As a child, Douglas was abused by a violent father who then threw him to the dogs. Instead of attacking him, the dogs protected him. Traumatised and leading a life on the margins of society with his dogs, Douglas descends into a murderous madness.
Dogman is directed by Luc Besson who has directed Lucy (2014), Léon: The Professional (1994), The Family (2013), The Fifth Element (1997), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) and a few others.
As strange as the premise of Dogman might be it strangely almost works, unfortunately this is yet another one of Luc Besson’s misfires that doesn’t quite live up to the potential that the movie had. Caleb Landry Jones is what makes this movie at the very least stand on it’s legs, he gives a pretty twisted and intimidating performance as Doug Munrow a man who is being interrogated by a psychiatrist (played by Jojo T. Gibbs) he gives his backstory when he was a child, why he became obsessed with dogs and tells a lot more about his life such as him being a drag queen in a cabaret act.
The first act and even some of the second act are quite decent I must say, Caleb Landry Jones as I said before gives a very solid performance and the backstory of Doug is actually pretty interesting. The score is quite nice (might be my favorite thing about it outside of Jones’s performance) and the trained dogs are quite impressive as well especially combined with the shots of the dogs doing some quite impressive tricks and perfectly matching each of the movie’s scenes tone.
Unfortunately the rest of the movie takes itself way too seriously and ultimately turns into another version of The Joker (2019) and Taxi Driver (1976) the third act is very rushed and has trouble really blending it’s themes together to create something interesting. There are some decent enough kills but the group Doug ultimately goes against are completely bland and have very little character to them outside of wanting to kill Doug.
There is definitely something interesting here with Dogman and I think if the writing had more work on it this could have at the very least been a decently fun movie.
Recently incarcerated, Baron strikes up a friendship with his new cellmate, a man with a history of prison breaks. As they hatch a plan to escape, Baron recalls how he met the love of his life and how they came up with a scheme to rob a bank.
Marmalade is directed by Keir O’Donnell which is his directorial debut.
I honestly had no idea what to expect from Marmalade going in, what got my attention was the cast as well as O’Donnell an actor who has done quite a bit of work (Wedding Crashers, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, The Break-Up, Gifted and many others) being in the director’s chair. Despite a couple missteps this was definitely a huge surprise.
Joe Kerry, Camila Morrone and Aldis Hodge all give quite fantastic performances, each of them bring something special to the table. Kerry and Morrone completely nail every single scene the two are together in, they capture this line of being surprisingly wholesome while being absolutely insane. Joey Kerry’s character Baron talking about how much his mother means to him and doing anything he can to insure his mother’s health and safety is touching and quite meaningful as well.
Camila Morrone is truly fun here, her character Marmalade is a great mix with Baron and the two ooze with chemistry. The little moments of Marmalade and Baron talking about each other’s past, family and why they need the money so bad is some incredibly strong character work that really shows the acting talent of Kerry and Morrone. The conversation between Kerry and Aldis Hodge is quite great as well, there’s so many character moments, emotional moments and a lot of dialogue heavy clues that paint a pretty interesting picture that happens later in the film.
I do think the movie does suffer from the first act being a bit too generic, Marmalade starts out as very typical heist drama movie where the main characters plan out the heist. However when the second act rolls around that’s when the movie gets interesting, there are a ton of plot twists that are cleverly written into the story. The script from Keir O’Donnell manages to take a familiar heist movie and turn into something quite different from what we normally see.
Between the strong performances, the plot twists and O’Donnell’s direction and writing. Marmalade is definitely something worth checking out if you haven’t seen it!
Accompanied by his pet chimpanzee, a celebrity animal trainer picks up a hitchhiker, only to discover his passenger is a cunning young serial killer.
He Went That Way is directed by Jeffery Darling who sadly died due to a surfing accident in March of 2022 (R.I.P.)
