Tag: movies

400 Words on: Thunderbolts* (2025)

or, “$180 and Not $180-Million”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” is lustreless – not just in its “New Avengers” advertising, or its ragtag group of antiheroes: accrued from a roster that studio boss Kevin Feige himself, ironically, would call “homework.”

A lifetime ago, I made an uncouth script pitch for a cop movie to a university girlfriend, with its villain a serial rapist. She asked why it was so important to use rape as a plot device. “Because it sells!”

What I meant to say (retrospectively) was that, along with child peril & domestic abuse, rape elicits a powerful viewer response, which they want ‘avenged’ by the time the credits roll. That’s just one of the stupid things I said & did to send that relationship into free-fall, much like Marvel Studio’s stupid choices since “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019 – theirs’ being a lack of creative honour, and too much contextual juggling.

Irrespectively, Marvel productions still carry a professional-grade aesthetic, even if you don’t connect with them on a human level. But while there’s no literal rape in Thunderbolts*, it violated my other sensibilities.

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: Until Dawn (2025)

or, “Buying-In to the Confusion”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

3 out of 5

While my wife would call me a “gamer”, I don’t clock nearly as many hours as when I was a kid: life gets in the way. So when I do play, it’s almost exclusively ‘arcade-style’ games that I can disconnect from quickly – physically & mentally – and there must be a Pause button.

Though I can’t attest, “Until Dawn” seems regarded as one of the premier, Western-made, story-driven video games of the previous console generation: a group of disposable teens trying to survive a throng of wendigos, with a branching narrative based on player interaction. “Until Dawn: The Movie” swaps out the choose-your-own-adventure input for a “Groundhog Day” esque time-loop, with some other surprises meant to mimic the discovery a player would get from the game.

My surprise was palpable. Though lacking the original’s star-power (which featured Rami Malek & Hayden Panettiere), the movie’s twenty-something players do a convincing job and, tonically, all five are spotlighted equally throughout the script. The savagery is effective, including a show-stopping water tower sequence & a close-up of a crushed face that gave me “Irréversible” flashbacks. The dialogue isn’t bad either, often breaking the fourth-wall to cheekily address the core plot’s uninspiredness, or the suicidal inclinations of its protagonists to reset the loop & try again.

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: The Amateur (2025)

or, “Bringing the Chicago-Wednesday Vibes”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1.5 out of 5

In an effort to engage more with my fellow hobbyist writers, here’s a tip that’s been beaten over my head through the years: use a thesaurus. Getting started is as easy as searching “synonym for word” on Google, and sprinkling some five-dollar expressions like Meghan Sussex sprinkles edible flowers is a good thing.

Let’s tutorial this by deep-diving into a few curated terms that I would use to describe “Mr. Robot” & “Bohemian Rhapsody” star Rami Malek’s new film, “The Amateur”:

en’co’pre’si’tic

A made-up adjective from the medical diagnosis “encopresis”; or, as 2001’s “Rat Race” calls it, “prairie-dogging.” The Amateur made me feel encopresitic: it was engaging enough to have convinced me to hold it in, so as not to miss anything.

bull’shit

Oxford calls it “stupid or untrue talk… typically to be deceptive.” The last ten minutes of The Amateur are bullshit, and ruin it. There’s no twist; no full-circle; and no viewer catharsis, anticlimactically concluding with little more than a subdued conversation, and a “where are they now.” I held my poop in for that?

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: Tyler Perry’s Duplicity (2025)

or, “Waiting-Out Your Shift on the Toilet”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

“Life is like an onion. Peel it back one layer at a time. Sometimes you weep.”

– Carl Sandberg

Recently, I went to a boring live drama where the players hardly moved – not even to monologue. In media, you shouldn’t have this problem because editors exist, where theatre fills that gap with the ‘live’ experience.

Jack-of-all-trades Tyler Perry’s new Prime collaboration “Duplicity”, however, is so top-loaded with actors in closed rooms retching phlegmatic dialogue, that Perry seems overwhelmed by his own cinematic mediocrity, and reverts back to his theatrical training. This results in stagers either sitting or standing across from one-another completely stationary, endlessly overstating their positions. It’s the filmmaking equivalent of waiting-out the end of your shift on the toilet.

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: The Alto Knights (2025)

or, “Running Around the Woods with Shrimp Cocktails”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2.5 out of 5

There are few things more comforting to a cinephile than Robert De Niro calling someone an expletive & unloading an entire pistol clip into them.

It’s unwholesome, but this has been his playground for decades. The Alto Knights is an impassioned throwback to the Scorsese/De Niro collaborations of old, but lacks the oomph of those masterpieces.

GQ’s 2006 interview with Bob is required reading for anyone wanting an encapsulation of the stubborn actor. I’m not here to rag on De Niro: he’s had many legendary performances over his long career. But like any artist (*cough* senior), he’s set in his ways, rejects change, and becomes crotchety when he feels disrespected.

Now an octogenarian, Bob can’t just go back & retroactively change his De Niro-isms, no matter how much digital technology de-ages him (like in Scorsese’s The Irishman). Now forced into ‘grandpa’ roles that he may or may-not feel are beneath him (being a new dad at 81 certainly increases that obligation), audiences know exactly what to expect.

[cont’d]

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