Full schedule these next two weeks, but before we get to business, a quick moment for me to get something off my mind. We are now in the heart of October, and if there is one genre that should be above them all this time of year, it is horror. On television, that is pretty clear. However, you are forgiven if you forgot what month it was. This year, the only wide horror releases (and I am being lenient on the level of horror) are Other Mommy, Verity, Crawlers, Clayface, and Christmas with the Kringles. Not exactly a lot of real, horror options with maybe 2 of the bunch. Now appearing in theaters is the trailer for Mike Flanagan’s new Exorcist film. That film looks pretty promising, but it is coming out in March of next year. I don’t doubt its chances at being successful, but wouldn’t it seem to play better in October? I’m not stupid. The reason these films are in theaters so early is so they will stream by the spooky season. See 2023’s Haunted Mansion (Please, see it. Someone has to). That film had a July 15th release date and never had a chance. However, the House of Mouse knew it would show up on Disney+ in time for Halloween where it belongs, which was October 4th. Why are we sacrificing theatrical runs in weird times of the year just so things will look good for people at home months ahead. It has been shown with Obsession and Backrooms that the theatrical experience is still viable. I’d tell you want things look like next October, but as of now there are only 3 films on the schedule: The Great Beyond, The Haunting of Hotel Transylvania, and The Mummy: Book of the Dead. It is just a shame that we can’t have that type of experience in October consistently anymore. On to the (7!) reviews!
A mysterious young man from a New York publisher is sent to Switzerland to persuade the renowned writer Patricia Highsmith to write one final installment of the Ripley anthology.
This film was adapted from the 2014 play Switzerland by Joanna Murray-Smith. We only really are with three characters here between Helen Mirren’s Patricia (a fictionalized version of the author of the Tom Ripley series), Alden Ehrenreich’s Edward, and Olivia Cooke’s Clementine. Of those three, it’s really Ehrenreich doing the most work and comes off the best for me here. He has to play two roles: the Publisher from New York, and Tom Ripley in the story he and Patricia are creating in her supposed final Ripley novel the publishers desperately want from her. This is a pretty good little thriller, but it doesn’t really live up to the other real Ripley entries. I also thought how the film ended was kind of a let down.
Desperate to pay their son’s ransom, a mayoral candidate and his wife resort to extreme measures, revealing dark secrets they never intended to bring to light.
There was one thought that stuck in my mind as this film was moving along: this is just another adaptation of 1963’s High and Low. That wouldn’t matter as much to me if we didn’t just get one of these last year from Spike Lee with Highest 2 Lowest. Rather than a music mogul or shoe businessman, Ben Affleck plays a LA mayoral candidate who finds himself dealing with his son being kidnapped. I won’t go into that further here, but if you saw either of those adaptations I brought up earlier, you already know. I didn’t really get anything out of Kerry Washington’s character, and almost less than that in Steven Yeun’s political advisor. This just didn’t have much more than Highest 2 Lowest. Interestingly, I don’t see anywhere where this was an adaptation. Without that, it looks like a lazy copy that really isn’t interesting enough to stand on its own.
Street Fighters Ryu and Ken reunite when Chun-Li recruits them for the World Warrior Tournament. As they face a hidden conspiracy, they must confront each other and their past-or face destruction.
I’m not going to come out here and say this was a great film. It wasn’t. What it is though is a fun film that is better than any other entry in this series. That isn’t a high bar though. Sometimes we just need a dumb action movie to entertain us. The storyline is not that complex of one, so the story isn’t bogged down by it. The cast too for this is solid. Noah Centimo and Andrew Koji are good as Ken and Ryu, but it is Callina Liang that really works as Chun-Li. I did get a chuckle as a WWE fan when Roman Reigns showed up as Akuma as the final boss (1’s to the sky!). This film will not convert the people that were already not interested, but there are enough good moments in this film to make this a fun watch.
Follows a scuba diver who, while looking for his father’s remains, is swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale and has just one hour to get out before his oxygen runs out.
