite (2018) and a few others. Lanthimos is absolutely one of the best directors working today and he shows that even more with Poor Things.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way that you have probably already have heard by now, but it can’t be understated how incredible Emma Stone’s performance as Bella Baxter. It’s the very definition of a career best performance that is incredibly striking, humorous and truly captivating. Stone’s acting brings so much life to Bella Baxter that truly makes her one of the best written characters from a film this year. This is easily a type of performance that could have easily went wrong in a lot of ways, but the way Stone naturally builds the character from the ground up throughout the film as Bella goes through in evolution is truly fascinating and hits every single note storywise. Bella is a character who easily wins the viewer over the very second she is introduced and want to see her explore the world she’s in as well as wanting her to reach her goals.
Mark Ruffalo who plays Duncan Wedderburn also gives a career best performance, he’s absolutely hysterical and gives so many memorable moments that take his acting talent and combine it with his comedic timing incredibly well. He does such a fantastic job of playing this buffoon who wants to be taken seriously but ends up being hilarious and I mean that in the best way possible because that’s ultimately what Duncan is as a character.
Willem Dafoe and Ramy Youusef are also pretty strong here as well, although Dafoe who plays Dr. Godwin Baxter or “God” is missing through a huge portion of the film he still plays a very important part of the story and is still fantastic. You can never go wrong with having Willem Dafoe in your film and he absolutely feels like a natural fit in Lanthimos’s strange world. Youusef works incredibly well with Willem Dafoe when they are on screen together and actually do have a couple hilarious lines between one another, Youusef is also really charming and fits quite well with the rest of the cast. His character Max McCandles and his bond with Bella is really nice to watch and is actually quite comedic.
The film itself is this unhinged gothic fairytale type Frankenstein story that has so much creativity and imagination all over it, it definitely goes without saying that the film itself is beautiful. The amount of attention to detail is insane, every single frame of this film has this dreamlike look to it that you never want to wake up from due to how fascinating it looks. The film makes you want to explore each and every corner of its world, it’s truly mesmerizing and absolutely captivating to the eye. It’s a beautiful yet haunting world due to some of the creatures we see walking around which is fitting since this is directed by Lanthimos.
Speaking of which Lanthimos has directed some disturbing and quite weird films in the past, Poor Things is definitely on the more weird side of things, it’s much more abstract and the humor is definitely one of the center focuses, but it has everything that Lanthimos’s previous films had. The way Lanthimos tackles many different themes in each of his films is what makes you keep coming back to them and here is no exception. Poor Things has so many metaphors that are about Bella’s self discovery and sexual liberation that we see throughout Bella’s journey and it all ties together to present such a chaotic story that is truly beautiful and absolutely exciting. The way Lanthimos is able to grab the viewer’s attention with Bella’s journey is truly fascinating and manages to do it quite effortlessly. He’s able to do this in the most chaotic ways with tons of sex scenes that really act as character moments of their own, it’s part of how Bella slowly starts to discover herself and what she wants in the world.
I don’t want to say much else, because this is absolutely the type of film that you really need to see for yourself to really get the full impact. But just know that Poor Things is masterfully acted, written and directed. There’s so much layers to this film that I’m sure more people will slowly realize in years to come.
A family man finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. However, when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, he’s forced to navigate the consequences of his newfound stardom.
Dream Scenario is directed by Kristoffer Borgli a director who’s work I’m a bit unfamiliar with but after watching Dream Scenairo really makes me want to look at his previous films because this was definitely a surprise.
I’ve heard a little about this film but really did not know what to expect, I’ll watch pretty much anything Nicolas Cage is in and this turns out to be one of my favorite performances by him. Nicolas Cage absolutely captures the humorous and imaginative atmosphere the film is going for. He even does such a fantastic job with the more emotion bits towards the end which really just shows how easily he can blend in with the atmosphere with each scene. The rest of the cast are quite great as well Julianne Nicholson has great chemistry with Cage, Tim Meadows and Michael Cera are great in the supporting cast.
What I find most interesting about Dream Scenario is how it progresses, it starts out presenting this very silly idea that even explaining this to someone would make them laugh. The idea that Paul Matthews who is played by Nicolas Cage randomly enters your dreams and just stands there is just hilarious. And for the first half of this film that’s exactly what it is, a crazy idea that works so well and it’s genuinely funny. But then the film takes a hammer and smashes the viewer’s heart into pieces with the satire on social media culture and cancel culture.
