Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Our reviews and thoughts on the latest releases, classics, and nostalgic favourites. Things we loved, things we hated, and worst of all, things we were ambivalent about.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

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For most of us, David Attenborough is the voice of nature. His soothing narration has taken us across the globe, from the coldest arctic waters to the hottest deserts to the wettest rainforests. The 93 year old Attenborough has spent his whole adult life exploring the world and documenting nature. During that time, he has seen drastic changes, and he has taken it upon himself to try to help us avoid an impending disaster.

Themes of conservation are not new to Attenborough’s documentaries but Netflix’s new A Life on Our Planet has no time for subtlety. Clearly, Attenborough feels he has no time to waste, which is less a function of his age and more an indication that catastrophe is imminent. Wisely, Attenborough’s warnings are interspersed with the beauty of our world, to show what is at stake and what could be saved or lost depending on which path we choose. Even better, Attenborough lays out a plan for saving ourselves, which he presents clearly and sells by pointing out that our planet is going to keep spinning, but our place on it is not guaranteed.

Unfortunately, Attenborough’s pleas will probably be dismissed by those who deny the changes that Attenborough, and all self-respecting climatologists, are documenting. Instead of ignoring the problem, I wish the deniers would be honest in their selfishness, and admit they don’t want to make sacrifices to preserve the future for coming generations. Of course, that would require them to admit they’re bad people, so I’m not holding my breath.

It is up to the rest of us to take action. A Life on Our Planet shows us how to do it, and more importantly, Attenborough reassures us that we can still undo the damage we have caused. A Life on Our Planet manages to be hopeful without minimizing the problems we face. It is a nature film that is about us, and it is a fitting capstone for Attenborough’s life work.

Killer Unicorn

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Danny (Alejandro La Rosa) is a bartender and used to be a bit of a party boy. His friends are queer, his best friends are drag queens, and they always stop by to invite him out. For the last year or so, Danny has passed. He’s had some trauma and no longer feels safe going out. However, the community’s epic Brooklyn Annual Enema Party (it’s exactly how it sounds) is just around the corner, and everyone’s trying to pump Danny up for the big day. A new love interest named PuppyPup (José D. Álvarez) makes him want to give the nightlife a second chance. Unfortunately, it becomes an even harder sell when it seems a serial killer is stalking the Brooklyn queer community and making drag queens disappear.

The Killer Unicorn gets his nickname in the least original way ever – he wears a unicorn mask. And not much else besides a pair of sequined booty shorts. The queens must like what’s in those shorts an awful lot because even though there’s a known Killer Unicorn on the loose and murdering their friends, a good many of them still agree to meet in dark, isolated places for a hookup – even when texts contain both unicorn and knife emojis. That’s practically a confession!

Writer José D. Álvarez can’t write. He can’t write dialogue, and none of director Drew Bolton’s cast can deliver it, so at least there’s some equanimity. It makes for a pretty garbage movie, and that’s even before you consider the vicious slander foisted upon the unicorn community. Who would want to desecrate these magical, beauteous creatures? They burp glitter and toot rainbows and yet some cretin has besmirched the good unicorn name. How dare you cast aspersions? HOW DARE YOU?

Apparently the script was written with specific queens in mind; it’s a shame Álvarez has such talentless friends. I don’t want to talk out of turn, but it would seem that RuPaul has turned the NYC drag family upside down and given it a good shake – even Drag Race’s losers go on to have stellar careers, but the leftovers in Brooklyn are clearly the dregs. Still, I don’t wish death upon them, and certainly not the particularly gruesome deaths this sick fuck in a unicorn mask inflicts. But aside from a few inventive kill scenes, there’s not much to recommend this film and plenty to warn you away.

But there a couple of you, just a couple, who are curious enough about the booty shorts and maybe even the enemas, who are going to watch it anyway. I see you. And what the heck, go ahead, enjoy it, you weirdo.

