Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) Film Review

Godzilla and the almighty Kong face a colossal threat hidden deep within the planet, challenging their very existence and the survival of the human race.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is directed by Adam Wingard who has previously directed Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Death Note (2017), Blair Witch (2016), The Guest (2014), You’re Next (2013) and a few others. The film servers as a sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), the fifth film in the Monsterverse and the 38th film in the overall Godzilla franchise.

I was kind of excited for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire especially after its predecessor Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) which was a genuinely fun movie that I would even go as far as to say that I really liked it. Unfortunately with The New Empire a lot of what made the previous movie exciting is completely absent here and is very noticeable drop in quality.

Rebecca Hall is pretty solid here once again and the addition of Dan Stevens who’s just having the time of his life here is always great. Stevens is some of the movie’s best moments mainly due to making the human character parts more fun and a bit more interesting. Where as I actually did not mind the human characters in the previous movie, it does feel like once again the human characters have become such a chore to watch, they were poorly written in Godzilla: King Of The Monsters (2019) and they are somehow even more poorly written here.

The action scenes with Godzilla and King Kong are fine enough, but part of the charm with the previous movie is we hadn’t seen Godzilla and Kong face off on the big screen in years. This movie doing the exact same sort of thing again loses the impact and hype that the first movie left the viewer. It doesn’t help that there really isn’t anything here that makes the movie itself standout. Sure the fights look really neat and there’s undeniably some cheer worthy moments, but is there really anything here that’s particularly memorable?

If anything the monsters interacting with each other Suko and King Kong for example is genuinely funny at times (the rest of the humor just does not work at all) and much more memorable than a lot of the action scenes. The New Empire really seems like they put together a half baked plot and threw some monsters on the screen and said “let’s hope for the best.” I wasn’t expecting an Oscar worthy script but seeing how the Monsterverse has shown in the past that there can be really great writing, it’s disappointing to see it get bogged down this low.

Having that said I did have fun with this movie for the most part, but this is definitely something I’m never going to go back to. If you just want some neat action scenes you might like this fine enough.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is available on all VOD platforms.

5/10 C

Turtles All The Way Down (2024) Film Review

When a 16-year-old struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder reconnects with her childhood crush, she faces the potential of finding love and happiness despite her mental condition.

Turtles All The Way Down is directed by Hannah Marks director of After Everything (2018), Mark, Mary & Some Other People (2021) and Don’t Make Me Go (2022).

When I saw that a new John Green film adaptation was being released I was very skeptical, even though I really liked The Fault In Our Stars (2014) and thought Paper Towns (2015) was fine enough. The era of John Green’s peak popularity is well passed now combined with the fact that this was releasing on MAX (previously known as HBO Max) really came off as some sort of cash grab….as I have said in the past I like to be proven wrong and I definitely was here.

Hannah Marks is a director who has really shown through her work that she can make the characters and audiences connect incredibly easily. With a story like Turtles All The Way Down that is incredibly necessary and she really does an excellent job of doing so. The performances are very grounded here especially the performance from Isabela Merced who truly gives such a touching performance combine that with some actually effective filmmaking that’s able to communicate what Merced’s character Aza is feeling and going through and you have yourself something pretty meaningful.

We follow Aza throughout the film and see what she is going through with her OCD, there’s some quite effective moments that easily connect the viewer with Aza something a lot of other films in the young adult adaption genre tend to struggle with. Isabela Merced is able to bring this grounded performance center stage and make each and every scene that much more believable, Cree who plays Daisy is also quite great here as well. She isn’t exactly the most developed character but her bond with Aza is completely buyable and well grounded.

Outside of a very underdeveloped subplot about a missing billionaire that really feels a bit tacked on, the film does a pretty solid job with its storytelling. It moves at a nice pace that keeps the story moving along and never feels rushed, the movie definitely could have went a bit deeper with Aza and her OCD but what’s presented is very sweet and absolutely works in the context of the story.

Turtles All The Way Down is available on MAX

8/10 B+

Humane (2024) Film Review

A global environmental collapse forces world leaders to take extreme measures to reduce Earth’s population.

Humane is directed by Caitlin Cronenberg which is her directorial debut.

Immediately what stood out to me about this movie is Caitlin Cronenberg in the director’s chair, we now have three Cronenberg’s directing which I’m not complaining at all. Humane is one of those movies where the ideas of the movie are better than the movie itself although for the most part I still think the movie is decent enough.

