Megalopolis (2024) Film Review

A conflict between Cesar, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare.

Megalopolis is directed by Francis Ford Coppola (I really don’t think I need to name the films he’s directed).

Every once in a while you get a movie that is so baffling you can’t make sense of how it exists…Megalopolis is one of those movies, while I don’t flat out dislike it and I respect the ambition here but at the same time this is the very definition of a “what the hell was that?” moment. This is a very bizarre movie and not really in a good way.

The main positive here is the visuals and camerawork, if we were solely talking about visuals Megalopolis would be a 10/10 it’s undeniably beautiful and really does a good job of complementing the alternate 21st century New York City, it has this take on Roman history, the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC and the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Topics I’ve always been fascinated by and there were moments during the movie where the themes actually land, not in the best way mind you but it’s something. The visuals mostly do a lot of the talking when it comes to these moments as they speak to the viewer due to how grand and massive they are.

Unfortunately the rest of the movie is a complete and total mess in just about every single way. Adam Driver is fun at least delivering some unintentionally hilarious lines that I have to say made me burst out laughing, everyone else is either flat out terrible or very dull to the point where you almost forget they are in the movie. Which I don’t think is entirely their fault due to just how baffling the script really is, it’s a weird mishmash of being so bad it’s hilarious and just flat out being terrible writing.

The narrative is unfortunately very dull, it says so much yet says so little. It heavily relies on the viewer to just kind of accept the bizarre acting with a plot that is very thinly put together, the visuals can only do so much sure they can tell the story during certain moments but when you need good acting to really drive home the pain that’s just not present here at all.

Overall Megalopolis is baffling, there were promises of a good movie in certain areas of the movie but unfortunately it’s just a huge mess. The biggest sin that the movie commits is that it’s not even a largely hilarious bad movie, it’s one of those long and drawn out uninteresting terrible movies.

Megalopolis is available on all VOD platforms

4/10 D+

Rumours (2024) Film Review

Leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies gather for the annual G7 summit to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. They soon become spectacles of incompetence, contending with increasingly surreal obstacles as night falls in the misty woods and they realize they are suddenly alone

Rumours is directed by Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin all three of which have worked together over the years they have directed The Green Fog (2017). Guy Maddin has directed many films by himself such as Careful (1992), My Winnipeg (2007) and a few others.

Rumours is a very strange one, a giant brain ends up in the middle of the woods but the movie only gets stranger from there. While the movie does have a decent start the rest of the movie falls flat from very weak political satire mainly due to how the story ends up being structured towards the end.

The biggest highlight here is the acting, the performances are all pretty solid across the board especially Cate Blanchett who I do like seeing in absurd roles like this. The cast has solid chemistry with one another and there are moments where the dry humor shines particularly in the beginning of the movie, as I said before the first act is actually quite decent. We get a nice introduction to the characters and the setup is genuinely interesting, a bunch of world leaders discussing how to address a global crisis. It’s clearly a political satire on how incompetent world leaders can be which I think the movie does well at least at first.

As the movie goes on it begins to really get stale and the political satire begins to get squished into this mix of B-movie horror that ultimately doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie. The way the story is structured at this point becomes very repetitive and really does not do anything interesting with the political satire that it established at the beginning. It almost feels like the movie completely forgot about its own satire and decided to throw absurdist elements into the mix none of which really stick.

Overall I do like what Rumours is going for but the movie really suffers badly after the first act and never recovers after that. I do recommend taking a look at the movie even if I don’t think it’s great, I can see how someone can walk away liking this one.

Rumours is available on all VOD platforms.

5/10 C

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is another weak installment to the series.

Influencers looking to breathe new life into a Texas ghost town encounter Leatherface, the legendary killer who wears a mask of human skin.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series is one of the main slasher franchises that have struggled for years to have tons of good installments. Outside of the original film from 1974, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) (the first two I named being some of my favorite films of all time) this series has not been very good in years. I was hoping Texas Chainsaw (2022) would at least be somewhat of a step in the right direction, that was not the case unfortunately. The positives are by far the death scenes which are quite brutal combined with the gore, the two make some really gnarly scenes that are quite a lot of fun. Elsie Fisher is the other positive, she definitely tries her very hardest with a script that’s rubbish a lot of the time. Mark Burnham does an okay job as Leatherface but I can’t help but feel that a lot is missing from Burnham’s Leatherface it’s more than likely that his family weren’t pulling the strings this time around. Which I get the movie wanted to try something different in fact it could have been interesting to see Leatherface without his family but the execution is way too generic and really doesn’t do much. What destroys this movie is two major problems the first one being the writing, I was really hoping that the “your cancelled bro” was just one line and that was it….while there aren’t lines on the level of garbage like that one. A lot of it was begging for a rewrite, the characters are horribly written, the story is done in the most generic way possible and at times it really felt like one of the writers got their ideas from Twitter of all places. The other major problem is how this movie used the legacy character of the series Sally, in case you do not remember Sally was the lone survivor of the original, I don’t have a problem with legacy characters at all. Halloween and Scream have proven you can use legacy characters correctly. What I am against however is using a legacy character for the sake of using one, Sally does nothing to add to the movie. If you were to take her out of the movie not much would change at all. It really comes off like they had no idea what to exactly do with Sally so they stuck her in there and called it a day. Sally also does not have the same impact as Sidney Prescott or Laurie Strode have, the acting is also nothing to write home about. The acting is definitely not as bad as it was in some of the other movies but that’s really not saying much. it’s a shame because I do think there were ideas to be explored the movie just didn’t bother to and instead went with something way too familiar and nothing new at all. Overall Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is another terrible installment to the series, it’s definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be however there was so much wasted potential here.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is available on Netflix.