I’m going to be completely honest here, the only reason I watched this one is because of Jacob Elordi and Zachary Quinto being involved. Which they both happen to be the best part about this…that doesn’t mean they give good performances. Because the script is a gigantic mess and is what basically kills this movie right from the start.
The dialogue that’s presented is terrible, absolutely ridiculous a lot of the time and incredibly unfocused that you really have to wonder how long did this movie spend in the writer’s room? The tone is another huge part of what kills this movie, for a movie that’s supposedly based on an account of serial killer Larry Lee Ranes (although the movie changes the name to Bobby Falls) where he encounters animal trainer David Pitts (who actually survived) the movie is quite ridiculous and not in a good way.
One moment the movie is goofy and the next it’s trying to be serious, it’s very jumbled mess that never seems to figure out what it wants to be or how it wants to tell the story. Heck at times the random fake Chimpanzee is more interesting than everyone else involved, the editing is also quite poor to the point where it loses the viewer within minutes.
I really don’t know what else to comment on here, He Went That Way is atrocious with seemingly nothing to say or even really show. It’s sloppily put together and really feels like the equivalent of a school project put together at the very last second.
He Went That Way is available on all VOD platforms.
Two brothers from opposite sides of the tracks are reunited as adults. Desperate circumstances force them into a deal with an organized crime syndicate in Boston, and a young women gets caught in the middle.
Not a whole lot to say here about Finestkind it’s directed by Brian Helgeland who directed 42. The idea of the movie itself is not bad at all, in fact it sounds genuinely interesting and I actually do think there’s a good movie here somewhere. However there are so many missteps, wasted opportunities and poor execution for it to come together.
Jenna Ortega and Tommy Lee Jones are hands down the best parts about the movie, you can never really go wrong with Tommy Lee Jones who’s just such a fantastic actor to watch whenever he’s on screen. Jenna Ortega is one of the best young talent working today and she really gives a solid performance here despite working with a script that gives her character very little to do. The movie itself is competently made with some solid looking shots that do show the beauty of the sea.
The first hour of Finestkind is a family drama which is basic yet not anything particularly bad, if anything it just suffers from being more of the same thing that we have seen several times before. If you have seen any given family drama in your life you already know what to expect. However the last half of the movie turns into a crime thriller that has absolutely no setup at all, you could honestly be forgiven if you thought Finestkind was two completely different scripts that somehow got meshed together into a Frankenstein’s monster of a mess.
As I said there’s a good movie in here somewhere, there’s just not a whole lot going on to actually make it into one, Finestkind isn’t one of the worst movies of the year but it’s one of the most unremarkable and one of the most forgettable that you might think about for two minutes after watching.
Solitary, cold, methodical and unencumbered by scruples or regrets, a killer waits in the shadows, watching for his next target. Yet, the longer he waits, the more he thinks he’s losing his mind, if not his cool.
David Fincher once again hits it out of the park with The Killer a film that has a lot of elements of what makes David Fincher so fantastic but also adds a bit as well.
It should go without saying but Michael Fassbender’s performance is absolutely fantastic, it’s cold, intimidating and hits the viewer right in the chest throughout the film. The narration from Fassbender is equally as cold and haunting, it already makes the incredibly cold and thrilling film, into a quite a dark experience that directly puts you into the mind of an assassin simply known as The Killer (played by Michael Fassbender). Tilda Swinton plays The Expert and she gives a fantastic performance as well, her interactions with Fassbender are top notch, although Fassbender is the main focus here you still feel Swinton’s presence throughout the film.
While being quite cold and dark the film is also quite funny, there’s a bit where The Killer has a bunch of fake aliases which shouldn’t really as a joke given the direction this film is going for….but it oddly works really well! Perhaps it’s Fassbender’s performance or David Fincher’s direction of making The Killer a bit more of a surprise, a very interesting approach is putting the viewer in the mind of an assassin while at work. The thoughts of “what if I miss the shot” “what if the target gets away” and “what if everything completely goes wrong” come up there’s tons of incessant paranoia that makes him overthink all of it.
