In a world hit by a wave of mutations transforming humans into animals, François does everything he can to save his wife. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, he and their son embark on a quest that will change their lives.
The Animal Kingdom is directed by Thomas Cailley who previously directed Love at First Flight (2014).
The Animal Kingdom is definitely an interesting one for sure, the film takes place in a world where humans gradually transform into animals. We follow François (played by Roman Duris) and his son Émile (played by Paul Kircher) who go on a journey together which becomes quite an experience.
Going into this movie I did not really know what to expect, but the movie delivers quite well, for starters the performances from both Kricher and Duris are fantastic. The father and son bond works incredibly well and the two share a lot of heartwarming moments between one another, the body horror elements are quite neat as well with some neat looking visuals. The theme of change is present throughout the film and how the characters have to go through it, although this isn’t something new as many films before have explored this before. The way the film goes about it with the whole animal transformation element makes it much more interesting and in a way sort of sad.
If there’s one major criticism it’s most definitely the running time which is 130 minutes long, the ideas of the film start to lose steam towards the end due to just how long the film goes on and it starts to repeat itself a bit. It also does lose its focus towards the end as well, like it almost forgets what it’s exactly trying to say.
However that really is not enough to stop the film from being quite beautiful, it’s a beautifully told film with a mix of great makeup and visual effects that do a really great job of telling the story. Some of the film’s strongest moments is Émile interacting with the animals, you can tell through the expressive visual effects and makeup the feelings and actions of the animals and what they are thinking. Which really fits for this movie!
Overall The Animal Kingdom might not be saying anything incredibly new but it is a very interesting film that executes its ideas quite well for the most part!
The Animal Kingdom is available on all VOD platforms.
A young woman agrees to marry a handsome prince — only to discover it was all a trap. She is thrown into a cave with a fire-breathing dragon and must rely solely on her wits and will to survive.
Damsel is directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo director of Intact (2001), 28 Weeks Later (2007) and Intruders (2011).
The frustrating thing about a lot of these Netflix action movies is they have the ideas and talented people involved they just for whatever reason always fall completely flat. That’s sadly the case here with Damsel a movie that is another attempt of flipping the fairy tale narrative, despite The Princess (2022) coming out 2 years ago I still had hope this would be fresh…unfortunately not the case.
Millie Bobby Brown and Angela Bassett are really solid here and are easily the movie’s strongest parts, the first bit of this movie I will say started out promising. While there wasn’t anything groundbreaking the movie explored the world decently well and we got to know the characters even if they were basically talking fantasy movie cliches. Unfortunately the rest of the movie happens and it ends up being no different than any other fantasy movie that has come out in the last several years.
I will give some credit for is being a surprisingly brutal PG-13 movie, there are some quite satisfying action scenes that I can’t deny are pretty surprising to watch from a PG-13 movie. However that’s where the praise really ends because you need more than some great kills to stick the landing, writing wise it’s very blandly written. Think of any fantasy movie trope and it’s more than likely somewhere in this movie, there’s some similarities to Ready Or Not (2019) which I actually thought they were going to do more with but instead is used for more blandly written story telling.
It doesn’t help that the ending feels very rushed, which is unfortunate because I do think what they went with for the ending is interesting. But there’s just such a lack of character moments and strong writing throughout the movie that by the time the ending rolls around you already checked out of the movie and just waiting for it to be over.
I really do wish Damsel was a better movie, the performances and ideas are there. The writing is just incredibly lacking and leaves a lot more to be desired.
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.
Mahito, a young 12-year-old boy, struggles to settle in a new town after his mother’s death. However, when a talking heron informs Mahito that his mother is still alive, he enters an abandoned tower in search of her, which takes him to another world.