I was very worried when the film presented this idea, mostly due to how films as of late have tried to tackle cancel culture it’s often done in a way that feels like the writers have no idea what they are talking about or it’s just done in a way that’s incredibly lazy. However Dream Scenario takes a character in this case Paul Matthews who the viewer wants to succeed especially now since he’s getting popular due to appearing in everyone’s dreams and makes him the target. It’s very effective and really shows that blindly going after someone is incredibly idiotic. Despite the sci-fi and fantasy elements this is shockingly quite grounded.
Paul Matthews’s family starts to get effected by the whole situation much like in real life when mobs go after people the family of said person is often targeted as well, it’s a very surprising addition that a lot of films that try to tackle cancel culture often forget so it’s a breath of fresh air to see it being done here. The writing is truly fantastic here, while there are a few bumps in the road during the final act that don’t quite land, that’s not nearly enough to stop the movie from being surprisingly well written and genuinely funny. The moments with Cage interacting with his family are truly some of the best of the film and actually feel quite real.
Overall Dream Scenario is a clever satire that’s well written, humorous and executes its premise very strongly.
Having escaped from the farm, Ginger and Rocky welcome a new little adventurer into their lives. Back on the mainland, the whole of chicken-kind faces a terrible new threat.
Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget is a sequel to Chicken Run (2000) and is directed by Sam Fell who’s directed Flushed Away (2006), The Tale Of Despereaux (2008) and ParaNorman (2012).
A sequel to Chicken Run has always been talked about much like Enchanted 2 or Hocus Pocus 2 it always got a ton of fake movie posters on Facebook pages claiming it’s official when it’s really not and you get people sharing it taking it as fact. I grew up with Chicken Run and I still think it’s a really fantastic film so I was pretty happy to see that a sequel was coming after 13 years.
There’s definitely a lot of fun to be had with this sequel, I do think out of the cast Bella Ramsey who plays Molly the daughter of Ginger and Rocky does quite a great job. Plus Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays as the rats give some decent laughs. The two work together well and have solid comedic timing the accents are also quite charming.
The stop motion animation is of course wonderful, you honestly can never go wrong with Aardman Animation when it comes to stop motion and that remains true here. Even if I didn’t like all of the voice cast the characters still have this special look to them that you can’t help but appreciate, there’s so much detail and passion put into the designs that are quite memorable. The same goes for the overall charm of the movie, although the movie is most definitely not as good as the first movie I do think it still has a lot of the charm from the first movie and it mostly works here.
Dawn Of The Nugget does unfortunately suffer from mediocre voice acting. Thandiwe Newton is fine enough but her voice performance is just not as fitting as Julia Sawalha’s, what’s sad is Sawalha was told she “sounded too old” for the performance. It’s such a weird decision from Aardman that I still have no idea why was made. Zachary Levi is flat out bad and really feels out of place, Levi being here really seems like they just wanted to stick a familiar face and that was about it. Mel Gibson isn’t here for obvious reasons but there’s absolutely no denying that you can really feel the difference of quality in the performance of Rocky’s character. The rest of the voice acting isn’t anything to write home about.
The film itself does feel like a natural continuation from the first movie and while that’s great, it does end up being a bit more of the same thing. Instead of the chickens we are familiar with being trapped it’s their turn to rescue other chickens. Which definitely makes sense from a story perspective but a bit weaker when you compare it to the first movie.
Despite the issues I have with it Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget is a fun movie especially for families looking for a quick and easy watch. There’s a lot to like about it and I said the charm from the first movie is still very much there. It’s definitely disappointing in some aspects but it is still a decent watch.
Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget is available on Netflix.
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.
The Holdovers is directed by Alexander Payne a director who while I’m not a die hard fan of his work I can still appreciate how great his films are (with the exception of Downsizing I still to this day have no idea what that was). The Holdovers is quite possibly the most human film of 2023 and what I mean by that is it’s a huge character study that really studies the many emotions people feel during Christmas time. The film is also quite possibly the most wholesome rated r film you will ever see in almost every shot there’s heart and soul being poured into it.
The natural place to start is the performances, Paul Giamatti is the lead who plays Paul Hunham a curmudgeonly history teacher who teaches at a New England boarding school and has to chaperone some students over Christmas break. Hunham starts out as your traditional teacher character, the teacher that students do not get along with at all. But slowly through the course of the film we get to see a ton of development in Hunham, Giamatti’s performance is really what makes his character he effortlessly balances being comedic and having more dramatic moments as well. Whenever Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy-Randolph are on screen together that’s when some of the film’s best moments occur. The two truly bounce off of each other incredibly well and show their range as performers.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph is truly incredible here, much like Giamatti through the course of the film we slowly but surely get to learn about her character. Her chemistry between the cast is masterful she plays a mother named Mary who just lost her son in the Vietnam War, the emotion and pain we see from her conversations with the other characters and her actions is truly some of the most powerful moments from a film this year.
