American Star (2024) Film Review

An assassin on his last assignment travels to Fuerteventura to kill a man he’s never met.

American Star is directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego a director who may not sound familiar at first but if you like at his work he’s directed a few recognizable movies (bad ones but still recognizable) such as Apollo 18 (2011) and Open Grave (2012).

The two most noteworthy things about American Star are Ian McShane’s performance which is quite great, he gives this quiet performance who plays the typical old hitman type of role but he does it well just enough to make his performance noteworthy. The other thing is The Final Countdown by Europe makes an appearance (a guitar version) and that scene was pretty okay.

I respect the movie for trying to tell a slow burn hitman type of story something that we don’t quite often see, however the story itself is very forgettable and isn’t exactly told in a way to get the viewer on board. The pacing ends up being a bit too slow, I do think the rest of the act from the cast is decent enough but nothing that you are going to walk away remembering. There are some genuinely nice shots here that are actually quite beautiful, but the movie stays on these shots for a little bit too long that it starts to become obnoxious.

There was definitely something that was trying to be said here about confronting your violent life from the past and I definitely think that would have made for an interesting movie if the story wasn’t so blandly written.

American Star is available on all VOD platforms.

5/10 C

Quick Review: Susie Searches (2023)

Susie is an awkward college student with a failing true-crime podcast. She seizes the opportunity to boost her popularity by solving the mysterious disappearance of Jesse. a campus heartthrob. With her star on the rise, events soon take a dark turn as she digs out the truth and finds herself in over her head.

Susie Searches is if you took Nancy Drew and parts of the whole obsession with true crime some people have and put them together. Not a whole lot to say here but there’s a few things worth mentioning.

The acting is actually quite decent here, Kiersey Clemons gives a solid performance and is very charming in the leading role. She’s genuinely funny and really fits the role well, Alex Wolff is also quite great and works very well with Clemons. Although Rachel Sennott is only in a handful of scenes she completely steals every scene she’a in, Sennott also works incredibly well with Clemons and the two are truly exciting to watch on screen.

The movie itself is decent enough, admittedly the third act does fall flat a bit due to shifting tones a bit too often, however the mystery itself combined with the movie’s entertaining dialogue makes the movie move at a decent pace that never drags out the plot. Honestly what saves this movie is mostly the charm, the characters have charm to them and the dialogue works incredibly well.

Susie Searches is available on all VOD platforms.

6/10 C+

A Haunting In Venice is engaging and a beautifully shot mystery.

Now retired and living in self-imposed exile in the world’s most glamorous city, Poirot reluctantly attends a seance at a decaying, haunted palazzo. He soons gets thrust into a sinister world of shadows and secrets when one of the guests is murdered.

A Haunting In Venice is the third Agatha Christine adaption (adapted from Hallowe’en Party) directed by Kenneth Branagh, Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile being the other two. While both those movies were solid, I really have to say A Haunting In Venice is the best out of the three.

Kenneth Branagh returns as Hercule Point and like in the previous two movies he does a fantastic job in the role, he doesn’t do anything particularly different but given how strong he is in the role that’s really not a bad thing. Tina Fey is pretty solid here as well, I was actually a bit surprised of how much she was given to do here which she nailed quite well.

A Haunting In Venice goes for more of a horror theme and the movie succeeds quite well, the movie combines that old haunted house atmosphere with some beautiful shots that give the movie a lot of personality. It really does feel like it came right from the black and white haunted house movie era. Combining the mystery with classic haunted house tropes was also pretty well done, even if there isn’t really anything entirely new it’s still very well done due to Branagh and his crew’s presentation of the film.

A Haunting In Venice does struggle when it comes to the mystery itself as it is very predictable, especially if you are a fan of the mystery film genre. With that said that doesn’t stop the film from being incredibly engaging and keeps the viewer busy with the attention to detail on screen. It’s a straightforward mystery that doesn’t have a whole lot too it but sometimes that’s all you really need.

A Haunting In Venice is available in theaters.

7/10 B

Sympathy For The Devil is filled with Nicolas Cage moments!

Forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems.

All I really knew about Sympathy For The Devil going in is that Nicolas Cage was in it and if you have been following me for awhile you know that I’m always down for a Nicolas Cage film not matter what the quality looks like. Luckily this isn’t a case of Left Behind (2014) where Nicolas Cage isn’t given any material that could get a laugh out of the viewer.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way, Nicolas Cage is his classic self here, his role as a character who is simply called “The Passenger” is quite hilarious, the movie has the classic Nicolas Cage moments sort of like Ghost Rider or The Wicker Man (2006) he has so many random outbursts to the point where here part of the movie’s suspense comes from what Cage is going to say next. His performance is menacing, hilarious and surprisingly electrifying it has this high energy to it that actually works quite well here.