I know people that can’t even watch the trailer for this film. I don’t blame them. Going in, I was preparing for a whole film of that. What this film does is cut away from the happenings in the whale to show flashbacks of the not so great relationship between Austin Abrams’s Jay, and his father Mitt, played by Josh Brolin. Off the top here, Abrams is fantastic in this. Between this and Resident Evil, it’s been quite the last month for him. What he shows here is a different kind of panic than he showed in Evil. In this, he is faced with a different seemingly hopeless situation, and he plays this almost like a silent film at parts. It is really effective, but what yanks you out of the anxiety and stress of Jay slowly moving through the whale’s digestive system are the flashbacks. I get why they are here, and the film is apparently very close to the book it is adapting from, but what is made the film feel like it was a see-saw of emotion. I found myself really waiting for the film to return to the whale as that is where the great stuff is. That great stuff is more than enough to make this a film to watch.
A thorough and unvarnished analysis of Elon Musk, a technology billionaire who serves as the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter.
This 4 hour documentary is more a comprehensive collection of what we need to know about Elon Musk. For some reason we needed 4 hours to do it. This first two hours cover X.com, PayPal, Tesla, Neurolink, Space X, and his many children. The second half is about Twitter, DOGE, and his current state. I know that read like a book report, but there is no easy way of covering that without making this unnecessarily long. Elon decided (colorfully) to not participate, so what Gibney decided to do is create an AI version of Musk that is powered by everything he has ever said. It is distracting at first, but over time, I got used to it. The way they chose to show the firings at Twitter and the Government agencies by way of a first person shooter game was definitely a choice. Gibney has been behind some documentaries that I really enjoyed. Going Clear is one I have watched many times. I’m not sure why this wasn’t a series or multiple films. The first half was certainly more interesting to me, as the second half was to much of a reminder of the awful period we find ourselves in today. Unless Elon succeeds to get this thing pulled from theaters, this is something that could be an interesting watch if they have the time. I know this will have more of a life on streaming when you have the ability to pause.
A filmmaker applies lessons from a Hallmark movie writing workshop to pitch a documentary about concrete.
For 3 seasons, John Wilson had a television show on HBO called How To with John Wilson. To say it was liked by viewers would be an understatement. This is referenced by Wilson himself at the beginning of the film. The title of this film is a bit of a misdirect. Yes, it is partly about concrete, but what it really is to me is an exploration of people. A good example of this is Wilson talking to a few people about a concrete recycling plant. He discovers one is a singer, and now we are at her apartment hearing about her life. Concrete in most areas of this film is the conduit for discoveries elsewhere. This was just a pleasant time at the theater on a Sunday that while it has a bit of doom in it, it was a nice escape. I look forward to whatever Wilson decides to do next.
Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, notorious Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait becomes a mind-bending three-year journey.
When you go into a Nathan Fielder project, you tend to expect one thing. What was pleasantly surprising here is that it isn’t this kind of documentary. For about the first half, what we have is pretty standard day-in-the-life type of project as we watch how Holmes is dealing with an ever-approaching prison sentence. Fielder isn’t here to find a smoking gun, or do some elaborate scheme like he is known for. It is the part of the film when Holmes enters prison where the film turns into something a little different, and that is where this goes from pretty good to great. The joy of seeing how this unfolds is best by not knowing what is coming ahead of time, so this review for now will be about the part with Holmes as a main player. How things are presented by her kind of tests the audience with a puzzle: Is Holmes really by this person she is portraying, or is she the manipulative mastermind that she is thought to be? I don’t want to spoil this, but there is a moment with Holmes in her last week that made my (full!) theater gasp. I just sat there dumbfounded. This is a film that really needs to be seen, and as that second half unravels, it really becomes more rewarding to watch. This is easily one of the best films of the year for me, and I look forward to seeing this again soon.
After a weekend with 4 releases, we have another full weekend coming up. The main favorite to take first is Clayface (tracking at $23-33 million), but it will be interesting to see how Wildwood and Klara and the Sun perform when You Can See Everything expands.
- Clayface
- Wildwood
- You Can See Everything
- Street Fighter.
- Kiara and the Sun
Another full week that, as I write this, is larger than this past week. I head to Chicago for the Film Festival on Wednesday night with 6 films in the Windy City, but before that it is catching up on some streamers the first two days and Screen Unseen on Monday.
Leave a Reply