The Boy and the Heron is directed by Hayao Miyazaki a director who absolutely does not need any sort of introduction, he’s a fantastic director with so many films that went on to be a huge impact on the animation genre such as Spirited Away (2001), Princess Mononoke (1997), My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and many many others. With each new film he introduces new ideas or takes ideas from one of his previous films and makes it fresh. The Boy and the Heron is a prime example of just how creative, powerful and emotional Miyazaki’s storytelling really is.
For starters the cast absolutely knocks it out of the park, everyone here does such an incredible job and matches the imaginative and emotional tone the film is going for. But the couple that really standout are Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh and Dave Bautista. Bautista plays the Parakeet King who doesn’t show up until the later half of the film, but when he does show up he truly captures the wackiness of the character. It’s a performance that should not work at all, but Bautista’s performance is genuinely hilarious it’s probably due to the Parakeet species in this film’s world being genuinely funny while a very emotional and serious plot is going on. It works strangely well and even if Bautista doesn’t stay for very long he remains as a very memorable part of the film.
Florence Pugh plays Kiriko both the young and old version, her performance is truly incredible and actually unbelievable when it comes to her voicing the old Kiriko. Her character is a huge highlight of the film, a character that we are introduced to at the very beginning who might seem like a comedic relief character at first but later becomes important. The young version of Kiriko helps Mahito Maki and points him into the right direction of his journey to rescue Natsuko, she’s a classic mentor type character that you can’t help but love. Pugh’s performance really sells the character well and almost immediately makes the character quite lovable.
Robert Pattinson as The Grey Heron is my absolute favorite performance from an animated film this year and I don’t think it’s even close, when the trailer for this film dropped I instantly thought the Heron was Willem Dafoe which while yes Dafoe is in this film he’s not in it for very long but still gives a haunting performance. I don’t know how Pattinson did it but this performance is truly unbelievable and truly effective right from the Heron’s first appearance, Pattinson completely matches the tone the film is going for and mixes it with a bit of humor and the Heron himself as a character has fantastic character development. It’s a classic case of not getting along with someone at first in this case not getting along with Mahito, but slowly but surely their bond builds and it’s truly delightful to see. The Grey Heron is such a fun character that balances humor and the more serious moments and Pattinson’s performance only adds on to that.
The writing much like other Miyazaki films is truly incredible, there’s a large theme here of grief and mourning the loss of someone very close to you. In this case Mahito losing his mother. There’s a lot of moments in this film that really tie it together, the world building of the world we are introduced to can be a bit confusing at first. But as the film goes on it starts to piece itself together and tell the viewer the full story about this world, it’s visually some of the absolute best Miyazaki has ever done, that’s something that consistently gets better and better with each film and this felt like a natural build up all of these films later.
Something that really stands out with this film is the masterful balance between humor, wackiness and the dramatic moments of the film. A film that’s about loss and dealing with grief has scenes where funny looking Parakeets want to eat people and their leader the Parakeet King is a presented as a serious but goofy boss voiced by Dave Bautista…yet it all strangely works. It comes down to just how beautiful the storytelling really is, it combines so many anime elements and genres we have seen throughout the years and presents it so well. From the classic adventure genre to the goofy villains who actually have a quite serious side to them it’s all here and delivered in such a fascinating, emotional and hilarious way that puts a smile on your face.
Overall The Boy and the Heron is yet another homerun for Hayao Miyazaki and one of the absolute best films of the year. It’s such a creative film with so much to say that it will surely go on to be a classic.
When a colony on the edge of the galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius, they dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighbouring planets to help them take a stand.
Rebel Moon or Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child Of Fire is directed by Zack Snyder. A film that I’ve been pretty excited about for awhile. This is sort of a passion project for Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad (one of the other writers of the film), it’s very clear the film has a ton of inspirations such as Star Wars, Dune, The Last Samurai and many others. So it’s very disappointing to see just how much of a mess and disjointed the movie is.
Before I start I do want to acknowledge that yes an extended cut is coming out in 2024 similar to Zack Snyder’s Justice League cut. We’ll cross that bridge when the cut releases but for now I’m reviewing the movie as what it is right now. Anyway let’s get to the review.
