Lola (2024) Film Review

A young woman struggles to save enough money to get her little brother out of their toxic home.

Lola is directed by Nicola Peltz Beckham which is her directorial debut. 

When I heard Nicola Peltz Beckham (Transforemers Age Of Extinction, Avatar The Lasr Airbender, Our House) was going to direct a movie I was pretty interested, I like to see actors and actresses throw their hat in the ring when it comes to directing. Unfortunately this is a case where it’s a misfire and a pretty disappointing one, I get what Beckham was trying to go for here. But a lot of this movie sort of reads as being out of touch about how people go through poverty and other struggles. Nicola Peltz Beckham’s father is Nelson Peltz a billionaire who’s a board member of Wendy’s Company, Sysco and The Madison Square Garden Company. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for someone who comes from a very rich family to make a great film about people’s struggles with poverty and other issues. I’m just saying that this is not the movie that tackles poverty well at all. 

Before that I will say the camerawork is phenomenal, there’s some quite strong moments that the cinematography compliments quite well, Nicola Peltz Beckham gives a solid performance and is probably her best to date (not really saying a whole since a lot of her performances are really not great). Out of everyone here Luke David Blumm is the one who shines here, while not given a whole lot to work with due to the shallow script Blumm delivers a touching performance that I wish most of the script focused on rather than the rest of the movie trying to mimic what other movies have done.

The main issue here is as I said before the whole movie is incredibly out of touch, the problem here is Nicola Peltz Beckham putting herself in the leading role and is just a very baffling portrayal of poverty. American Honey (2016), The Florida Project (2017) and to some degree Zola (2020) all explored the exact same themes as this movie did such as poverty and sex work, each of them did it FAR better and never once felt out of touch. 

Even if you took away Beckham’s status, Lola would still fall flat due to such an empty script that gives none of these characters any depth outside of the brother and sister bond of Lola and Arlo which is admittedly touching but never fully develops due to a choice made in the movie that felt completely unnecessary outside of the movie wanting you to feel sorry for Lola when as a character she isn’t written well at all. 

Overall Lola falls flat with a very rough script, cliches and shallow character development.

Lola is available on all VOD platforms.

3/10 D-

Ricky Stanicky (2024) Film Review

When three childhood best friends pull a prank that goes wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble. Twenty years later, they still use the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their immature behavior.

Ricky Stanicky is directed by Peter Farrelly director of Green Book (2018), Dumb and Dumber (1994), The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022), There’s Something About Mary (1998) and among many others.

After directing Green Book (2018) and The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) Farrelly returns to raunchy studio comedies, which could have great if it was the same level of quality as Dumb and Dumber (1994) or There’s Something About Mary (1998) but unfortunately that’s not what you get here. Ricky Stanicky believe it or not has six writers and has been in development since 2010 and both of these show in the final result. 

The one positive here is John Cena who takes a script that is painfully unfunny and manages to actually get a few chuckles out of the viewer, which is mainly due to Cena’s facial expressions and entertaining performance. Zac Efron while not necessarily terrible plays a very okay performance that you quickly forget about after watching the movie. He’s given a few emotional moments and to his credit he does a decent job but the script lacking in character really holds him back. 

Ricky Stanicky feels like a throwback to the raunchy comedy era but not in a good way, it uses the most tired cliches (bunch of dick jokes) a lot of it is very tired bits that you would have seen a bunch of in 2010. What does confuse me however is how a pretty straightforward movie like this was written by six people which includes Peter Farrelly himself, the movie itself is very blandly written and really has nothing noteworthy going on. Between being juvenile, bafflingly joyless and drawn out jokes that go on for an uncomfortably long time it really begs the question of what was going on in the writer’s room? 

Honestly Ricky Stanicky is the type of movie where the background of the movie is far more interesting than the movie itself, you can easily sum this movie up as a raunchy comedy that missed the time when the genre was at it’s peak. Even if it came out back in the mid 2010s this movie would still be outclassed by far better movies in the genre.

Ricky Stanicky is available on Amazon Prime Video.

2/10 F

Argylle (2024) Film Review

Reclusive author Elly Conway writes best-selling espionage novels about a secret agent named Argylle who’s on a mission to unravel a global spy syndicate. However, when the plots of her books start to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, the line between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Argylle is directed by Matthew Vaughn director of The Kingsman series, X-Men: First Class (2011), Kickass (2010) and a few others. 

Say what you will about Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and The King’s Man(2021) despite being nowhere near as good as the first movie at the very least they had a consistent style to them and for the most part kept the audience entertained. Argylle attempts to do the exact same thing but only it ends up being far far worse. The ugly effects in particular stick out like a sore thumb, Vaughn sticks with his usual style here that does not work here mainly due to the story being told. Despite the concept sounding promising a large majority of it is a bunch of spy movie cliches packaged together in a long and drawn out movie that had no idea what it was doing.