A performance that I feel is not getting talked about quite enough is Dominic Sessa which the film happens to be his first performance and it’s quite a powerful one. He plays a student named Angus who starts out as your typical student character that doesn’t get along with anyone, but much like Paul Giamatti’s character slowly evolves over the course of the film. When the film really starts to examine Sessa’s character that’s when you truly get some hard hitting moments, his parents don’t want him home from Christmas and he really doesn’t have anything planned out after boarding school. Where will he go? What will his future be? These are questions that almost immediately come to the viewer’s mind when learning about his life.
Eventually the film focuses on Paul, Mary and Angus three completely different people who are at different stages in their lives. Paul is a college professor who really doesn’t get a long with a lot of people, Mary as I said before is grieving because of the loss of her son and Angus has a very troubling family life. But in a lot of ways the three really help each other and it’s honestly what makes this film so great. The natural human connection especially during the holidays, the want to help another person out or at the very least understand where they are coming from or what their situation is. It’s beautiful moments like these that really hit the viewer hard in the heart.
The film itself really feels like a time capsule from the 70s, from the look of the film to how it’s filmed. Cinematographer Eigil Bryld does an excellent job of really giving this warm Christmas feeling to how it’s shot, you truly feel like you’re there during a Christmas in the 70s. Most of all though is the film has the feel of a Christmas card that maybe one of your family members or friends gave you. You stored it away and one day you open it up again, it’s a sense of nostalgia that cannot be beaten it honestly brings you to tears because of how beautiful the memories really are.
Lastly there’s the writing and direction which are both just phenomenal, the script from David Hemingson is truly touching and Alexander Payne’s direction is very natural. Something both Hemingson and Payne clearly wanted the viewer to know is that they both truly love these characters and want the viewer to see themselves through these characters and the two really accomplished that incredibly well. You truly feel the love in every single moment during the film, whether it be a comedic moment or a dramatic one there’s always some sort of love.
The Holdovers is one of the best films of the year and one of the most powerful ones as well, it’s a feel good film that is so much more than just being positive. It’s about connecting with others, loving others and helping each other however we can.
Leo the Lizard has been stuck in the same Florida school for decades. When he learns he only has one year left to live, he plans to escape to freedom, but instead has to rescue his class from their horribly mean substitute teacher.
If there’s one movie from this year that I did NOT expect to be good it’s Leo an animated Netflix movie about a talking lizard who’s voiced by Adam Sandler. Okay well it’s about a bit more than that but you get my point, I was not expecting Leo to be any good but I really have to hand it to Adam Sandler (who wrote and is one of the producers), directors Robert Marianetti, Robert Smigel and David Wachtenheim as well as writer Paul Sado and producer Mireille Soria they all took a concept that could have easily gotten old within 15 minutes but made it into something surprisingly touching.
I’m not a fan of the voices Sandler has been using in some of his films as of late, but I don’t mind it here. It fits the character of Leo well and there’s some genuinely funny moments, I think what makes Leo work so well is it goes for this exploring the home life of certain kids in the 5th grade class. There isn’t anything groundbreaking being said here and there really doesn’t have to be, much like your days of going from school it’s a routine and is very straightforward at points. The film actually does a decent job of showing that quite well.
There’s some music numbers that admittedly I do think are not the best, but they are fun and creative enough to leave you with a smile on your face. The whole message of growing up, worrying about the future and connecting the reptiles with the 5th grade students and how they both share growing pains is an interesting and clever one that’s executed quite well.
I do think Leo is held back a bit from a weak third act that isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just on the very generic side of things that is much weaker when you compare it to what came before it.
Overall Leo is a charming little surprise that I had a fun time with, it’s not anything groundbreaking. But it’s a charming little movie that has a huge heart and I can’t help but respect it for being just that.
A student at Oxford University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.
Saltburn is directed by Emerald Fennell who previously directed Promising Young Woman.
I’m going to be completely honest here I saw Saltburn back towards the end of November and I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about it, but this review is going to have to get out at some point so let’s just move on. After Promising Young Woman I was really excited to see what Fennell’s next film would be and after watching Saltburn it’s definitely a step down from Promising Young Woman but I really don’t think it’s a bad film or even as polarizing as a lot of people are making it out to be. However that does not mean it’s flawless there’s a ton of issues here that I’ll get into.