The performances are pretty solid, while the characters could have used a lot more work in the development department the performances especially from Jay Baruchel are a lot of fun. Baruchel and Emily Hampshire in particular work incredibly well together and actually kind of humorous at times as well. The rest of the cast aren’t anything too crazy but they match the dark humorous tone the movie is going for.

I will say that Caitlin Cronenberg did a solid job with the directing and worked with what she could with the very undercooked script from Michael Sparaga, the atmosphere is absolutely there and quite honestly reminds me of a mix of The Purge (2013) and Ready Or Not (2019) although I do think it actually accomplishes far more than The Purge (2013) especially when trying to get it’s message across (even though Humane doesn’t do that very well either).

The main problem here is the writing, there’s tons of ideas floating around in the movie such as classism, climate crisis and a few others. How the movie executes these ideas however leave so much more to be desired, the bare bone execution briefly explores these topics but never bothers to explore them in any meaningful way. Sure the movie ramps up towards the end and the gore is nice, there’s even hints at the movie potential diving deeper yet it never happens.

It’s frustrating because Humane isn’t a bad movie, despite the very lacking execution everything else is quite fun to watch. There’s some darkly hilarious moments that gave me a couple laughs, it just takes a bit to get going. I definitely think Caitlin Cronenberg has a lot of potential and is a filmmaker still keeping an eye out for in the future.

Humane is available on all VOD platforms.

6/10 C+

Arcadian (2024) Film Review

In the near future on a decimated Earth, Paul and his twin sons find tranquility by day but terror by night when ferocious creatures awaken and consume all living souls in their path. When Paul is nearly killed, the boys come up with a desperate plan for survival, using everything their father taught them to keep him alive.

Arcadian is directed by Benjamin Brewer who previously directed Beneath Contempt (2011) and Trust (2016).

You would think that a monster movie featuring Nicolas Cage who is the leading role would have a lot to talk about. But that’s oddly enough not the case here which is where a lot of the disappointment comes in.

The performances are not bad here Nicolas Cage gives a solid performance even if for a lot of the movie despite being in the leading role he is not really given a lot to do. When the movie does focus on his character Paul that’s where the movie shines, while Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins and Sadie Soverall give solid performances their characters are missing a ton of character development and result to your typical teenage characters.

The creature designs are at the very least fun and there are some thrilling moments to spice the movie up a bit, unfortunately the rest of the movie ends up amounting to yet another post apocalyptic movie that doesn’t do anything new for the genre. Which is a shame because I do like the premise and there are a lot of glances of a solid movie here it’s just surrounded by a lot undercooked writing and story elements.

Arcadian is available on all VOD platforms.

4/10 D+

Unfrosted (2024) Film Review

In 1963, Kellogg’s and Post, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast forever.

Unfrosted is directed by Jerry Seinfeld which is his directorial debut.

Films about brands have become sort of a trend over the last year or so. Last year alone we got Air, Tetris, BlackBerry, The Beanie Bubble and Flamin’ Hot. Of the bunch BlackBerry, Air and Tetris were quite excellent, they told the stories of these brands or products while also focused on being genuinely great films. Flamin’ Hot and The Beanie Bubble fell into the dull category the two weren’t anything atrocious but they were quite forgettable movies that get completely overshadowed when it comes to this conversation.

Unfrosted somehow ends up being worse than Flamin’ Hot and The Beanie Bubble, look I get what Jerry Seinfeld was trying to go for here (at least during the first half of the movie) he wanted to make some sort of parody about products of the 1960s and used Poptarts as the device to try and execute it. While that’s great and all there’s a ton of problems with this movie that it never recovers from.

First and foremost the performances are atrocious, Jerry Seinfeld is about what you expect his performance is the least of this movie’s worries. Amy Schumer gives an atrocious and unfunny performance that really comes off as try hard, Melissa McCarthy is sadly not much better who is stuck with some of the worst written lines in movie so far this year. There is absolutely no chemistry between Seinfeld, McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan or anyone else in the movie. It really just seems like they randomly selected some actors to put in certain scenes and didn’t bother to figure out chemistry, dialogue or interest.

Honestly the best of the cast has to be Bill Burr as JFK (I’m not joking) and Hugh Grant who plays Tony The Tiger (again I’m not joking), minor spoilers ahead but there’s one scene in this movie that I truly hate myself for laughing at. I say this because it’s incredibly dumb and practically comes right out of nowhere (sure there’s some development but nowhere near enough to say that the movie was building up to it) the scene in question is a January 6th 2021 parody of Kelloggs characters such as Snap, Crackle, Pop, the Cornflakes bird, Tucan Sam and a few others who are led by Tony The Tiger to raid Kelloggs due to being afraid of being replaced by Pop-Tarts. The scene is a recreation of January 6th from the person who fell to the horned hat costume it’s all there and it’s truly baffling to watch. Also fun fact this is the first movie to show a satire of January 6th not that it matters just worth pointing out.