The amount of twists and red herrings becomes obnoxious because it’s clear the movie is adding them for the sake of adding them, there’s no real build up, suspense or payoff at all. It’s the equivalent of trying to tell a purposely bad story that makes no sense with Mad Libs, none of the twists or red herrings aren’t really that shocking either. A bunch of them are predictable as they can get and the others really do not make sense at all. 

The only positive here is mostly the acting, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell are trying their best but it’s not enough to save this disaster. There’s a few okay moments between the two otherwise they have very little to work with. John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Samuel L. Jackson, Dua Lipa and many others are given the short end of the stick as they appear for a few minutes and are never seen again. They do give solid performances but not enough to keep this movie afloat. 

It’s quite a shame because I do think Argylle could have been a great movie if the writing was coherent and the movie itself wasn’t filled to the brim with cliches. 

Argylle is available on all VOD Platforms. 

3/10 D-

Out Of Darkness (2024) Film Review

About 45,000 years ago, a desperate band of early humans finds a new land to settle in. As they start to realize that something monstrous is hunting them down, they must confront a horrifying danger that they never could have imagined.

Out Of Darkness is directed by Andrew Cumming which is his directorial debut. 

I hate to echo what others have said about this movie but this is a prime example of a very interesting idea executed in a way that really does not go anywhere. The idea of a survival horror movie during the Stone Age sounds like something that can really be investing and have so much potential as well, the movie nails the idea down quite well at the beginning. With the atmosphere that is automatically felt as the movie begins, the movie’s opening moments are among some of it’s best with the characters talking to each other and setting up interesting elements that we sadly don’t get to see in the later parts of the movie.

The performances all around are quite great particularly Safia Oakley-Green who really gives it her all and really delivers especially during the movie’s more emotional moments. The cinematography combined with the atmosphere sets up the movie’s world perfectly and is visually stunning, there’s so many shots that are quite breathtaking and compliments the movie well.

Unfortunately the movie fumbles the ball incredibly hard when the third act rolls around, when we get the big reveal and while I can understand what they were trying to do (conceptually at least) it’s that sort of situation that makes the movie make very little sense and actually takes a lot of way from the rest of the movie. 

Out Of Darkness was definitely a bit of a disappointment, while I wouldn’t say it’s a bad movie as there was clearly a lot of effort put into it especially visually, having that said the script needed a lot more preparation and a far better third act. 

Out Of Darkness is available on all VOD Platforms.

5/10 C

Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate (2024) Film Review

When Megamind’s former villain team the Doom Syndicate returns, the newly crowned blue hero must keep up evil appearances until he can assemble his friends (Roxanne, Chum and Keiko) to stop his old teammates from launching Metro City to the moon.

Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate is directed by Eric Fogel who’s done a few My Scene movies (yes those actually exist) and The Barbie Diaries (2006). The movie also serves a sequel Megamind (2010) and is a pilot to the series Megamind Rules. 

Megamind is a film that over the years has gained a cult following, while it got mostly positive reviews it was one of Dreamworks’s lowest growing films of the 2010s which is more than likely why a sequel never came to be…that is until one day a trailer popped up and all hell broke loose. To say fans were not happy would be understatement, from the completely different voice cast, to the much cheaper quality that pretty much equals to those straight to DVD sequels Disney was doing for awhile. The movie itself is somehow a lot worse than the trailers made it out to be.

I’m not going to pretend like Megamind (2010) is one of my favorite animated movies ever made, I think it’s a solid movie with some actually pretty strong character work and decently funny jokes. With that said even if you aren’t a fan of the first movie the way they completely changed everything is flat out character assassination. 

For starters the cast from the first movie being very noticeably missing does not help at all, part of what made the first movie work was Will Farrell, Tina Fey and David Cross they actually went into their characters and gave plenty of character moments. In this movie all of that character growth that was present is gone and completely replaced with tired tropes such as Megamind being a complete and total jerk and then later learning that he should not be one. It both completely takes away everything that Megamind learned from the first movie and the purpose of it all. There was a balance of good vs evil in the first movie, this whole movie doesn’t seem to know what it’s trying to say outside of cliched plot points that have been done to death. 

Roxanne is reduced to a typical side character who has absolutely nothing going for her outside of being a plot device, I’m not trying to say Roxanne had this deep and rich character development from the first movie. But at least she had a point and was genuinely enjoyable, her and Megamind just talking was genuinely funny and she was more than a love interest. 