3/10 D-

Sundance Review: Emergency blends comedy and heavy subjects in a unique way.

Ready for a night of legendary partying, three college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an unexpected situation.

Emergency definitely surprised me, it’s from Carey Williams who had a movie at Sundance last year called R#J (which still has yet to get a release date) I thought it wasn’t a very good take on Romeo and Juliet and was a bit of a mess. However this is one hell of a improvement, The most successful thing about Emergency is the blend of comedy and serious moments or when the film tackles racism. One does not out do the other it’s such a perfect balance that really works for this film, as far as performances there’s a lot of great ones such as RJ Cyler, Donald Elise Watkins, Sebastian Chacon and Sabrina Carpenter (who gives a much different performance than she usually does.) they all do such a good job of really capturing the atmosphere of the film and dive pretty deep into their performances, the movie does have a lot of Superbad elements to it which works quite well here. Carey Williams takes those elements and makes something new with them, speaking of which Williams’s direction is truly fantastic. He actually makes the film quite raw at times which really surprises the viewer, there’s a lot of great characters bits throughout the film and ends up being a very entertaining yet quite intense ride. The final act is quite fantastic both when talking about the film’s themes and build up! Overall Emergency is quite fantastic, this is definitely something I recommend checking out when it releases!

Emergency will release May 20th in theaters and May 27th on Amazon Prime Video!

9/10 A

Sundance Review: TikTok, Boom doesn’t tell anything new about the popular app.

With TikTok crowned the world’s most downloaded app, these are the personal stories of a cultural phenomenon, told through an ensemble cast of Gen-Z natives, journalists and experts alike.

TikTok, Boom was by far the weakest documentary I watched at Sundance, basically this documentary covers all the controversies that TickTok has been in such as the whole situation with China, the Trump rally being taken over, Trump threatening to shut down TikTok, the BLM hashtag being silenced because of a “glitch” and so on. There is absolutely nothing new here at all that wasn’t on the news, sure the documentary does a decent job of talking about the controversies but if you go into this already knowing everything that has happened with TikTok you are not going to get anything out of this. The best thing I can say about it is at least it was sort of refreshing to hear the perspective of some other TikTokers who aren’t Addison Rae, Bella Poarch or some of the others. But that doesn’t make it an interesting documentary, I guess it ends on a nice message but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the movie being a slog to get through. You are better off just reading news articles about the controversies surrounding the app rather than sitting through the documentary.

TikTok, Boom currently has no release date.

3/10 D-

Sundance Review: Alice is a better Antebellum but that’s not saying much.

Alice, an enslaved person yearning for freedom on a Georgia plantation, escapes through the woods and stumbles through time into the year 1973. After she meets a disillusioned political activist, she confronts the lies that kept her enslaved.

To address the elephant in the room yes the plot is very similar to Antebellum (2020), with that said I found Alice to be a bit better than Antebellum but that is honestly not saying much at all. What makes Alice better is Keke Palmer’s performance, Keke Palmer is the type of actress that brings so much power to any role she’s given. Alice also does get better towards the end of the movie, with a actual pretty fun ending that wrapped up the movie nicely. However the movie wastes so much time during the first act and a majority of the second act being focused on unfunny jokes, very tiring elements that seem to repeat throughout the movie and very uneven writing that doesn’t blend well with the tone the movie is going for. The writing flaws in particular are what kill this movie, it was really baffling to hear some jokes being told (you know the obvious oh she’s not from this time period so she doesn’t know what this means or what this is), while the movie was trying to take itself seriously at the same time. I really don’t have anything else, it’s a not as bad Antebellum that’s just not interesting at all.

Alice will release March 18th in theaters.

3/10 D-

Sundance Review: Babysitter is a confused mess.

Like with Tribeca I’m going to review the films I saw at Sundance from worst to best (27 films).

Cédric (42) loses his job after a sexist joke that goes viral. Encouraged by his brother — a well-meaning nerd — he embarks on a so-called therapy to free him from sexism and underlying misogyny. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Nadine, exasperated by his narcissistic introspection, is herself in need of dreaming and adrenaline. The hiring of a mysterious and liberated babysitter, Amy (22), will help her get some fresh air and shake up the family balance.