The performances and the visuals are what pushes the movie to the finish line, Sofia Boutella is a fun protagonist who does give a solid performance and Anthony Hopkins while not getting a lot of screentime still manages to land a touching impression on the viewer. The rest of the cast aren’t particularly noteworthy but none of them turn in a bad performance.
The visuals are fantastic, if it’s one thing that Snyder has always been great at it’s making his films visually appealing and that absolutely applies here. Even if we don’t know much about Rebel Moon’s world it’s truly beautiful and really does make you want to explore the place, it’s huge in scale and the attention to detail in a lot of areas is very creative there’s many striking moments that standout as well.
Unfortunately that’s where Rebel Moon ends for me, the characters on paper are interesting they are very neat looking design wise but don’t have the character development to make the viewer care about them. Something that’s very noticeable here is the characters appear, get to do a couple cool things and then are put aside as characters who stand around until a fight scene starts. This repeats throughout the movie and it’s a huge shame because you want to learn more about these characters but the movie doesn’t give any strong development.
The same can be said with the world building, while yes the world itself is very neat to look at. Once again the movie unfortunately doesn’t give the world the proper development it needs, it really leaves the viewer in the dark a lot of the time and not in a good way, I still do very much like the look of it and It does make you want to explore. But at the same time I want to actually learn about it, it’s all very vague and loses the viewer very quickly.
Finally there’s the villains who are pretty by the numbers, Ed Skrein does a fine enough job in the role. But there’s just nothing here that makes the viewer care about this guy as a villain.
Overall Rebel Moon has its moments but it’s mostly a huge misfire, can this be fixed with the director’s cut? Will the sequel that’s coming out next year be better? I guess we will cross that bridge when we get there, but for now this is a huge mess.
After a traumatic experience, Eddie Garrick, a social worker, no longer believes in the magic of Christmas. At the request of his estranged wife, he brings his daughter Charlotte to work where a magical adventure begins for them.
There really isn’t a whole lot to say about Tim Story’s latest movie Dashing Through The Snow. It’s the very definition of a forgettable Christmas movie that just sort of exists and has a lot of the exact same problems a lot of modern Christmas movies do. Which mostly consists of slapping a few familiar faces on the movie and not really care about anything else.
It’s nice to see Ludacris attempt to branch out in different roles other then the Fast and Furious series, however that really doesn’t mean all that much when the writing is painfully dull and really does not have the Christmas spirit at all. Lil Rel Howery Santa could have worked if the material was actually funny, he tries his best with what he’s given but it’s nowhere near enough to save this movie from being a chore to sit through.
That’s perhaps the biggest problem here, Dashing Through The Snow feels like a very long chore to finish with no actual reward at the end, the characters are very underdeveloped and the journey they go on is just not very interesting at all. I’ll give the movie some points for it’s cast, despite not giving great performances there were some heartfelt moments during the third act that did work. Unfortunately by then it’s too little too late and we have pointless villain subplot (they could have easily went without a villain.)
Teens confront a legendary supernatural spectre that emerges from the cornfields of a small Midwestern town every fall.
After many delays since September 2021, Dark Harvest is finally released and it’s not exactly hard to see why this took so long to release.
I can see what director David Slade was attempting here with the movie but unfortunately that all gets lost with tons of bad performances and some very messy dialogue especially towards the end. The first half you can at least get an idea of what’s going on, as it does have some classic Halloween time type of themes that help the movie stand out a bit.
The creature’s design was decent enough but the parts with CGI completely take you out of the movie, honestly what hurts this movie the most is the second half. Which is mostly due to the movie really not focusing on it’s worldbuilding at all, sure we are given the rules but without much exploration of said rules the end result only puzzles the viewer. Events sort of just happen as the movie goes on with little to no context which admittedly can lead to some unintentionally funny scenes but not enough to save the movie.