The voice acting is just not good here I’m sure the cast tried the best they could with such an uninspired script which bafflingly enough is from the exact same writers as the first movie. As I said before this movie is basically the equivalent of one of those terrible straight to DVD sequels Disney use to release, only this time it’s straight to streaming since we live in the streaming age. 

The villains in this movie are just terrible, they all have one personality trait which is their power and that’s it Lady Doppler manipulates the weather, Pierre Pressure is a mime who uses hypnosis, Lord Nighty-Knight manipulates shadows and Behemoth is a giant lava monster. A complete downgrade from Hal Stewart in the first movie. 

The movie also ends on a cliffhanger which sets into the series that was released on the same day which is Megamind Rules. Which I have not seen anyone else can be my guest because Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate was quite enough. 

Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate is available on Peacock.

Disgrace To Cinema F

Most Anticipated Films Of March 2024!

February flew by and was an overall okay month for film. How To Have Sex (first 10/10 of the year) Lisa Frankenstein, Cobweb, Marmalade, Orion and The Dark and Suncoast were the standouts (I have not seen Drive-Away Dolls yet). With the rest month not being particularly very great, still better than January that’s for sure.

March is when we get into some of the most anticipated films of the year both for blockbusters and indie films. Some films not on the list such as Kung Fu Panda 4 (I just think it doesn’t not look that great) and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire (I’m not into the series that much) are highly anticipated from fans. Let’s get into the list.

14. The Animal Kingdom – March 15th (VOD)

13. You’ll Never Find Me – March 22nd (Shudder)

12. The Listener – March 29th (Theaters)

11. In The Land Of Saints and Sinners – March 29th (Theaters)

10. Spaceman – March 1st (Netflix)

9. Shirley – March 22nd (Netflix)

8. One Life – March 15th (Theaters)

7. Late Night With The Devil – March 22nd (Theaters)

6. Cabrini – March 8th (Theaters)

5. Problemista – March 1st (Limited Theaters) and March 22nd (Wide Theaters)

4. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire – March 29th (Theaters)

3. Love Lies Bleeding – March 8th (Linited Theaters) and March 15th (Wide Theaters)

2. Immaculate – March 22nd (Theaters)

1. Dune: Part II – March 1st (Theaters)

Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Film Review

Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley overcomes adversity to become the most famous reggae musician in the world.

Bob Marley: One Love is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green director of Monsters and Men (2018), Joe Bell (2019) and King Richard (2021). The movie is based on the life of reggae singer and songwriter Bob Marley from his rise to fame in the mid-1970s up until his death in 1981.

Bob Marley: One Love is definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be as there are a few things that are actually quite great here. Kingsley Ben-Adir is really solid as Bob Marley and gives such a touching performance as well, there’s definitely a few script issues that hold it back from being an incredible performance. However what he manages to do with the script is quite fantastic and definitely has the spirit of Bob Marley. Lashana Lynch as Rita Marley is also quite solid, there’s a few scenes in particular that really help her standout and she takes advantage of them well. The conversations between Adir and Lynch are some of the movie’s best moments by far and really help capture the feelings of the two.

The music is of course quite strong, the moments when you have Adir on stage performing are some of the movie’s most beautiful moments as well as capturing what made Bob Marley so interesting and great as a singer (this movie does not do Marley justice as a person which I’ll get to right now). 

Unfortunately the rest of the movie is very by the numbers when it comes to biopics, the movie really doesn’t bother to explore the complexities and tougher aspects of Marley’s life. What makes it even worse is the movie focuses on the part of Marley’s life where he’s fighting for political change in Jamaica yet the movie itself shows apolitical attitude. Which is an incredible dishonest way of telling Marley’s story especially when he was fighting for change. 

It’s incredibly frustrating because this movie has the performances and the music to make this an incredibly fun movie that could have easily been a tribute to Bob Marley. But when you paint a drastically different picture of a man who was fighting for change and say “well actually this whole thing was sort of apolitical” you absolutely miss a major point of why people looked up to Bob Marley. 

Bob Marley: One Love is available in theaters.

5/10 C

Mea Culpa (2024) Film Review

A criminal defense attorney takes on the case of a seductive artist accused of murdering his girlfriend, but when burning desire takes hold, things get hot — and dangerous.

Mea Culpa is directed by Tyler Perry who I don’t think needs an introduction. 

Tyler Perry is back with another thriller that should have been on the Lifetime channel rather than Netflix, Mea Culpa is pretty much two hours of some of the exact same elements that Tyler Perry has been putting in his movies for years now. 

For starters the movie is 2 hours long when it has no reason to be, it’s drawn out for the sake of being drawn out and is a huge chore to sit through. Kelly Rowland and Trevante Rhodes do the best they can with the script, but what’s there is very little to work with. 