Babysitter is the worst of the bunch by far, if you remember Sundance 2021 you might recall a movie called “Mother Schmuckers” (that still has not been given a wide release) well Babysitter has a very identical style to that movie. But Babysitter at least has more to say, it tries to tackle misogyny and toxic masculinity but it honestly does not work here. Babysitter does it in this way that is incredibly painful and obnoxious, I’m all for filmmakers to be incredibly weird with their films, however this movie was weird for the sake of being weird. I completely understand what it’s trying to go for but between the style, the look of the movie looking like it’s something out of a bubblegum commercial and the acting that was incredibly obnoxious. It turns into a complete and total mess that completely loses the viewer, the only reason I would even consider recommending this to someone is if they want something that must be seen to be believed.

Babysitter currently has no release date.

1/10 F

Scream (2022) is a fantastic addition that adds evolves the series!

Twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, Calif., a new killer dons the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.

It’s quite amazing to me how constantly good The Scream franchise is. The first film is a classic, the second is a very solid sequel, the third movie is actually not as bad as I remembered it’s a flawed but fun film. The fourth film is one of my favorite films from the 2010s. Scream (2022) is a love letter to the franchise in the best way possible, for starters there’s tons and tons of references from the past films that feel earned. It’s a huge celebration to the series, the acting is another constantly great part about this series. Where as some other slasher series struggle in the acting department, Scream has managed to give some great acting scenes and here is no exception. The highlight is Jenna Ortega who does a brilliant job in her role while yes as I said earlier Scream has always had good acting, but Ortega truly brought something new to the table and actually manages to outclass even the veterans of the series. The humor is absolutely phenomenal here, it tackles toxic fandoms and truly does a great job with it. It balances the comedy and serious moments of the film, which is something this series has always been really great at. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett who previously directed Ready Or Not truly do a fantastic job here, they both capture everything that people love about the series and turn it up to eleven. The kills are much more brutal this time around making for some pretty intense and thrilling kills, the rest of the cast is quite great here Melissa Barrera, Jack Quaid, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown and the three veterans Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette! It’s great seeing all of these characters together, lastly the film itself is just a huge blast. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had with a horror film in awhile and truly shows that this series always has a trick up it’s sleeve! Overall Scream is a fantastic film that would have made Wes Craven proud, it’s a huge tribute to the series that I can see evolving even more in the future!

Scream is playing in theaters!

10/10 A+

The Matrix Resurrections is a satisfying installment!

To find out if his reality is a physical or mental construct, Mr. Anderson, aka Neo, will have to choose to follow the white rabbit once more. If he’s learned anything, it’s that choice, while an illusion, is still the only way out of — or into — the Matrix. Neo already knows what he has to do, but what he doesn’t yet know is that the Matrix is stronger, more secure and far more dangerous than ever before.

I might not be the biggest Matrix fanatic out there, but when the trailer the newest installment in the series Matrix Resurrections I was pretty excited! Luckily it did not disappoint at all, right off the bat the film itself is very meta which presents several interesting ideas that work very well here. The cast all do a fantastic job seeing Keanu Reeves as Neo again is truly an amazing sight to see, the direction is very strong with a lot of dialogue that’s very bold. The character moments combined with the action scenes truly give this movie a lot of strength and makes it visually interesting. Speaking of which the visuals did not disappoint at all, what makes this one successful is that it trades in some action scenes for character moments that work to the film’s advantage. The film itself reads as a film where Lana Wachowski just doesn’t care what anyone thinks and makes a film, which I actually found to be quite great. It’s a very bold blockbuster that succeeds in a lot of categories! Overall The Matrix Resurrections is a fantastic film that I highly recommend giving a watch!

The Matrix Resurrections is in theaters and on HBO Max!

9/10 A

Being The Ricardos is another below average biopic.

In 1952, Hollywood power couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz face personal and professional obstacles that threaten their careers, their relationship, and their hit television show.

Being The Ricardos is what happens when a movie that is a very very below average gets constantly pushed to get spotlight. I was already dreading to watch Being The Ricardos after I heard how it’s a biopic that does nothing interesting, sadly that’s how I would sum up this movie. While Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem aren’t bad at all, they are not giving some of the best performances of the year that the movie and many sites are leading you to believe. Nicole Kidman was heavily miscast as Lucille Ball and it’s very easy to tell just by watching her performance for at least 10 minutes, the best performance was J.K. Simmons who gave this movie some sort of character. The writing felt like a huge drag, Sorkin’s writing this time around felt way too cluttered with so many ideas being thrown into the movie and proceeding to see what sticks. There’s a few interesting bits such as the camerawork which feels like it’s being filmed in a dressing room type of feel and it works actually pretty well considering the topic of the movie. What ultimately kills this movie is the 2 hours and 5 minute running time like a lot of biopics it over stays it’s welcome and goes on for far too long, it also starts to fall in typical biopic movie cliches and does absolutely nothing new. I really don’t know what else to say here, which is very concerning seeing how this might be a best picture nomination at the Oscars, in a year that I felt was a very strong year for film. The fact a below average biopic that has nothing to say and feels incredibly lifeless is being celebrated over Pig, The Green Knight, Nine Days and a few others is very sad. Give this one a skip.

Being The Ricardos is available on Amazon Prime Video!

4/10 D+