Sent to live with his estranged father for the summer, a rebellious teen finds kinship in a tight-knit Philadelphia community of Black cowboys.
Concrete Cowboy is a very sweet movie, it has tons of really touching moments that are helped by a magnificent cast such as Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin as well as many others! The acting is quite fantastic and feels incredibly raw that really gives the audience some powerful moments, the story is very well told even if the movie does lose it’s steam at the third act. The writing feels grounded and keeps things interesting with several touching moments that are bound to put a smile on your face. The end of the movie shows some small clips of the actual cowboys and cowgirls it’s some really interesting piece of history, even if this movie is a fictionalization it’s still based on a piece of history that’s still around today! The movie does a pretty good job of telling about the culture, what they do, why they decided to be cowboys and cowgirls and much more. The story can be unfocused at times but that isn’t enough to stop this movie from being great. Because it’s a very solid movie that I recommend!
A dystopian world where there are no women and all living creatures can hear each other’s thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise.
2021 is definitely not Doug Liman’s year, first there was LockedDown and now Chaos Walking. To be fair Chaos Walking has had many release dates in the past but was delayed for various reasons. The best way to describe Chaos Walking is that it’s another YA Sci-Fi adaption, it feels like a movie that should have came out years ago and it strangely feels very outdated. The only positives this movie has going for it is Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland, the performances were definitely not good at all but at least they tried with what they had. The huge problem with this movie is the waste of a good cast and some great ideas, the movie uses those ideas in the most bare bones way possible and doesn’t really bother with character development or try to develop these ideas. Instead it feels like a chore to sit through and doesn’t say or do anything interesting at all, some of the scenes in the movie you can easily tell they were reshoots which really shows a level of not caring at all. Doug Liman’s direction is terrible, there’s no style, no sense of trying to make the characters interesting and definitely no attempt to make this good either. I’m not sure what exactly happened to Liman (for god sake he directed Edge Of Tomorrow one of my favorite films of the 2010s) but good lord this feels like a huge step down from some of his other work. Then there’s the pacing…this felt way too long even though it was 109 minute long, the movie hits a wall after the first 20 minutes and gets slower and slower. I really don’t have much else to say Chaos Walking is another YA adaption that’s going to be easily forgotten, give this one a pass.
A psychiatrist, whose client commits suicide, finds his family life disrupted after introducing her surviving brother to his wife and daughter.
Every Breath You Take I feel would have been okay….if it came out in the 90s or early 2000s. It feels like a bad cable movie you would catch on TV on a Saturday evening. There really isn’t much to say here to be quite honest, the acting is very okay at best with Casey Affleck trying to give a good performance but this is easily one of his weakest. The movie never really goes anywhere at all, it starts off way too slow and ultimately stops dead in it’s tracks towards the end. Although I will say the ending was actually not too bad, the main problem with this movie is it’s a thriller that has nothing noteworthy about it. The only reason why this movie got some sort of attention is because of the cast, without the cast this movie would have gotten no attention at all. The cast is the only reason why I even bothered with this movie and it’s definitely the best thing about the movie. Plus the filming is at least pretty decent with some interesting shots, but everything else such as the writing, directing and so on are a complete mess and don’t add up to anything great.
March flew by pretty quickly! And was actually a pretty surprising month when it came to films! April has a smaller offering but I definitely feel like this will be a case of quantity over quality!! So let’s talk this month!
Now I have actually seen 3 of these movies already which are…
Jakobs Wife which is releasing on VOD April 16th, I recently have done a review on it so if you haven’t already check it out! It’s a refreshing take on the Vampire genre and Barbara Crampton is brilliant in it! Highly recommend it!
Best Summer Ever which is releasing on VOD April 27th is the movie Music wanted to be. As I said in my review it’s a huge win for representation and I seriously can’t wait for everyone to see this movie, it’s such a fun musical that puts a smile on your face. Definitely was one of the standouts from SXSW! I have a review out for this one as well so if you haven’t already check it out!
Finally there’s my most anticipated In The Earth which I’m very excited to see again! I saw it back in January during the Sundance Film Festival and this is one of the movies from Sundance I’ve wanted to watch again ever since! It’s a mix of many different types of films like Midsommar and Annihilation! Ben Wheatley goes back to his roots and it’s just incredible to see. I will definitely be making a second review that goes into more depth so be on the lookout for that! In The Earth releases in theaters April 16th!
Now let’s talk about some of the other films!
