Sweetheart's Script Can't Quite Balance Monster Mayhem With Human Drama

We get about five or six Blumhouse Productions movies a year that get major theatrical releases, the likes of Get Out, The Purge and Halloween (2018) but what about the rest of Blumhouse's annual output? The Jason Blum-run production outfit actually releases more films annually than you might realize, they just end up getting way less prolific direct-to-video bows after brief film festival runs. Such a fate is the one seen by their 2019 feature Sweetheart, a new directorial effort hailing from J.D. Dillard, the filmmaker behind the 2017 film Sleight. After debuting at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, Sweetheart basically vanished before getting dropped on digital retailers in October (currently, there is no physical home video release for the title).

Pedro Almodovar Rips From His Past To Create Modern-Day Gem Pain and Glory

The past tends to echo well into the future in ways we sometimes can't even comprehend as well as in ways that can prove detrimental to the present. Acclaimed writer/director Pedro Almodovar contemplates this matter thoroughly through his newest movie Pain and Glory. The lead character of this production, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), is clearly a stand-in for Almodovar to a degree (how accurate he is to the actual man is something I cannot state confidently) given that he's, like Almodovar, a middle-aged filmmaker of a notable stature who attended a religious school as a child, was impacted heavily by cinema at a young age and spent his formative adult years in Madrid, Spain. 

Jojo Rabbit Takes A Bonkers Premise And Makes Something Quite Special With It

Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), the lead character of Jojo Rabbit, is a ten-year-old boy like many others. He has an imaginary friend, he has a passion for the outdoors and he loves his Mom, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), even if he sometimes struggles to express that. But unlike many ten-year-old boys, Jojo is a Gentile growing up in Nazi Germany and he's as passionate about everything related to Nazism as modern-day ten-year-olds are with Magic: The Gathering. His ardent dedication to all things Nazi is reflected in his imaginary friend, his own version of Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi). However, Jojo's world gets turned upside down when he learns that his Mom has taken in a Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) and is hiding her from the Gestapo in a secret compartment in their house.

The Current War Doesn't Shock But It Does Alright Nonetheless

We take electricity for granted nowadays since it's used to power everything, including the computer I'm typing this review up on! But there was a time just a bit over a century ago where electricity was a new concept and a few men were in control of its future. Two of these men, Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), are the central focus of The Current War, which chronicles their multi-year feud over who gets to go down in history as the person that lit up America. Edison's the one with the brains but also the one who can't seem to interact with a person without starting up a fight whereas Westinghouse is the soft-spoken man with a head for business but not much in the way of a head for science.

Prepare For Cinematic Bliss With Parasite

Please forgive the vagueness of certain parts of this review of Parasite, as you're bound to have heard by now, this is a movie that's best to go into with little in the way of expectations on what exactly you're getting into. Some movies merely use empty twists as a substitute for actual storytelling and then there are films like Parasite that are a master course in how to do twisty-turny storytelling right. Every inch of this intricately put-together production has a greater purpose and that includes the brilliantly executed revelations that upend the plot. Far be it from me to spoil such shocking moments so let's instead spend this review combing over what a miraculous creation Parasite is in as spoiler-free of terms as possible.

Zombieland: Double Tap Is Way Too Familiar For Its Own Good

Comedy sequels have got to be one of the most treacherous subgenres out there, the track record for these films is just not great at all. Exceptions like 22 Jump Street do exist, but more often than not, comedy sequels are just reheated leftovers of jokes that just aren't as funny the second go-around. Even getting the entire Anchorman crew back together resulted in a middling Anchorman 2 rather than a laugh riot. Zombieland: Double Tap is the newest entry into the world of comedy sequels, and as far as these types of movies go, it's actually one of the better comedy sequels out there. However, that's not exactly the highest bar to clear and when considering it as just a movie on its own terms, Zombieland: Double Tap can't help but feel more than a touch underwhelming.

