Abominable
Abominable (not to be confused with last year’s animated film) is a film that I know I’m going to watch more than once, but that isn’t to say it’s good.
2020
Phoenix, Oregon
Phoenix, Oregon is a vast improvement on the Grown Ups formula. Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2 were fuelled by seemingly harmless ideas of nostalgia and friendships, but the movies were made disingenuously by the egos of their cast. Phoenix, Oregon, on the other hand, isn’t wired to be smug. Instead of the story solely rooting itself in the past and being self-congratulatory, memories are used as reference points to fuel aspirations to make more memories.
She’s Allergic to Cats
She’s Allergic to Cats is an absolute anomaly. Incorporating elements of American independent cinema, Jon Moritsugu-style filmmaking and even early video art, music video director Michael Reich has created something that is, at once, missing a cohesive audience and the sort of work that we need right now.
Blush
Wendi McLendon-Covey is experiencing a really unique resurgence as an actor. After establishing herself as a quick-witted commedienne on Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, a longstanding role on ABC’s The Goldbergs has propelled her towards more endearing roles. While it’s a different change in pace for McLendon-Covey’s repertoire, she still knows how to bring the laughs. Blush is another career tilt for the actor but, this time, the tone is much darker and stranger than anyone…
Love Wedding Repeat
Netflix’s latest romantic comedy Love Wedding Repeat is about the unpredictable path of fate. How one altered detail can completely rewrite the future – it’s possible at-home viewers will be reminded of 2004’s The Butterfly Effect. Making a parallel connection with the present, fate seems to be cutting me a break. Love Wedding Repeat has found its way to me after I survived Netflix’s Coffee & Kareem. Maybe if I didn’t watch that horrendous comedy, I…
We Summon the Darkness
The year is 1988. Floods of teenagers flock to a Midwestern heavy metal concert despite controversies sparked by unidentified Satanists on a murder spree and the region’s fearmongering Bible Belt. A trio of rowdy friends (Alexandra Daddario, Maddie Hasson, Amy Forsyth) have a run-in with a group of aspiring metal musicians (Keean Johnson, Logan Miller, Austin Swift). Both parties have a rocky start with each other, but the head-banging camaraderie in the air is enough…
Rootwood
What is the point of making a found footage film when it is surrounded by a traditional narrative style? Not like Cannibal Holocaust, where the traditional style was used as a framing device to present the found footage, but rather a traditional narrative that occasionally cuts to a shot from the point-of-view of a camera with a red record signal in the corner. With Marcel Walz’s Rootwood, there isn’t even a documentary concept surrounding the whole thing, as…
Cave Rescue
Following in the same footsteps as Clint Eastwood’s maligned biopic The 15:17 to Paris, Tom Waller’s Cave Rescue is a dramatic thriller about the 2018 real-life mission to save a team of young Thai soccer players. Like Eastwood’s movie, it stars some of the actual people who were key players in the recovery. There isn’t much build up to the incident in Cave Rescue, which separates it from The 15:17 to Paris. Waller’s movie is…
Coffee & Kareem
Director Michael Dowse comes from an eclectic filmography, but he’s becoming the go-to guy for mainstream fare. He recently brought audiences Stuber, which was an efficient buddy comedy but aggressively ordinary. But, following up a bland movie with something so unfunny and foul will make you value mediocrity. That’s *exactly* what happens with Dowse’s Netflix Original Coffee & Kareem, one of the worst movies of the year.
It Started As a Joke
By: Trevor Chartrand It Started as a Joke is an emotionally charged documentary that will sort-of sneak up on you. It’s so sneaky in fact, that the film will try to convince you that you’re watching ‘just another Netflix-style comedy special’ – until you’re suddenly not. You’ll let your guard down, laughing with the featured comedians, chuckling at their on and off stage antics. It’s funny, it’s goofy, and it’s a great time… and then…