This week turned into very busy week, so no time to waste. On to the reviews!
This was really not a pleasant film to sit through. The premise is very simple at first glance: a woman shrouded in black shows up in the yard of a family who just went through a great tragedy. That tragedy was the passing of the Father of the family. That leaves just Ramona (played by Danielle Deadwyler) and her two children to take care of a large farmhouse. Adding to their issues is that Ramona suffered a bad leg injury in the car crash the killed her husband. You can already tell that the relationship between Ramona and her children is not great. Ramona is a mother that is checked out at most points, and her teenage son comes across like he hates her at stretches. Once we learn what the woman in the yard is, the lack of any happiness in the beginning stretch where the story is being setup makes the entire affair a bleak one, as the story gets very dark in the final third. The ending is one that will be abrasive to many and kind of gives a dangerous message. Suicide is an important conversation to have, and this film tries to have it, but it makes for a depressing film in total. This isn’t the scary interesting film that trailer wants you to think it is. It really is a bleak character drama that has a couple jump scares. Any one coming into this for a fun time will be wrong in a big way.
As I walked right out of the screening for Woman in the Yard, and right into this one, to say the mood was completely different would be an understatement. In Death of a Unicorn, a father and daughter (played by Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega) hit a unicorn with their car on the way to a summit with his Pharmaceutical boss and his family (Richard E. Grant, Tea Leoni, and Will Poulter). After is is discovered that the unicorn can cure health issues, notably cancer, the pharma crew want to exploit the unicorn. This ends up being a poor decision when the unicorn’s parents come for it. What follows is a lot of graphic violence that is played for laughs as this film rightly is not taking itself seriously. Nobody is going to feel smarter when this film ends, but it was an enjoyable time. The MVP of the film for me was Anthony Carrigan’s Griff, the butler of the family. His dry sense of humor through the film was hilarious whenever he popped up. What really goes against the film is that there isn’t much of a plot. I’m not sure it needed much of one, but if the film is sitting at 2 hours, there needed to be more of a set path. At least more than Ortega continually telling everyone the same thing over and over. I wanted this better than it ended up to be, but I still had fun with it.
I am a proud Michigander, so all the references to Zehnder’s and Zingerman’s were fun to catch, but this film just felt like it was spinning it’s wheels for most of the run time. Nicole Kidman plays Nancy, a housewife living in Holland, MI, who is married to an optometrist names Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), and has one son named Harry. Due to Fred going to frequent out-of-town conferences, Nancy starts to think he is hiding something. With the help of her “close friend” Dave (Gael Garcia Bernal), she tries to uncover what she thinks is a big reveal. Through most of the film, it plays out like Nancy is just someone who worries about things to a high degree (like me unfortunately sometimes), but once the final third kicks in, things change. That is where I think this film show it’s biggest flaw. For there to be anything wrong with Fred kind of makes her paranoia real, and that got tiring as the film progressed. Nobody is bad in this, but nobody is great either. Everyone is kind of at a daytime soap opera level, and that is fine for an hour or so, but not for the runtime this film had.
I will preface what you are about to read with a relevant thing about me: I have never played Minecraft. Not once. The extent of me playing the game is playing as Steve in Super Smash Bros. That isn’t to say I don’t know anything about the game. It is the best-selling video game of all time, so it is hard to avoid it in it’s over 10 years of existence. It was inevitable that there would be a movie based on the game, and now that we have one, it is ok. Video Game movies are historically bad, but recently with Super Mario and Sonic, we have gotten some good ones. I think this one belongs in that conversation, but it isn’t as good as the plumber or hedgehog. This is a movie that doesn’t dumb things down for the audience, and I know I missed some references to the game, but those weren’t lost on others in my screening. The cast is fine here, but this is the Jack Black show. He is dialed up to 11 with his mannerisms, and that might tire some adults watching the movie. This movie isn’t for them though. There were some flaws in here that I don’t understand. Why did we need a B-story of Jennifer Coolidge finding love with a Villager who escaped into the real world? Every time she appeared on screen, the movie screeched to a halt. With this movie probably on a path to make a huge amount of money, a sequel is most likely coming. It will be very interesting to see how they go on from this one. Minecraft doesn’t seem to have the stories that Mario and Sonic have, so creativity is crucial. That isn’t a bad thing though.
I’m not sure why I rented this on Amazon. I heard from others that this would be a very interesting film, but this turned out for me to be one of the weakest A24 films I have seen. There just isn’t much to say about this one. We follow Parthenope, played by Celeste Dalla Porta, as she progresses through her life being the object of desire for every man she meets. This also creepily applies to her brother. We she she is a well regarded researcher, but this a plot point that we don’t go into very much past the surface. We just hear how great she is. That is really the issue I had with this. The film just continually showcases her beauty, but we barely get anything for what her character believes. It is just a vapid exercise that is way too long of a film.
The real question for me is how well does Sinners perform. A R rated vampire film opening on Easter weekend is an interesting puzzle. I am positive Minecraft will continue to rule the box office, but can Sinners get the runner-up spot?
- A Minecraft Movie
- Sinner
- The Chosen: Last Supper
- Drop
- The Amatuer
This upcoming week, I finally see the two films with trailers that i have grown to hate with my entire being as they play before every movie I see. Also, another film I saw this past week will see it’s review included in next week’s post. I didn’t need this week’s to include 6 reviews.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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