The filming is incredibly well done, with tons of strong camera angles, the haunting cinematography with some strangely electrifying editing. There’s a whole lot here that really gives The Killer its haunting and thrilling nature. Finally David Fincher’s direction is just outstanding, combining his original roots with some newer ones was quite honestly a fantastic move that really makes the film standout.
The Killer might not be for everyone, but I still do recommend to give this one a watch!
After losing her job, a woman who’s struggling to raise her daughter takes a job out of desperation. She begins work at a failing pharmaceutical startup, but what she doesn’t anticipate is the dangerous racketeering scheme she’s suddenly entered.
Pain Hustlers is directed by David Yates (bunch of the Harry Potter movies, the Fantastic Beasts trilogy and The Legend Of Tarzan). There is not a whole lot to say here unfortunately, Pain Hustlers is if you took The Wolf Of A Wall Street (2013) and The Big Short (2015) then proceeded to somehow make them bad and completely uninteresting.
Emily Blunt definitely tries to give it her all and is by far the best part about the movie, she’s held back from giving a very good performance due to the direction from Yates. Chris Evans is quite awful and it’s very baffling to watch, I’m still not exactly sure what he’s attempting with the accent but it completely falls flat immediately when he first appears.
The main thing that really brings the movie down is the lack of energy, it doesn’t have the energetic feel that The Wolf Of Wall Street did or the interesting dialogue that The Big Short had, Pain Hustlers is stuck in the ground with such a dull script that really doesn’t offer anything new. The running time also seals this movie’s fate with a 2 hour and 3 minute running time that feels so much longer, there’s so much here that could have been interesting but between the dull direction and the terrible script it turns into a huge misfire.
In the 1920s, members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma, are murdered after oil is found on their land, and the FBI decides to investigate.
Killers Of The Flower Moon is based on the 2017 Book of the same name, which is also based on the series of Oklahoma Murders in the Osage nation during the 1920s which were committed after oil was discovered on tribal land.
It goes without saying that Martin Scorsese is truly an incredible filmmaker, each of his films always brings something quite interesting to the table. Whether it be how the viewer looks at films in different ways, the way he discusses characters, different ways of telling stories. It’s always exciting to see what he is going to do next.
Killers Of The Flower Moon establishes it’s atmosphere almost immediately with the introduction to some of the characters such as Ernest Buckhart played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Ernest’s uncle William King Hale played by Robert De Niro. Right off the bat DiCaprio and De Niro absolutely nail down their roles, both of them work incredibly well together and they are quite different from the usual horrendous people that Scorsese has in his films. Scorsese instead has Ernest and William King Hale come off as people you would actually trust at first when in reality they are downright horrendous people that the film makes sure you know they are terrible.
Some people may see this as the film trying to get you to sympathize with Ernest when that’s not the case at all. Portraying Ernest or William King Hale as cartoon mustache twirling antagonists would be a complete disservice to the story being told (heck it would be a disservice to the real events that happened), the Osage trusted William King Hale and naturally trusted Ernest since his uncle is Hale. There’s a lot of betrayal in this story that is absolutely gut wrenching that makes the viewer so angry and it absolutely works.
When Lily Gladstone enters the film that’s when we get one of the best performances of the year, there is so much that could be said about Gladstone’s performance that you could write a 20 page paper about it. There’s so much heart, passion and many other emotions put into the performance that really elevates Lily Gladstone, it’s a heartbreaking performance that has tons of quiet moments and moments that are incredibly raw. Lily Gladstone plays Mollie who eventually marries Ernest and what follows is incredibly heartbreaking moments that only progressively get more and more disturbing as the film goes on. One scene in particular towards the film’s final moments alone makes Gladstone the absolute best performance of the film.