The rest of the movie is a complete and total mess of unfunny jokes, piss poor comedic timing and is pretty much like an unfunny SNL skit. As I briefly said earlier while I could understand what Seinfeld was going for during the first bit of the movie, it quickly becomes a gigantic random humor fest of ideas that are just scattered around. It’s at the point of “what the hell is going on here? What am I watching?” territory and not the good kind…think of Movie 43 (2013) that’s how nonsensical it gets and it stays that way for the rest of the movie.

I’m not entirely sure what the viewer was supposed to take away from this movie, it certainly wasn’t the history of Pop-Tarts because even that is told incredibly poorly, the attempt of trying to tell it in a absurdist way is fine enough but the movie forgets to be funny, clever or at least make some sense.

Overall Unfrosted is an endurance test of some of the worst acting, unfunny gags and terrible writing from a movie so far this year. I would only recommend this movie if you truly want to see how idiotic and horrible this movie really gets.

Unfrosted is available on Netflix.

Disgrace To Cinema F

Founders Day (2024) Film Review

A series of ominous murders rocks a small town just days before a heated mayoral election. As accusations fly and the threat of a masked killer darkens every corner, residents must race against time to uncover the truth.

Founders Day is directed by Erik Bloomquist director of She Came From The Woods (2022), Ten Minutes to Midnight (2020), Intermedium (2023) and a few others.

Founders Day is one of those movies where I respect the effort put into it more than the quality of the movie, they did what they could with a low budget and at times there’s even glimpses of a decent slasher movie here. But more often than not it’s a mess.

Nobody in the cast gives a really good performance, at best there are moments where the cast have some fun which is mainly when Bloomquist asks for different notes in certain scenes. The kills are at least fun, I don’t think they are as gnarly as some people made them out to be. But they get the job done and are easily the strongest part about this movie.

What kills Founders Day is the script, the reveal for the killer is completely idiotic, the lack of motivation is felt throughout the movie and essentially becomes a killer running around killing teens with some local politics thrown into the mix. It doesn’t end up meshing very well at all and really needed a whole lot more time in the oven.

Founders Day is available on all VOD platforms.

2/10 F

Arthur The King (2024) Film Review

Desperate for one last chance to win, Michael Light convinces a sponsor to back him and a team of athletes for the Adventure Racing World Championship in the Dominican Republic. As the team gets pushed to the outer limits of endurance, a dog named Arthur comes along for the ride, redefining what victory, loyalty and friendship truly means.

Arthur The King is directed by Simon Cellan Jones director of Some Voices (2000), The One and Only (2002) and The Family Plan (2023)

I really don’t have a whole lot to say here about Arthur The King it’s another one of those feel good dog movies that are based on a true story. Although Arthur himself takes awhile to enter the movie. There’s some perfectly serviceable performances, the bond between Michael Light (played by Mark Wahlberg) and Arthur is charming enough and gets the point across quickly. Simu Liu isn’t terrible here (just not really much going on with his performance) and Juliet Rylance is decent enough.

As I said Arthur doesn’t show up until about halfway through the movie, which means we are mostly stuck with Mark Wahlberg being incredibly uninteresting. However once Arthur does enter the picture the movie does get better and the final act although somewhat predictable (even if you did not know the true story you could very easily predict what happens) is still very touching.

There was a genuine amount of heart put into this when it comes to capturing the spirit of the true story, the direction is fine enough and gets the job done. Honestly the movie’s worst offense is being forgettable, it’s a very middle of the road dog movie that is admittedly charming but not something I would ever go back to.

Arthur The King is available on all VOD Platforms.

5/10 C

Mother Of The Bride (2024) Film Review

Stunned by her daughter’s bombshell wedding announcement, Lana soon faces another shock: the groom’s father is the man who broke her heart years ago.

Mother Of The Bride is directed by Mark Waters the director of Mean Girls (2004), Freaky Friday (2003), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2007), Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011), Vampire Academy (2014), Bad Santa 2 (2016), Magic Camp (2020), He’s All That (2021) and a few others.

Well here we go again for the fiftieth time so far this year…another horrendous Netflix original that doesn’t even try. Think of the most cliched romantic comedy movie you can and now add a huge lack of charm, humor, interest and fun. You get Mother Of The Bride a complete and total mess of a movie that I’m not even quite sure if the movie itself knows what it’s trying to do.