Shiva Baby I have been waiting to see forever now, I’ve heard so many great things about it and when I heard it got a release date I got very excited! I’ve heard it’s a powerful coming of age movie and that happens to be one of my favorite genres! The trailer is also incredible so count me in! Shiva Baby releases on VOD April 2nd
Concrete Cowboy is a Netflix film starring Idris Elba another movie I’ve been waiting to get a release date for a bit! It seems really promising! It releases On Netflix April 2nd
A few horror movies that are releasing into theaters are The Separation which is releasing either April 23rd or April 30th (so many sites are having conflicting dates) The Unholy which releases April 2nd!
Voyagers releases in theaters April 9th
Every Breath You Take releases on VOD April 2nd
Things Heard And Seen releases on Netflix April 30th along with The Mitchell’s Vs The Machines a movie that had almost forgotten about before I saw the new trailer with a release date. It looks like a very promising movie that I think can be great!
Boys From County Hell releases on April 22nd on Shudder
Finally we have Mortal Kombat which releases on HBO Max April 23rd! I have to say I was very shocked by the trailer and this might be another video game adaptation movie that doesn’t suck! The original Mortal Kombat movie is a guilty pleasure of mine that could definitely use improvements so I’m hoping that’s the case here! We got lucky with Sonic and Pokemon (Detective Pikachu) I’m hoping for the best with Mortal Kombat!
Determined to ensure Superman’s ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, Bruce Wayne aligns forces with Diana Prince with plans to recruit a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat of catastrophic proportions.
Before I begin as always this is a NO SPOILER REVIEW! So first a bit of background history, as you know Zack Snyder stepped down from filming Justice League due to his daughter’s tragic suicide. Joss Whedon took over and what came out was a movie that was missing a lot of scenes, felt rushed, was way too tonally different in different parts of the movie and was overall a gigantic mess. The Snydercut took awhile to come out but luckily it did, some people may not know this about me but I’m a huge fan of lost media and seeing it be found. The Snyder Cut fits into that category very well, with that said before going into this movie I was a lot more interested in the movie as I was excited for it. But I love surprises and the Snyder cut really surprised me, I was originally a bit concerned about the running time but this is some of the fastest four hours I’ve sat through. Some major differences from this movie and the 2017 cut are a lot of Cyborg and The Flash’s character development which is absolutely incredible. Especially with Cyborg, Ray Fisher knocks it out of the park and brings such a emotional and powerful role into the film, his story is really fleshed out and makes you care about Cyborg. Where as in the 2017 cut Cyborg just felt like an afterthought, the same can be said with Erza Miller they did a great job in their role and brought a lot of life in The Flash’s character! The rest of the cast does a really solid job as well except for a few….Amber Heard’s role shows once again that she can’t act, luckily she isn’t in the movie for that long! The other being Jared Leto who still is not a good Joker, he’s barely in it luckily but those few minutes he is there doesn’t help him out. Part of the problem is Ben Affleck and Jared Leto have no chemistry whatsoever so the whole dialogue just felt very awkward. One of the best things about the Snyder Cut is Steppenwolf’s character development, which was nonexistent in the 2017 cut but is shown quite a lot here. It does a good job of making the audience take him seriously as a villain, plus when you add Darkseid into the mix you got yourself some great villains! The action scenes are a lot better as well, much more detailed, much more story to them and context as well. Which leads me to why the Snyder Cut is much better…context. The 2017 cut felt like a bunch of out of context scenes mixed together which is why it was a complete and total mess, but you get the full context here, the full reasons why certain events are happening, why certain characters chose certain actions and so much more. The difference is night and day that the Snyder Cut is basically it’s own movie. The only main criticism I have with the movie is I do feel the epilogue went on for a little too long and you did feel the length of it during that segment. They could have trimmed the epilogue a bit and kept everything else, because that’s only my major criticism. The rest of the film is quite incredible, I’m not the biggest Zack Snyder fan out there (this is definitely his best film since the Dawn Of The Dead Remake) but I have always appreciated him as a person and always found him interesting. He did such an incredible job here and I can’t wait to see what he does next, I’m glad his vision eventually got released even if it did take awhile. I highly recommend checking this one out!
Nowhere left to go, Will Hawkins finds himself at camp for the first time. His instinct is to run, but he finds a friend, a father figure and even a girl who awakens his heart. Most of all, he finally finds a home.
