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‘BOY KILLS WORLD’ A Graphic Overkill That Tires Quickly

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Boy Kills World plunges viewers into a frenetic, hyper-stylized dystopia reminiscent of a violent graphic novel, drenched in buckets of expertly-extracted gore. It’s a stylish mélange of the warped battle royale fantasia of The Hunger Games with Schumacher’s colorful and daffy 90s Batman movie entries, spiced with a dash of the meta, self-aware hyper-violence of the popular TV series The Boys. A decidedly over-the-top action genre entry by first-time filmmaker Moritz Mohr, Boy Kills World swings for the fences, though it occasionally whiffs due to its extreme, maximalist approach. Read More

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Dev Patel’s ‘MONKEY MAN’ is Franchisable Action Fare in Inequitable India

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Written, directed, and starring Dev Patel, Monkey Man is Patel’s action movie passion project. Written as a means of rejuvenating the formulaic genre by infusing it with “real pain”, “real trauma”, and a dash of cultural intrigue, Monkey Man is nonetheless pretty standard revenge-driven action fare, though Patel’s passion in front of and behind the camera is undeniable. A furious fisticuff beat-em-up, Patel’s movie interweaves elements from Indian mythology—drawing heavily on the legend of the invincible deity Hanuman for its hero’s backstory—with a narrative set against the backdrop of societal inequity and upheaval reminiscent of current politics under a Modi-esque ruler.  Read More

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Monstrously Dumb ‘GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE’ As Empty As Hollow Earth

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More a proper Kong movie with some Godzilla spice sprinkled on top than the titan buddy movie that the marketing materials insists this film is, Adam Wingard’s cartoonish Godzilla x Kong: New Empire is loud, brash, and dumb, with its wee share of monster fun. Will it be enough to satisfy audiences hungry for more large-scale monster mashing? Probably – but for a franchise that consistently undervalues things like character, stakes, and scale, and still manages decent box office returns and mild reviews, that’s not particularly hard to achieve. This fifth edition in Warner Brother’s MonsterVerse picks up after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong where, as the title implies, the two titans threw down in a tedious battle that overshadowed any semblance of human subplot. Read More

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Lifeless ‘GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE’ Lacks Spirit 

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There are times as a film critic that I wonder why I allocate my spare time to the watching and writing about movies. This is one such occasion. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a profoundly bad film, one that seems to be actively sucking the very lifeblood out of the movie industry with its lazy indifference, indifferent storytelling, and filmmaking incompetence. In a way, it’s actually more interesting as a cultural microcosm of the horrors of modern franchise filmmaking writ large. It exists in a world of franchise as mandated IP flexing. Strictly a means to an end. Ostensibly the opposite of a write-off but with the same underlying purpose. Done because it must be done to preserve intellectual property ownership, not because there is any purpose, vision, or passion involved. Read More

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Quirky ‘PROBLEMISTA’ Aspires to Make America Artistic Again

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El Salvador native Julio Torres, a former SNL writer described as a comic surrealist, injects every single quirky ounce of his personality into Problemista. The experimental indie film financed by A24 explores the dual struggle of an aspiring toymaker and his labyrinthine journey to navigate the American immigration system. Working from a script that he wrote, Torres directs, produces, and stars, making this a singular effort that’s bursting with Torres’ at times crude, often surrealistic, and always a little off-kilter sensibilities. For those operating on his wavelength, Problemista will be an original breathe of fresh air, a new creative voice projecting itself boldly into the cinesphere with Torres’ lispy monotone. His style being a decidedly acquired taste, those who don’t vibe with his unique approach to the dramedy genre however will find this to be a rather long and taxing watch. 

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Sundance ‘24: ‘DÌDI’ Comes Of Age in Observant, Rude Dramedy 

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In his cringe-tastic treatise on middle school awkwardness Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham captured the universal horror of growing up through the specificity of Elsie Fisher’s Kayla. Her oily identity crisis effortlessly evoked our own transitory 13-year-old state, subjecting us to the lost-but-not-forgotten dread of first crushes, online interactions, and seething parental conflict. With Dìdi, Oscar-nominated director Sean Wang does much the same, with more of a skater-punk male juvenile delinquent edge. While the similarities are easy to identify, Dìdi stands on its own as a singular vision of coming-of-age that taps into the universality of being a total dickhead rage monster, because hormones. Read More

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Sundance ‘24: Love and Faith Collide ‘BETWEEN THE TEMPLES’ In Quirky Jewish Rom-Com

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After the sudden passing of his author wife, a Jewish cantor (Jason Schwartzman) finds himself deep in the throes of a crisis of faith that has his questioning everything from his career to his own worth. When he crosses paths with his childhood music teacher (Carol Kane), herself at a turning point in life, his misery and her meshuggah send the pair into orbit around one another. Together they decide she’ll have her long-awaited Bat Mitzvah, despite the fact that she’s in her 70s. Between Two Temples, written and directed by Nathan Silver, explores this unexpected relationship at the intersection of faith, expectation, and love, using humor and heart to examine how what makes sense on paper is rarely what the heart yearns for. Read More

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Sundance ‘24: ‘A DIFFERENT MAN’ A Darkly Comic Psychological Thriller About Abandoned Identity 

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An aspiring actor with an extreme facial deformity undergoes an experimental procedure and ends up missing out on the role of a lifetime. Things only get worse when the life he always dreamed up ends up in the hands of a rival actor, himself facially deformed. Writer-director Aaron Schimberg combines body horror with a Shakespearean-level of ironic romantic tragedy to tell a nightmarish story about one man’s journey to reshape – and ultimately undo – himself.  Read More

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Sundance ‘24: ‘LOVE LIES BLEEDING’ Is a Blood-Stained Queer Love Affair on Steroids

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Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding melds a greasy crime drama with a gritty love story, presenting an American saga steeped in steroid-fueled rage, white trash aesthetics, and memorably bad haircuts. Glass leans into B-movie intrigue with an elite level of execution, creating a visually provocative and impressively-performed world of high crimes and low sleaze and populating it with scumbags and weirdos. A followup to her excellent religious-horror debut Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding furthers Glass’ exploration of those on the fringes of society. In this case, it’s late-80s Nevada, a dried-up rural wasteland where the local gun club is the center of all cultural and sociopolitical activity, as well as the epicenter of its deeply-integrated criminal enterprise. Read More

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‘THE BEEKEEPER’ Makes John Wick Look Like Walt Whitman

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Just because a movie actively acknowledges how dumb it is doesn’t make it any less so. This is the case with The Beekeeper, a low-rent John Wick knockoff that almost plays like a spoof. There’s plenty of quick-cut bloody action, a truly mind-boggling amount of references to bees and bee hive politics, and some of the worst dialogue this side of an Expendables movie. Pretty much everyone involved in the project seems to be in on the joke, hamming up the lowbrow camp when not administering decent, if unmemorable, action shoot ‘em ups, but that doesn’t make its consumption any less grueling. Read More