The Glorias

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Gloria Steinem is 86 years old; I wonder how she feels about getting the biopic treatment while she’s still alive. She was a leader for the American feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. She is a journalist, activist, and the co-founder of Ms. magazine.

At least four actors portray Steinem in the various stages of her life, including Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander. Director Julie Taymor clearly wants to impress us with a litany of Steinem’s experiences, influences, and achievements. There are a lot. So many they start to lose their power, they start to feel less real. Which is counter-productive to the goal of celebrating Steinem’s life. Reduced to a mere character, we never get a complete sense of who Gloria is as a person, Taymor gets trapped in an achievement-oriented cycle that feels more like separate segments in a shared universe than a narrative running like a river through a single life.

Individually, a lot of these chunks work. The talent is there, and the story-telling is inventive. Unfortunately, Taymor’s flair as a director doesn’t seem suited to Gloria’s no-nonsense attitude. There is almost certainly an interesting story here, I’m just not sure this script ever had a firm grip on it, despite Taymor’s accumulation of gifted actors and clever staging. It feels more invested in painting a fuller picture of history than it serves Steinem’s particular place within it.

The Binding (Il legame)

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Emma (Mia Maestro) and young daughter Sofia (Giulia Patrignani) are visiting her fiancé’s mother in southern Italy, which sounds like a dream scenario, sun kissed summers with wine and pasta, but it turns out this particular corner of southern Italy is less romantic getaway and more death by curse.

Turns out, Emma’s fiancé Francesco (Riccardo Scarmarcio) hasn’t always been a stand up guy. In his youth he got a girl pregnant and instead of a) doing the right thing or b) breaking up with the woman and sending a monthly cheque or c) becoming a deadbeat dad, he opts for d) use some black magic on her to get rid of the problem.

Obviously her evil spirit has been lingering, waiting for the perfect moment, and its malevolent intentions have targeted young Sofia as its victim. It starts with a tarantula bite and gets oh so much worse. To make matters even worse, it’s unclear to Emma, who isn’t fluent in poultices and incantations, whether her in-laws can be trusted or whether the old women and their evil eye are actually the source of the curse.

Is that the actual plot? Probably not. I was only paying half attention because the movie was so dull and boring. It’s supposed to be a horror movie, but the specifics of the situation are so vague and the relationships between characters so unclear that it’s hard to invest in the story or the consequences. I don’t think Sean was faring much better because his only quibble was with the freshness of the tarantula blood. So….

Maybe something was lost in translation. That seems possible. Maybe. I’m not convinced. In fact, I’m still a little resentful that this movie tried to scare me but didn’t try to entertain me. That’s a terrible equation and I’m not impressed to be involved. If you’re willing to be a variable, you can insert yourself on Netflix. Just don’t blame me if The Binding adds up to a pretty generic horror movie.

Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2

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What more really needs to be said? Zed and his friends effected a zombie revolution in the last film, achieving equality for their people. It seemed like things in the sister communities of Seabrook and Zombietown were on the up and up – but what is a sequel without a new and terrible conflict?

Werewolves!

Turns out, Seabrook legend has “always” told of werewolves in the forest, but they’ve only chosen now to reveal themselves. Of course, Seabrook immediately forgets all the important lessons it learned last time and re-enacts the “monster laws,” the worst of which, in Zed’s (Milo Manheim) biased opinion, his inability to take cheerleader Addison (Meg Donnelly) to prom (to “prawn” actually, Seabrook students are the “Shrimps”). The situation, or Zed’s situation anyway, is only exacerbated when werewolf Wyatt (Pearce Joza) pays a little too much attention to his girl, trying to steal Addison away to their pack.

It’s very convenient to the plot how quickly humans abandon lessons of the past and yet it is also extremely and depressingly true to life. People are always afraid of what’s different, and they let fear blind them to the things that unite them. Even the zombies, themselves oppressed in the very recent past, are not sympathetic to their plight but eager to to leverage a new underclass to bolster their own status. It is a perfect allegory for the American class system, but surprising to find it in a Disney produced movie for tweens about prom and cheerleading.