The only kind of decent part here is seeing Miranda Cosgrove in another role, it’s too bad she’s stuck with such a terrible script that does very little for the viewer to actually care about the characters or the story being told here. The script attempts to try and bring in this examination on social media culture, which might have worked if this was any other movie. There’s also a few characters here who are nothing more but to serve as narrative devices mainly Scott (played by Wilson Cruz) and Clay (played by Michael McDonald) a gay couple. Almost every single line that comes from the two is exposition, it starts to become slightly comical at one point (not in a good way).

Acting wise the performances are fine enough, but there’s nothing here that really grabs you at all. Which again is due to the script and how much load of bunk there is in it. None of the characters are given any meaningful arcs or interesting personalities, the story itself is about as predictable as a lot of these other Netflix romantic comedies and the direction from Waters much like his last several movies lack so much passion that he once had.

Mother Of The Bride is available on Netflix.

1/10 F

Prom Dates (2024) Film Review

Jess and Hannah, at 13 years old, made a pact to have the perfect prom. However, 24 hours before the big event, everything is ruined when they break-up with their dates. Now they have one night to find new dates and make the fantasy comes true.

Prom Dates is directed by Kim O. Nguyen which is her directorial debut.

Prom Dates is basically if you took Booksmart (2019) and watered it down quite a bit, although there’s some genuine attempts to differentiate itself the movie can’t seem to avoid the shadow of Booksmart (2019).

With that said not everything is terrible here, the performances from Julia Lester and Antonia Gentry are solid enough to deliver some funny lines. The two work well together and do have some comedic timing that is worth praise, the friendship of the two is genuinely touching at times even if some of the development is lacking you can still buy their friendship.

Unfortunately the heavy reliance on cliched situations really stops this movie in it’s tracks, a lot of the resolutions to the conflicts is very by the numbers and quite predictable. Which is unfortunate because the movie does talk about complexities of real world friendships and those moments in particular are very intriguing, how the movie goes about solving the resolutions is incredibly frustrating and takes a lot away from the story that was being told.

Prom Dates is available on Hulu.

4/10 D+

Challengers (2024) Film Review

Tashi, a tennis player turned coach, has transformed her husband from a mediocre player into a world-famous grand slam champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she makes him play a challenger event — close to the lowest level of tournament on the pro tour. Tensions soon run high when he finds himself standing across the net from the once-promising, now burnt-out Patrick, his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.

Challengers is directed by Luca Guadagnino director of A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Suspiria (2018), Bones and All (2022) and a few others.

One thing that I truly love in film is when you see a film you knew was going to be really good and it ends up surpassing your expectations by a lot. That’s the case with Challengers. Luca Guadagnino takes the sport of tennis and what seems like a straightforward premise and flips it on it’s head. Thrilling, captivating and erotic are just some of the words to describe the film.

Starting with performances since Challengers is a very performance heavy as well as a character heavy film. Zendaya gives a career best performance, her performance as Tashi Duncan is truly exciting to watch and truly captures the film’s atmosphere. Just by looking into the eyes of Tashi the viewer is able to get a good idea of her, Zendaya truly masters the subtle and careful character moments with body language and some speech patterns that are truly investing. Her performance is one of the best so far this year and quite honestly one of the most fun performances of the year as well.

Similarly Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist are both brilliant as well, it’s some of the best pairing I’ve seen in a film so far this year. Each and every time the two share a screen together they have this natural connection that makes the scene in question all the more interesting. The dialogue the two share to each other is raw and really brings the viewer into the film’s world. What’s great is we get a ton of information about the two Art Donaldson (played by Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (played by Josh O’Connor) have a lot of their information told through some flashbacks which the film does a excellent job of jumping back and forth. It also helps build the film’s world as well.

Together all three have this chemistry that is just oozing with style and powerful development that is shown throughout the film, the more we learn about each of the three the more you get put into the film. It’s truly remarkable how natural and easily the script by Justin Kuritzkes brings in the viewer to a wild ride.

One thing that is often brought up in a ton of reviews is the score, which let me tell you right now it’s for a good reason. I was not expecting the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to take this electronic direction that it did. Tennis is the last sport you would think of to associate with electronic music and yet it fits perfectly, especially combined with the cinematography and many camera angles during the tennis matches it creates some quite electrifying and stylized moments that really make the film standout.

I do not want to say much else because Challengers is definitely a film you have to experience for yourself, it’s a truly brilliant film that I can’t recommend enough!

Challengers is available in theaters.

10/10 A+