Joel Kinnaman plays a character called “The Driver” who’s real name is David who just wants to see his wife who is in labor again following a recent miscarriage. David ends up at gunpoint from The Passenger and that’s when we see the two’s completely different behavior and personalities. David is calm and really tries his hardest to get through this situation, he does anything he can for survival and to see his wife. The Passenger is very menacing, can be set off with a flip of a switch and has no problem harming people. It’s an interesting comparison of the two that actually does balance out quite well, granted the movie doesn’t do a whole lot with but it’s still interesting to see from their interactions.

As I said before a lot of the suspense comes from what Nicolas Cage is going yell out or do next which does work in this movie, but if you are looking suspense in the overall atmosphere department you aren’t really going to get that here. The atmosphere can have it’s thrilling moments but for the most part it really comes down Nicolas Cage. It also doesn’t help that the movie is a tad bit predictable, which leads to a very weak ending that really fails to end the movie on a high note.

Overall Sympathy For The Devil might be a bit of a mess, but it’s a fun one that is worth watching!

Sympathy For The Devil is available on all VOD platforms.

6/10 C+

Death’s Roulette is a bad Saw clone

Seven strangers wake up in a mansion and are subjected to a macabre game: they will choose one to die, otherwise they will all be killed. In 60 minutes, they will discover the dark past that binds them.

Death’s Roulette I hadn’t even heard of until I randomly looked at the “List of Paramount+ Original Movies” Wikipedia page, I read the plot and it sounded a bit interesting so I gave it a go….and well that’s definitely what I sort of expected.

I will say that the music is surprisingly really great here, the use of “Siboney” by Connie Francis is actually kind of atmospheric and is by far the best scene in the movie, where the characters really start to let the situation sink in on how terrifying the situation really is. The acting is overall decent, nobody really does a terrible job but at the same time nobody gives a performance to write home about.

Honestly the main problem here is how cliched and predictable the movie really is, when you really get down to it Death’s Roulette is a Saw clone and not a very good one either. It’s nowhere near as campy or as fun as the Saw movies are, the movie is about as predictable as you would expect. If you have seen at least one of these types of movies before you have seen this one, it’s honestly nothing different.

Finally there’s the characters which the movie attempts to give some sort of backstory to, but like the rest of the movie it’s just not interesting enough to really hold the viewer’s attention.

Death’s Roulette is available on Paramount+

3/10 D-

The Artifice Girl is a solid enough movie about the rise of AI.

Special agents discover a revolutionary computer program that uses a digital child to catch online predators. However, they soon learn that the AI’s inevitable advancement is far more rapid and incalculable than they ever could have imagined, posing unforeseen challenges and unsettling consequences for the future of technology and mankind.

The Artifice Girl takes the concept of AI and how it’s rapidly growing then does something quite interesting with it.

The performances from Tatum Matthews and Lance Hennriksen are quite great, they are the sole reason why the third act stands out so well and put so much power into their performances. The first bit of the movie where there’s nothing but a long but very investing interrogation room scene is quite great, while this sort of thing has been done before it still makes for great attention grabbing and really sets up the movie well.

The second act is where the movie fumbles a bit, it starts to show the movie’s low budget with some not very good acting (outside of Tatum Matthews) and writing that doesn’t quite land all that well. However the movie does start to ask questions about how ethical is AI and asks a lot of questions about Tatum Matthews’s character.

The third act performance wise with some very long scenes with Matthews and Hennriksen are quite great, story wise it becomes a bit more of a mess there’s potential here that goes a bit underutilized. Plus the movie does fall into the whole “the AI is taking over and there’s nothing we can do” area that a lot of these very low budget Sci-Fi movies tend to go down.

With that said I do actually think this was an interesting enough movie, it’s heavily flawed but there’s just the right amount of decent performances, questions of how ethical and a solid first and third (mostly) act that warrants a watch.

The Artifice Girl is available on all VOD platforms.

6/10 C+

Hypnotic is a heavily flawed but fun ride.

When a detective learns that his missing daughter and a string of high profile bank robberies might be connected, he must go on a mind-bending journey to find his daughter and stop the secret government agency behind the madness.

Hypnotic was the May 1st Regal Mystery Movie and of the ones I’ve went to (I missed the ones for Missing and Sisu) this is definitely one of the better ones. There’s definitely a lot to like about Hypnotic and I applaud Robert Rodriguez for doing his own thing.

The performances can be a bit of a mixed bag at times, I like seeing Ben Affleck take on different roles especially these types of roles. With that said I wouldn’t call his performance good but I will say that it’s pretty entertaining at times, the supporting cast such as Alice Braga and William Fichtner are pretty solid especially Fichtner who does give an intimidating performance.

The many ideas of the movie are decently executed during the first two acts, as both acts are very engaging. There is definitely some questionable editing that makes some scenes a complete and total mess, but for the most part it tells a pretty engaging story. Character development is pretty nonexistent here, sure we are given some information about the characters but we are never really given a backstory, who they really are or why they are doing certain things.