Like the first one, production design on Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2 is A-M-A-Z-E-B-A-L-L-S. The sets and the costumes have incredible theming that really emphasize the story. I particularly enjoyed the glitter fog, or as they called it, colloidal silver – you know, for subduing werewolves. These are the touches that force me to like a movie that is pure bubblegum and lollipops.

The whole cast is back, including Trevor Tordjman, Kylee Russell, Carla Jeffery, and James Godfrey from the first film, and newcomers Chandler Kinney and Ariel Martin. They’re talented, they’re all talented, even Tordjman, who remains my one beef. He’s just a little too “on.” Everyone else is making a movie, and he’s playing to the back of the house of a children’s theatre, hammy and exaggerated.

I still say these are surprisingly tolerable movies, definitely a fun time for kids to watch with parents. The monsters make it Halloweeny but the singing and dancing and gelato carts make it harmless with a side of sweet messaging.

We’ve been depending on generation Z to save us, but if not them, generation Z(ed) seems up to the task. Armed with pompoms and dance battles, they’re a lot more prepared for change than we’ve been. Zombies 2024.

Z-O-M-B-I-E-S

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Seabrook is a perfectly planned community, where everyone is uniformly beautiful and bright. Fifty years ago, there was an accident involving lime soda at the local power plant, unleashing a green haze that turned people into zombies. Seabrook survivors erected a barrier to keep themselves save, and it has lived securely beside Zombietown ever since.

The ensuing 50 years have harkened 50 years of zombie improvements; they now wear a device on their wrists that emits a soothing electromagnetic pulse that keeps them from eating brains (it probably counts their steps as well). Zombies are are now like anyone else, though they are easily identified thanks to green hair and a pale pallor. Unfortunately, zombie phobia is rampant in the Stepford-like community of Seabrook, and the division is still pretty strict. Zombies wear uniforms, work the worst jobs, aren’t allowed to keep pets, etc, etc. Today, however, Zed (Milo Manheim), a teenage zombie, is super pumped because it’s the first day of school and for the first time, zombies are allowed to attend human school. He shouldn’t be surprised that the school is still very much segregated, with the zombies all relegated to the dank basement and not allowed to mix with human kids or join extra-curriculars. Luckily Zed’s got a zombie edge when it comes to football, and the Seabrook Shrimps are utterly awful without him. Can one zombie jock heal the hearts and prejudices of a xenophobic town? With a little help from his zombie friends and one brave, blonde cheerleader named Addison (Meg Donnelly), yes. Yes they can.

This little ditty is available on Disney+ and will make for some fun, family friendly viewing this Halloween.

Meanwhile, I’m a little embarrassed to say that I really liked this film myself. It’s corny and earnest as heck, but it’s also extremely well put together. I never saw High School Musical, but I imagine this is not unlike it, only half the kids are zombies.

Someone production-designed the heck out of this thing. That person is Mark Hofeling, and he deserves an awful lot of credit. The Seabrook side looks like a Taylor Swift music video and the Zombietown half looks like a Katy Perry video, and for the first time in my life, I mean that as a compliment. Costumes by Rita McGhee follow the aesthetic brilliantly (Sean even commented on the pastel football uniforms), so when they all break out into dance, the effect is rather pleasing. Oh did I mention it was also a musical? And the songs aren’t bad – not worse than a lot of what plays on the radio, anyway. The choreography’s decent too, more current and involved than I would have predicted from a Disney movie. The young cast (Manheim, Donnelly, Trevor Tordjman, Kylee Russell) are talented and charming and quite polished. And the script isn’t terrible either. Or, it’s terrible in a self-aware way, leaning extra hard on archetypes but making use of them and landing a few clever quips along the way.

Do I have a school girl crush on this movie or what? It’s really not meant for adults and I would never inflict this on anyone other than Sean. It’s a living, breathing cupcake of a movie and I guess I was in the mood for dessert.