A Week Away can be best described as a christian version of Camp Rock with some High School Musical in it, heck they got the main male lead Kevin Quinn as a Zac Efron look alike. So it’s pretty clear to see what they were doing because this can’t be a coincidence, I will say that I did like Bailee Madison. She did the best she could with a script that is very outdated and just overall not good either. The movie tries to be wholesome but comes off as extremely corny and the characters are basic stereotypes that you can already guess what type of arcs they go through. A lot of the songs aren’t too great either outside of maybe two or three of them everything else is painful to sit through, the movie fails to understand as to what made Camp Rock and High School Musical fun. Both movies had energy, fun characters, fun writing and most of all the movies were actually a lot of fun! A Week Away can have it’s fun moments but a lot of the time it’s too busy trying to copy off of Camp Rock or High School Musical that at one point it trips itself. Speaking of the writing another thing worth pointing out is the jokes here are just not funny, a lot of it is “lol random humor” that doesn’t add up to anything at all and the humor heavily involves character stereotypes for example “haha the best friend character is shy and nervous to talk to the girl he likes so he says random things! It’s funny you guys!!” Overall there really isn’t much else to be said about A Week Away if you have seen Camp Rock or High School Musical you have already seen this movie. It’s quite clear Netflix wanted their own Camp Rock so they released this…thanks I guess?
A film development executive realizes that “guiding voice” inside her head has been lying to her about everything.
I heard so much about Violet before going into the film and I really have to say I’m quite impressed. Violet is a meaningful film about anxiety and the voice in your head that says “you aren’t good enough” or “nobody likes you” Violet uses this idea in a way that’s very unique and quite clever, it combines some very quick editing with some very striking shots that grab the attention of the viewer. The film itself is incredibly raw and emotional to the point where it punches you in the gut several times, which leads to Olivia Munn’s performance which is easily the best of her whole career. She displays so much talent here and how capable she is as an actress, her character is fully fleshed out and feels like an actual person with so much anxiety. The writing is absolutely perfect as well, once again it captures the natural feel and truly delivers when it comes to making the viewer feel and care for what’s taking place. Overall it’s best to go into Violet knowing as little as possible, I will definitely have a more in depth review once it comes out! But Violet is hands down one of the best films so far this year, please keep this one on your radar!
Anne, married to a small-town Minister, feels her life has been shrinking over the past 30 years. Encountering “The Master” brings her a new sense of power and an appetite to live bolder. However, the change comes with a heavy body count.
Jakob’s Wife is a very interesting take on the Vampire genre as well as a refreshing one! The standout in this movie is Barbara Crampton, she does such a fantastic job in her role and really makes the film that much more interesting, she gives off a very calm and haunting performance which is very welcoming! Jakob’s wife does have a slow start, it starts out as kind of a slowburn horror movie but then quickly picks up as it goes on. The film itself is ultimately really fun, there’s plenty of great scenes towards the end and once the 3rd act kicks in it gets really satisfying! The writing isn’t too bad at all either, it gives off this eerie feeling to it which is quite great that not a lot of Vampire movies as of late have been able to do. Jakob’s Wife is something I definitely recommend checking out once it comes out on VOD April 16th 2021!
After receiving a mysterious letter, a woman travels to a desolate island town and soon becomes trapped in a nightmare.
Offseason is a movie I really had to sit down and actually think about if I liked it or not, in my first reaction I praised the movie and while I do still stand by a few things I said it’s not as good as I first thought. I will say that the atmosphere, the location and the filming were all there and do quite a good job of doing what they were assigned to do. The atmosphere has a creepy feel to it, the location and filming both compliment each other really well and definitely do deliver at times. My problems are with the performances and how the movie is crafted. The performances while are not bad are most certainly not anything special and the characters really don’t add much either which is a shame. As far as the craft Offseason is unfortunately one of those movies that has a ton of interesting ideas but places them throughout several parts of the movie and doesn’t do anything with them. I mean sure they are there but the movie doesn’t do anything interesting or creative with them. Which is a huge missed opportunity, I can definitely see some people really liking Offseason I just find disappointing considering that I really like Mickey Keating! But if it sounds like your thing check it out when it releases.
A Spanish teacher and her student develop an unexpected friendship.
Out of the three COVID/pandemic films from what I saw at SXSW Language Lessons is hands down the best one. First of all it’s very well acted, Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales have beautiful chemistry and give such raw performances to the point where you care about their chemistry. The film itself is entirely filmed by zoom calls and I really have to say it’s actually very well done, it feels as natural as possible and really delivers when the movie get’s to it’s quite moments and it’s character moments as well. The whole movie feels like you are witnessing two regular people having a conversation through zoom it’s that authentic, to me that’s a very beautiful thing! Natalie Morales also does a fantastic job in the director’s chair she really has a taste for interesting style choices, build up and execution, this is another movie where you look at the daily life or lives of a person or group of people it’s truly interesting and the film itself really drags you in. Definitely check this one out once it releases!
Jerome Reviews... 