I’m still working on a format for my planned trailer thought series, but there is one trailer I need to bring up now. This week we got a new Strangers movie, and there is something in that trailer that I think never should have been in it if my guess is correct. In this first part of a new trilogy, our new victims to the murder trio are played by Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez. At the very end of the trailer that is playing incessantly before nearly movie right now, Gutierrez’s character has at gunpoint a screaming Dollface. The are two important nuggets of wisdom to know here: 1) This new trilogy is a Prequel, and 2) Dollface dies in the second entry in the series, 2018’s Strangers Prey at Night. So, my theory is the person under that mask is Petsch’s character, and the real Dollface is trying to trick Gutierrez into killing his girlfriend. If I’m right, why add this possible spoiler in the trailer? I could be right on this, but I will never spoil for real on here and really ruin it for you. As of me writing this, I don’t know if I’m right or not. What I do know is this week’s movies I did watch were kind of all of the place. Let’s find what out what I mean by that. On to the reviews!
I’ve never been more happy to be wrong on my guess for the Screen Unseen. While I’m glad to avoid Back to Black after reading some terrible reviews, this wasn’t that great either to me. Most of my theater laughed hard throughout it, so it must just be a me thing. Illana Glazer isn’t annoying that often for me but in this one, I was done with her 10 minutes in. That isn’t good. There aren’t many parts of the plot you can’t see where it’s going as the movie moves on. Also, I wish that the movie either went with Glazer’s character’s story or Michelle Buteau’s character’s. Those two storylines are very different, and both in this doesn’t work very well for me. John Carroll Lynch, Hasan Minhaj, and Oliver Platt were all good in their supporting roles, but if the main character is annoying me to no end, it takes down the whole movie. That was the case here.
There are not very many original family films in theaters anymore it seems. So it was nice to see this finally. Most of this movie really worked for me. I liked the design of the imaginary characters. They were all just fun to be around in the movie, and the movie really comes alive when they enter the story. For me watching this story really seemed that everything was in Bea’s head as she worries about her Dad in the hospital for a heart surgery, after losing her mother to cancer at the beginning of the movie. I was really thinking of 2016’s A Monster Calls while watching most of the film. That one too was about a child imagining a fantasy to try and grapple with his mom’s terminal illness. I was real thinking all this up until the last 20 minutes when the twist that everyone saw coming actually happens. That twist broke the movie for me after thinking about it for awhile, and I will probably get into that more at a future date. In the end, this is a kids movie, and this certainly is a movie that kids will like. The imaginary characters do fun things that they will enjoy. It is also a movie that will annoy parents too much. It’s just a nice kind of film that we don’t get very often, and if it doesn’t make enough money at the Box Office, we might just be stuck with Toy Story and Shrek sequels until the planet explodes.
I’m not sure what I watched with this one. This one felt like a David Lynch kind of film, and not in a good way. Kind of like some of the middle episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return seven years ago. This has the loosest of plots that can barely carry a half hour episode, let alone over a 90 minute film. This one is about Justice Smith and Bridgette Lundy-Smith’s characters bonding over, and growing obsessed with a Buffy knockoff tv show. Lundy-Smith’s character disappears about halfway through the film, but returns claiming she lived in the actual TV show, and wants Smith to return there with her. Like I said, this is weird. Now, take those two sentences of plot, add in a lot of empty space and long musical performances that just won’t end, and you have this film. There were some neat, creepy moments toward the beginning of the film, but this quickly just became a race to the end of the film for me.
It isn’t hard to pick a winner for next week. It’s Furiosa’s time, and it should win by $70 million. We might see it crack a rare $100 million during the holiday weekend. The latest Garfield movie attempt should grab second since Furiosa doesn’t really work for kids.
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- The Garfield Movie
- IF
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
- The Strangers: Chapter 1
Tomorrow is another Screen Unseen, then it’s the two movies I have been looking forward to most this month: Hit Man and Furiosa. Before I see those two though is my second small tourney on Wednesday. That one will probably the only one of these new tournaments that only I will pick winners on. You will see why it’s only me this time in a few days.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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