Inheritance

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Lauren Monroe (Lily Collins) is the privileged daughter of a white and very wealthy family. She seems quite young to be the District Attorney already, and yet that it what she is. You might think this is reason to be proud, but her father (Patrick Warburton), a banker, sneered at public service and would have preferred she work for a private firm where she could be defending her family’s interests. Her younger brother William (Chace Crawford) is a Congressman running for a second term. He also seems young for his position, but let’s just go with it. He’s vehemently denying that the family has made financial contributions in exchange for union votes, but his campaign has the slight whiff of scandal. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that William is his father’s favourite child, a valuation that seems starkly measured in his will when their father dies unexpectedly. It would seem that he loved his son about 20 times as much as he loved his daughter, if love can be measured in the millions of dollars inherited by them.

But Lauren doesn’t just get a slap in the face in the will, she also inherits a family secret. And boy is it a doozie. A serious, serious doozie, but I will refrain from saying anything more and I implore you to go into this film not knowing any more than this. A thriller works best when you allow it to thrill you, and thrills function best with the element of surprise on their side. Modern movie trailers seem to have forgotten this, but since Inheritance is found on Netflix, there’s a good chance you can make it there without accidentally spoiling it for yourself.

Netflix has vast resources and it churns out content at a truly remarkable rate. This results in both hits and misses, but I heard a Netflix executive tell their team that they weren’t failing enough, which meant they weren’t taking enough risks. Being Netflix means you can afford to take more risks on the kind of content that big studios have all but given up on: indie movies, untested directors, new formats, and more. Their deep pockets are attracting increasingly impressive talent, and it is quickly becoming a real Oscar contender. Audiences have largely learned to go into Netflix movies with low expectations; the movie might be great, but is much more likely to be mediocre, and quite often they’re very, very bad. But having paid a monthly fee rather than a per-movie rental, it’s easier to take chances on movies we’re not sure we’ll like. It’s movie watching with no strings attach. But once in a while, it achieves cultural zeitgeist; early on in our global quarantine, the world consumed The Tiger King together, and it united us even in our isolation. Before that, it was Making a Murderer that stirred us into disrupting the legal system. Inheritance isn’t going to be universally beloved. It is not a great film or an important one, but is a good, solid thriller, the way thriller should be made. It’s also an increasingly rare opportunity to go into a movie fairly blind, and allow one’s self to be surprised, and entertained.

Hubie Halloween

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Hubert Dubois is Salem’s official volunteer Halloween helper. Easily startled and frequently frightened, Hubie devotes himself to keeping the holiday safe for everyone, young and old, for which he is openly and mercilessly mocked by all.

This Halloween, armed only with good intentions and his trusty swiss army thermos, Hubie (Adam Sandler) has an extra hefty burden. He’s being bullied by some local high school kids, he suspects his neighbour Walter (Steve Buscemi) is a werewolf, and a psychotic prisoner in a pig costume is on the loose, escaped from a nearby institution. Exasperated with Hubie’s numerous reports, Sgt. Steve (Kevin James) shuts down his concerns, leaving him with only his elderly mother (June Squibb) in a series of suggestive tshirts and his childhood crush, soup-serving Violet (Julie Bowen) as allies.

As with every Adam Sandler movie, many of his friends and a great many of his family join him on set as they film on location in a very quaint-looking Salem, Massachusetts, even if the town’s lengthy history of “bullies” persists. Hubie Halloween reunites Sandler with his Happy Gilmore costar Julie Bowen 24 years after she first played his love interest, Virginia Venit (this time playing Violet Valentine, we see that Sandler’s love of alliteration and the letter V have also withstood the test of time). Also joining them from the cast of Happy Gilmore, Ben Stiller in a cameo playing the exact same character, orderly Hal.

Although Sandler’s movies for Netflix have been more miss than hit, this one is a pleasant exception. It’s just scary enough to qualify as Halloween viewing, but Sandler’s brand of low-brow humour ensures that all but the little ones will be able to watch. Does it reinvent the wheel? Not remotely; it’s merely better inflated than the flat tires his production company has been turning out for some time.