The rest of the cast are also phenomenal, part of what makes Scorsese’s films so exciting is his focus on side characters, even if some characters appear for about 5-10 minutes they are still a very integral part to the film. Killers Of The Flower Moon is no exception from Anna Brown (played by Cara Jade Myers) who gives such a powerful performance, Tommy Schulz who plays Blackie Thompson who gives such a fantastic performance especially during the last half of the film, Tantoo Cardinal who plays Lizzie Q, Mollie’s mother gives a very heartbreaking performance. Brendan Fraser has a few lines that he absolutely nails down in such a unexpected but raw way, Jesse Plemons who completely steals a lot of the major scenes he’s in, his performance really goes to show just how much he is one of the best working actors. His scenes with DiCaprio are some of the absolute highlights! There’s so many other performances that are fascinating, one thing these performances all have in common is they each bring something truly special to the film.
The writing is masterfully done, there’s so much carefully put together scenes that end up being so powerful and brutal as well. It’s a tough subject to really tackle but Scorsese does such a fascinating job he isn’t afraid to show the down right cruelty the Osage went through. Most of the violence is not shown which works in the movie’s favor, if anything it makes the whole story much more disturbing. You hear the desperation of the Osage people of wanting to find out who is doing this in the dialogue like it’s some of the film’s best moments as well as most heartbreaking.
I’m not going to spoil the ending since it’s absolutely something that really needs to be seen to get the full impact, but I will say that I was certainly not expecting it. Rather then ending with a traditional black screen that explains what happened to the people in the story, Scorsese goes for something completely different and it truly works. Mainly due to the fact that Ernest and William King Hale or any of the other people who helped them never faced any real justice, it’s a story that truly makes you angry and ending a heartbreaking film the way Scorsese did was just such an incredible note to end it on.
Overall Killers Of The Flower Moon is yet another masterful film from Martin Scorsese it’s a very important film that I highly recommend checking out as soon as you can!
Killers Of The Flower Moon is playing in theaters!
Following the brutal murder of a young real estate agent, a hardened detective attempts to uncover the truth in a case where nothing is as it seems, and, by doing so, dismantles the illusions in his own life.
Reptile is another Netflix crime thriller, not a whole lot to be said about Reptile but there’s actually parts here that did surprise me however Reptile slowly but surely starts to fall apart towards the end.
Benicio del Toro is definitely the standout here, he easily steals the show during the first half of the movie and then proceeds to keep the movie afloat during the last portion of the movie when it goes downhill. Alicia Silverstone is also quite solid here but she’s given very little to do unfortunately. The first hour is genuinely interesting, it’s intense and has a lot of atmosphere too it. It has the thrilling atmosphere that the movie is going for.
After the first hour that’s when things start to go downhill, the movie starts to become a nonsensical mess. With a plot that gets way too convoluted and ultimately leads into something very uninteresting, Justin Timberlake’s performance is also quite dull and is completely outshined by every other performance around him.
Reptile is probably going to appeal to casual crime thriller fans, but for fans of the genre this is going to be way too familiar.
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.
An intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon.
Heart Of Stone falls in the exact same category as Red Notice and The Gray Man, over expensive and uninspired Netflix original action movies. Sadly this is a trend that I don’t see dying anytime soon, honestly what could I say that’s really thought provoking about Heart Of Stone?
Gal Gadot isn’t good here, the acting all around falls completely flat and the writing gives very little information about any of these characters. Outside of a few action scenes that are decently done, this is a movie that is really trying it’s hardest to be Mission Impossible. Except where as Mission Impossible is entertaining, has a story to follow and even if the characters aren’t the most developed they are still fun to watch. In Heart Of Stone the characters are the most generic spy movie characters you could come up with, they lack any personality outside of being plot devices or exposition.
The running time is a whole other problem as well, it’s 2 hours and 2 minutes and the pacing is about as dreadful as you would expect, there’s nothing investing, nothing that could give the viewer some sort of interest and nothing really to say at all. It’s not helped by bland direction that has no style to it at all, making this another terrible Netflix action movie that lands in the sea of them.
Jerome Reviews... 