At least the third act while still horrendous is hilariously bad due to the many baffling twists this movie decides to use. They aren’t well thought out and make very little sense if you think about them for more than a minute. Which let’s be honest is to be expected from a script written by Tyler Perry. 

Had the rest of the movie been written like the third act I would actually say to give this one a go for the laughs, but sitting through a majority of this movie when it’s dull and have nothing going for it is just not worth it. 

Mea Culpa is available on Netflix. 

1/10 F

History Of Evil (2024) Film Review

War and corruption plague America and turn it into a police state. A resistance member, Alegre Dyer, breaks out of political prison and reunites with her husband and daughter. The family on the run takes refuge in a safe house with an evil past.

History Of Evil is directed by Bo Mirhosseni which is his directorial debut. 

Unfortunately History Of Evil is a prime example of a movie that has a lot of interesting ideas that could be investing to the viewer, but ultimately fall completely flat. The acting is fine enough and I actually do like the slow burn element of it all as it does fit the feel the movie is going for. It helps create the world the movie is establishing during the first half. Paul Wesley easily gives the best performance and what the movie attempts to do with his character is actually quite great as well. His character Ron is pretty compelling and really sticks out.

The idea of the movie being The United States Of America becoming the North America Federation which is a fascist totalitarian state that took over in the year 2045. Unfortunately that’s really about all the movie explores, it doesn’t go any deeper than a group took over. The rest of the movie is poor character writing and a lot of dull haunted house narratives that have been done better elsewhere, the first half at the very least tries to do something with Ron but forgets about the other characters. 

It doesn’t help that said group of fascists are incredibly goofy and cartoonish which takes out any of the grounded nature the movie was attempting to go for, it’s frustrating because I think with far better writing this could be something interesting. 

History Of Evil is available on Shudder.

3/10 D-

Madame Web (2024) Film Review

Cassandra Webb is a New York City paramedic who starts to show signs of clairvoyance. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she must protect three young women from a mysterious adversary who wants them dead.

Madame Web is directed by S.J. Clarkson which is her directorial debut. Madame Web is also the fourth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. 

I’m going to cut right to the chase, Madame Web is a terrible movie. Every single part of what could go horribly wrong in a movie goes horribly wrong to the point where it becomes such a fascinating mess that is truly unbelievable. It’s as if one of those terrible superhero movies from the early 2000s found a time machine and landed in 2024. 

I’ll start with what becomes noticeable almost immediately when watching…the acting. Granted Sydney Sweeney actually nails down some of the lines in a campy way that’s genuinely hilarious, but everyone else is either half asleep while reading their lines or wants to collect their paycheck and call it a day. 

Dakota Johnson who has shown to be quite talented in a lot of roles such as Peanut Butter Falcon (2019), Our Friend (2019), The Lost Daughter (2021), Suspiria (2018) and a few others gives such a dull performance, which is mainly due to how lazy the script from S.J. Clarkson, Claire Parker, Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama really is. There’s absolutely baffling lines such as Madame Web directly saying to Young Uncle Ben “what you don’t wanna get shot in Queens.”

We learn absolutely nothing about Cassandra or any of the three spider-women which consists of Julia Cornwell (played by Sydney Sweeney) Anya Corazon (played by Isabela Merced) and Mattie Franklin (played by Celeste O’Connor) they also barely get to do any fun spider-woman actions, instead we are given a prequel on how they get their powers rather than spending time with them learning to use them. Then you have the villain of the movie Ezekiel Sims who’s played by Tahar Rahim, who not only gives a terrible performance but Sims ends up being one of the most forgettable villains in any of these superhero movies. It’s actually quite baffling how terrible the dialogue between Johnson and Rahim really is, how nobody in the writing room said “wait hold on a second” when reading this is insane. 

The editing is some of the absolute worst I’ve seen in a blockbuster in quite awhile, I commonly like to mention Taken 3 (2014) as a prime example of garbage editing that ends up being unhinged at one point. Madame Web is on par with Taken 3 on how absolutely baffling the editing really is, it becomes hilarious at one point which is something I have to mention. Madame Web is one of those it’s so bad it’s hilarious movies (kind of) I say kind of because there are some quite dull parts that are a chore to sit through (mostly the middle that drags out for far too long) but a lot of this movie is hilariously awful. I was actually baffled with what I watched and honestly had no words. 

Overall Madame Web is something that has to be seen to be believed, it’s a horrendous movie and I would not recommend this to anybody. However if you love bad movies and love laughing at them this might honestly be for you. 

Madame Web is available in theaters.

1/10 F