The thrills are mild, the jokes are corny, but it’s a harmless movie that might add some Halloween spirit to your household, and considering many will be refraining from trick-or-treating this year, a movie night is a nice way to celebrate in a safe and socially-distanced way. I think Hubie would approve.

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Yes

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Patrick Nolan (Tim Realbuto) is a washed up former child actor, tainted by scandal, all but forgotten by Hollywood, addicted to any kind of numbing he can find, scraping by as an acting coach to teenage hopefuls.

He attends a high school staging of Romeo + Juliet starring his protégé and niece. He’s not sober and she’s not good, but Jeremiah (Nolan Gould), the young man playing Romeo, catches his eye, and Patrick reaches out to take him under his wing. Everyone knows about Patrick, or think they know, about the ‘perversion’ for which he was charged but never convicted, but Jeremiah meets with him anyway, anxious to hone his new craft.

Patrick’s technique may seem unorthodox to you and I, but he believes that all acting comes from a place of pain, and his lessons revolve around eliciting Jeremiah’s pain. It’s something they have in common, their tortured pasts, their private pain. Patrick is never sober, not even close, but he’s also never intoxicated enough to shake the memories that haunt him. Jeremiah’s is too young to know how to handle a profoundly depressed teacher, or the mentorship that transforms into something rather more intimate and intense.

Tim Realbuto is strangely at home in the skin of a man clearly on the brink of personal apocalypse, as he should be, having written and performed the play off-Broadway. Patrick is a portrait of barely suppressed rage, a hopeless heap of man who doesn’t believe in salvation. He dreams of the actress who played his mother on screen, and imagines her giving him the mothering he needed but never received. Gould’s portrayal is mature and nuanced, playing Jeremiah as slightly less innocent as he seems. Together, the two navigate a relationship that teeters on the fine line of inappropriate, Patrick’s disgrace so palpable it’s a third character in the room. Rob Margolies’ confident direction moves the story from stage to cinema seamlessly, soundly avoiding the temptation to over-produce.

The result is a slow build toward a well-earned finale, two restrained performances each deeply felt in different ways, and an ending that gnaws at the heart.

Alien Addiction

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Riko (Jimi Jackson) is what you might generously call a man-child. He’s fully grown but lives with his Auntie (Veronica Edwards), plays role playing game Galaxy Gods with his friends in her basement, gets high and generally fucks about.

Throughout the history of science fiction, we have sent many fictional scientists and doctors to make first contact with aliens, but writer-director Shae Sterling tries a different approach with good-for-nothing stoner, Riko. That turns out to be quite fortuitous as the aliens, Jeff (Steven Samuel Johnston) and Gurgus (Mel Price), are just here to party. Meanwhile, alien blogger Pete (Thomas Sainsbury) thinks he’s finally hit pay dirt. Aliens have touched down in New Zealand and he’s going to be the one to introduce them to the world. Huzzah!

Will you like this film? Not everyone will. It serves a niche market at the intersection of crude humour and science fiction. I was totally up for the stoner humour, and didn’t flinch too much at the scatological stuff although that’s largely not my bag, and I allowed for more “probing” comments than I normally tolerate. I draw the line, however, at the fat jokes, and this movie doesn’t just make fat jokes, it makes Jacinta (JoJo Waaka) the joke, and I felt bad being complicit as au audience member.

It’s too bad because this film truly does have its moments, not to mention a certain New Zealand charm. But in 2020, such mean-spirited pot shots just feel unfair and out of place. Alien Addiction was doing fine without them.

Jimi Jackson is…well, he’s exactly what the character demands. He’s loose, he’s chuckle-heavy, he is surprisingly cool with his new alien friends. This movie was never going to win any awards, it’s here to make you laugh, and to subvert some of the common sci-fi tropes. If it had done that without needing to fat-shame anyone, I could have endorsed that.