What hurts this movie mostly is the third act that is way too fast paced and ends very abruptly, granted there are moments during the third act that are very unintentionally hilarious. But it isn’t quite enough to really save it from being a mess.

If it sounds like I didn’t go into much detail with Hypnotic it’s because the movie is hard to really talk about without spoiling. And I really don’t want to do that because I do think the several twists in Hypnotic are interesting and definitely should be seen going in as little as possible. Overall I definitely liked Hypnotic a bit more the more I thought about it, it’s not anything I don’t think I will ever come back to but it is something worth looking into.

Hypnotic releases in theaters May 12th

6/10 C+

Murder Mystery 2 is a small step up from it’s predecessor.

Now private detectives launching their own agency, Nick and Audrey Spitz land at the centre of an international investigation when a friend is abducted.

Murder Mystery 2 is a sequel to Murder Mystery which came out in 2019, a movie which I wasn’t a huge fan of. While I found the chemistry between Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston to be charming and it had some comedic moments, outside of that it was a very bland Netflix comedy. Murder Mystery 2 I actually found to be a step up from the first movie but that doesn’t really mean much when the movie itself suffers similar problems that the first one faced.

Once again the chemistry between Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston is really great, they definitely get a lot more room to tell more jokes and they definitely take advantage of that well. While not all of the jokes land there’s a decent amount of them that actually work well, the acting was decent enough and there were a few action scenes that combined comedy and action actually pretty well.

The main issue comes from the mystery itself, unfortunately it’s not very engaging and ultimately doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you think about it for more than a minute. A lot of the side characters are just there to serve as suspects and have no real character to them at all, Murder Mystery 2 is also one of those sequels where it’s very similar to it’s predecessor in almost every single way and does very little to change the formula.

Murder Mystery 2 is available on Netflix.

5/10 C

Marlowe lacks in story and writing.

Detective Phillip Marlowe becomes embroiled in an investigation with a wealthy family in Bay City, California after a beautiful blonde hires him to find her former lover.

Out of the sea of Liam Neeson movies that have been coming out like crazy, Marlowe stood out as the one with the most potential. It’s based on the 2014 novel The Black Eyed Blonde by Jon Banville who writes under the pen name Benjamin Black. The cast seemed quite good and Neil Jacobs is a pretty solid director.

Marlowe does have it’s good parts which mostly comes from the performances and the style of the movie. While it doesn’t completely nail the film noire style, it does it pretty well and actually has some quite transformative moments that do put you into the atmosphere of the movie. Between Liam Neeson’s performance (one of the best he’s given in awhile) and the atmosphere it does a decent job of creating a film noire type style.

What ultimately drags this down is everything else, the story becomes way too generic and starts to repeat what a lot of better films in the film noire have done already. The writing falls incredibly flat towards the end with a lot of pacing that is just way too slow for it’s own good, by the end it starts to become your usual Liam Neeson action movie. Which would be fine if this was trying to be something like The Commuter, but that’s not the case here as it’s trying to be a film noire mystery.

Overall Marlowe has great style and acting, it’s also better than a lot of other Liam Neeson movies that have been coming out the last few years, but unfortunately it falls short when it comes to just about everything else.

Marlowe is available on all VOD platforms.

4/10 D+

The Pale Blue Eye has great performances but with a weak script.

Veteran detective Augustus Landor investigates a series of grisly murders with the help of a young cadet who will eventually go on to become the world-famous author Edgar Allan Poe.

The Pale Blue Eye serves as an origin story to Edgar Allen Poe (kind of) I will give credit where credit is due it’s definitely one of the better Edgar Allen Poe movies that have come out recently. But that really doesn’t mean much when the movie itself falls short, Christian Bale and Harry Melling are both quite great especially Harry Melling who actually does a far better job as Edgar Allen Poe than you would expect. The film itself is shot pretty well and the location helps the movie standout a bit from a lot of other gothic horror films, unfortunately that’s where the movie really ends for me. While the story itself is interesting in concept the movie really doesn’t do anything with it, it’s way too slow for it’s own good especially combined with a 2 hour and 8 minute runtime that just draws out. The worst offender is the twist ending that was way too predictable but at the same time made very little sense, it’s honestly one of those endings that completely breaks a movie and truly makes the rest of the movie seem incredibly pointless. Finally The Pale Blue Eye does barely little to differentiate itself from other gothic horror movies, while yes the filming and the locations help out a bit just about everything else is working against it. A lot of this movie is a gothic horror movie with an Edgar Allen Poe overlay over it, it’s a shame because this did have potential but unfortunately much like a lot of Scott Cooper’s work the ideas are most certainly there the execution is just severely lacking.

The Pale Blue Eye is available on Netflix.

4/10 D+