There’s admittedly some pretty neat gore that I give credit where credit is due, but that’s really about it. Which is a shame because Dark Harvest had everything it needed to be a future cult classic during Halloween time. But with the movie taking itself way too seriously and a completely messy second half, it’s likely that Dark Harvest will be forgotten about.
A woman and her son enlist a motley crew of so-called spiritual experts to help rid their home of supernatural squatters.
Haunted Mansion is another take that’s based on Disney’s theme park attraction ride The Haunted Mansion. The first movie was of course was the 2003 movie The Haunted Mansion, a silly movie that some people still quite like to this day. Haunted Mansion (2023) however? It’s a complete and total mess as well as being one of Disney’s most forgettable releases this year.
Haunted Mansion has a decent cast and they do the best they can with a script that is incredibly limited, LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson and Danny DeVito in particular are decent enough, what holds them back is the script. Between a lot of painfully bad jokes and product placements such as Baskin Robbins, Burger King, CVS and a few others it starts to become a mess that strangely enough makes very little sense.
At least with the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion it had some sort of personality and actually knew what it wanted to be, this one wants to go for a darker tone, have product placements and tell unfunny jokes. It’s not like this movie did not have potential either, the New Orleans setting if it were taken advantage there could have been some really strong moments. The characters are given very little in ways of character traits and development, combine that with such a dull plot that moves at a snails pace and you have a chore of a movie to sit through.
I wish there was more to be said but this is the most nothing movie I’ve seen so far this year, it’s a bunch of product placements and a poorly written script crammed together with some talented actors involved.
Haunted Mansion is available on Disney+ and on all VOD platforms.
The crew of the merchant ship Demeter sets sail from Carpathia to London to deliver a cargo of 50 unmarked wooden crates. However, they soon discover they’re not alone as Dracula’s unholy presence turns the trip into a nightmarish fight for survival.
The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is an adaptation based of “The Captain’s Log” a chapter that is from the 1897 novel Dracula. The movie is directed by André Øverdal who at this point in his career has directed some quite interesting films such as Autopsy Of Jane Doe, Scary Stories To Tell in The Dark, Troll Hunter (2010) and a few others. While I don’t think The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is one of his best films, there is still a whole lot to really like about this one.
The performances are all around quite great, nobody turns in a bad performance and sticks with the period gothic style that Øverdal is going for. The standouts are definitely Corey Hawkins who plays a strong leading man and really helps put this movie to the finish line, Aisling Franciosi is fun here and has decent enough chemistry with Hawkins. Finally there’s Liam Cunningham who plays Captain Elliot and narrates the story which is quite well done and does fit with what the movie is going for.
Dracula’s design is quite interesting and takes on an appearance more like Nosferatu which is always welcomed, some people might have issues with the design looking a bit too generic but it fits with the whole “monster attacking a ship” type of story which the movie is in the most classic way possible.
Øverdal’s atmosphere like in some of his other movies is very effective here, there’s actually one or two emotional moments that are genuinely sort of sad and you really start to feel towards these characters, it really fits with the period piece gothic atmosphere and look the movie is going for which it really does succeed.
The main flaws come in with the huge lack of character development and not a whole lot to the story, a lot of the characters on the ship really just serve to be killed off, there definitely are character moments for Clemens (Corey Hawkins), Anna (Aisling Franciosi) and Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham) and I said before there are a few emotional moments that are quite great. But in a lot of areas it’s still incredibly lacking, as far as story goes it’s a very simple story of a monster attacking a ship picking apart it’s crew one by one. There really isn’t a whole lot here, it does take a bit to get going and the story starts to run at a very slow pace but the final act is admittedly very fun.
Overall despite it’s flaws The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is a fun time, it takes awhile to get going and writing wise there really is not a whole lot here, but the acting, atmosphere and the fun final act push this one to the finish line.
The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is playing in theaters.
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