But first the positives, which the cast is easily the most noticeable best part about it. Barry Keoghan gives yet another creepy and downright unsettling performance that really works in the film’s favor. At times it does get a little too goofy and can take you directly out of the film but that’s kind of the charm of it, Keoghan makes it work incredibly well and he gives this balance of creepy and bizarrely funny. Jacob Elordi is also quite great here, I definitely think his chemistry with the rest of the cast truly benefits him in the long run, his character isn’t really as explored as you would think but he still turns in a solid performance.
Rosamund Pike is once again phenomenal, this is definitely one of her weaker performances mostly due to the material that’s given. However that doesn’t make her performance bad, she uses the same techniques that make her such an exciting actress here and it works well. Carey Mulligan is in the movie very briefly but I couldn’t help but love her performance. The cinematography is also quite beautiful, especially when combined with the location. Say what you will about Saltburn but it’s very clear that Emerald Fennell certainly knows how to frame an interesting shot and Linus Sandgren’s cinematography makes said shots all the more stunning and compelling.
The biggest problem with Saltburn is it starts out very strongly but slowly ends up going for a much more natural conclusion, the movie’s final moments where it attempts to do this almost Saw like flashbacks on how certain events really happened during the film really acts like a cop out and cheapens almost everything that came before it. It’s such a baffling choice to go with especially after you had some truly strong moments, it doesn’t help that Fennell’s direction really spells it out at the beginning of what’s going to happen.
As far as being weird Saltburn has its moments of being bizarre (the final scene being one of the most notable) but I really don’t think it’s as insane as a lot of people are making it out to be. There’s definitely been weirder that have released this this year (Beau Is Afraid and Infinity Pool are a lot more strange). As far as themes go Emerald Fennell attempts to tackle class and while I do give credit for trying to go for a different sort of approach. It mostly ends up being the same sort of message that’s been done with other films. There is just honestly not a lot being said here about class and nothing that adds to the already gigantic discussion behind it.
It’s a shame because Saltburn is definitely not a bad film it’s just oddly enough holding back on a lot of its own ideas and really struggles to execute it’s ideas in a powerful way. I definitely had an entertaining time with the film but that’s really where it ends unfortunately.
When family members switch bodies with each other during a rare planetary alignment, their hilarious journey to find their way back to normal will bring them closer together than they ever thought possible.
Family Switch is if you took Freaky Friday (2003) and made it into a Christmas movie…look what do you really want me to say about this movie?
Emma Myers turns in a decent performance, Ed Helms is also quite decent here as well, but Jennifer Garner and Brady Noon fall behind unfortunately. Oh and for some reason Rivers Cuomo is in this movie (funnily enough his character is named Lake) plus Howie Mandel is here as well so that’s neat I guess.
I think this movie would have been fine enough if it came out back in the early 2000s, by now all of the plot points in the movie have been explored far better in other films. The movie has its best moments when it’s focused on the family just bonding together rather than the comedy (which is by far the weakest part about it.)
Family Switch is basically yet another Netflix movie that will be talked about for a week or two before being forgotten about, you can absolutely do so much worse on the platform that doesn’t really do the movie in favors.
Two self-obsessed businessmen discover they’re long-lost identical twins and come together to plot the reunion of their eccentric, divorced parents.
Dicks: The Musical is a film on the off-Broadway musical Fucking identical Twins by Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson who are also the leads of the film. The film is directed by Larry Charles who directed Borat, The Dictator, Bruno and a few others, Charles mostly goes into satire with his films and there’s plenty of satire in Dicks: The Musical although it’s not very good.
Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp are actually quite entertaining here and their singing voices are genuinely pretty entertaining, some of the music has no business being as good as it is the prime example being “No One Understands Us” and “You Can’t Give Up” two songs that are pretty much poking fun of the moments in a musical when the main character is at their lowest point. Both songs are genuinely entertaining and the scenes they are used for matches they completely well.
Megan Thee Stallion is actually not bad here either, granted she isn’t given a whole lot to do but she does get song “Out Alpha The Alpha” which is another pretty solid song here, the whole sequence of her song is perhaps the most memorable of the movie as well as the most fun.
Unfortunately that’s where the positives end because everything else in this movie is either not funny, repetitive or falls flat, the humor itself unfortunately is a lot of the same jokes just repeated every 10 minutes. The rest of the songs are incredibly forgettable and while I do get the point that they aren’t supposed to be good, and that would be fine if the rest of the music was entertaining and genuinely funny which is not the case here.
I’m not sure what really happened here because Larry Charles has made some great satire in the past especially with Borat, so it’s very frustrating to see this movie be this forgettable.
Dicks: The Musical is available on all VOD platforms.
Jerome Reviews... 