Getting An Actual Injury Is More Pleasant Than Watching Wounds

Even the most cell phone adverse people on the planet would never be able to imagine the horrors the cell phone at the heart of Wounds is capable of. That phone is discovered by bartender Will (Arnie Hammer) after a skirmish at the tavern he works at. At first, he simply expects to drop it off with the police or the bar's owner so that its owner can get it back pronto. However, an unusual text sent to the phone leads Will to dig around in the device and discover a series of gruesome photos. He's also being followed around by a black car that's intent on making sure he doesn't speak to the authorities on this matter. Oh no! Will's whole life is being turned upside down by malevolent forces! Worse, he's stuck in the movie Wounds!

Gemini Man Delivers Double The Will Smith's But Very Little In The Way of Excitement

Notes: Films are usually shot with cameras that capture images at 24 frames per second (fps). Gemini Man has been shot in 120 frames per second and is screening in digital 3D showings presenting it in 48 frames per second. This review covers a 3D 48 fps screening.

With Gemini Man, you'll be seeing double with four, er, two Will Smith's. How did this happen? Well, it all started when Henry Brogan (Will Smith), a cool as a cucumber experienced assassin, decides to retire. Per Brogan, his job is giving him moral heebie-jeebies, he can't sleep or even look at a mirror. Time to hang up the gun and maybe engage in a research project on what exactly Collateral Beauty really is. But suddenly, armed assassins break into his house one night to try and kill Brogan and Dani Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the latter person being a lady previously tasked with tracking Brogran in his retirement. The people Brogan worked for now see this retired-spy as a loose end in need of getting cut and the person tasked with taking him out is a 23-year-old clone of Brogan named Junior.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie Provides A Fantastic Epilogue To The Jesse Pinkman Saga

SPOILERS FOR BREAKING BAD FOLLOW

Nothing else has made me curl up my toes and instill a pit in my stomach in response to dread like Breaking Bad did. That show constantly had me on the edge of my seat watching these characters spiral into wholly new people over the course of multiple seasons. Unlike too many other grisly TV shows (looking at you Ozark), everything on Breaking Bad had a purpose, every action had a consequence, there were constant ripple effects attached to everything. That's where so much of its suspense came from, the constantly present notion that nothing in a single episode was going to waste. Breaking Bad was all about every action has an equal or opposite reaction and that led to a one-of-a-kind sense of unease that I got the privilege of experiencing once again with El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.

Little Monsters Is Plagued By Big Storytelling Issues

For the first ten minutes or so, Little Monsters proves to be outright excruciating, the cinematic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. This is the part of the story introducing the viewer to the protagonist of Little Monsters, an aspiring musician named Dave (Alexander England). Dave is a man-child protagonist whose foul-mouthed and selfish ways make the average Adam Sandler comedy protagonist look like a model citizen. Obviously designed to be intentionally unlikable, writer/director Abe Forsythe does too good of a job here, Dave is downright repellent. Even in the context of a dark comedy, why should I want to spend time with this guy? Who cares? One couldn't blame you for turning off the TV just a few minutes into his ribald man-child antics.

We Live In A Society And Joker Lives In An Only Occasionally Successful Movie

So many people come and go in our lives every day, it's easy to forget that other human beings have had entire lives up to the point we meet them (maybe that's just the Walgreen's cashier in me talking).  Everybody's got a story for how they got to their current point in their lives, even wanna be stand-up comics like Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). Residing in Gotham City with his mother and working as a clown-for-hire, Arthur struggles through life due to his mental illness that includes a handicap that sends him into sudden fits of uncontrollable laughter. Bad luck follows Fleck wherever he goes as he searches for purpose in his life and a reliable father-figure to serve as a substitute for the dad he never knew.

North Texas Film Festival 2019: Dolemite May Be Bad But Dolemite Is My Name Is Great

The era of Blaxploitation cinema brought out a number of iconic fictional figures ranging from Shaft and Sweetback. Among that group is Dolemite, who wasn't always a figure of the silver screen. The figure of Dolemite started out as a live comedy personality crafted by Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy). Moore was a record store employee on the lookout for his big breakthrough all sorts of creative avenues, all of them leading down to dead end's. Then, he got a brilliant idea. He took slave jokes told by local homeless men, polished and refined them and would proceed to tell them to crowds as a new kind of stand-up comedy routine through a boisterous and fully confident fictional personality entitled Dolemite.