Muggs

Rock solid slab of Hong Kong kickassery, filmed in Thailand, with high stakes- the baddies are **** child traffickers. The U.S. dubbing appears to have been done with AI, which is controversial & unfortunate- but the martial arts punches & kicks, knives, arrows, and hammers are pure action cinema real deal. 100% mayhem satisfaction.

A Terry Gillian movie for the ADHD generation? A screwball sci-fi anti-capitalist, pro-union agitprop revolutionary pop-art bomb planted in the multiplex? Boots got a budget & felt the need to indulge every whim to a degree that sometimes exhausts. Keke Palmer, the costumes & production design are a continuous delight. Sound mix is a bit of a mess with wall-to-wall Tune-Yards music turned up too high. A flawed, scrappy absurdist art-object to be treasured.

While Inde Navarette is getting attention for committing to the shrieking, I suspect the bigger reason this has become a breakout hit is that cinema crowds are loudly responding to the cruel, pitch black, bro-centric comedy here. It’s fun with a noisy crowd. As a microbudget monkeys-paw riff it’s otherwise pretty threadbare.

A Sunday matinee boredom watch, and because the first one was a decently clever Most Dangerous Game riff. This one supersizes the cast of villains & adds a sassy kid sister to greatly diminished returns.

Ducournau’s “Raw” & “Titane” were a kick, a thrill, and created the kind of movie buzz that lasts for days and made you want to tell everyone about them. Her 3rd film is a funeral dirge as it toggles between drab social realist melodrama & dreamtime surrealism. It’s super grim. Glad I was able to see it in a cinema (I was the only customer), it’s a singular feature, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone. (UPDATE: the film unlocked some vivid, troubling dreams, which hasn’t happened in a very long time, so there’s that.).

Salty, sweet, funny and unexpectedly tender. Genuinely nonjudgmental with steady direction and nuanced performances that make this sub/dom love story something worth swooning over.

Extravagantly goofy alien fungus sci-fi comedy, with 2 very cute young leads and gratuitous Vanessa Redgrave, that’s pretty much derivative of Everything. I paid to be entertained, and I was, but immediately began forgetting it between the theatre & the car.

Jump scare happy (soundtrack literally goes BOO! every 6 minutes) throwback to break-the-curse movies that cluttered Blockbuster shelves in early ‘aughts— only with less charismatic 30-year-olds playing high schoolers. Making the final-girls **** should have been a nicer touch, and I wanted more Nick Frost. Nothing new here.

Once upon a time Van Sant made excellent, nervy American independent films (“Drugstore Cowboy”, “My Own Private Idaho”, “Elephant”). This news-of-the-weird true crime two-hander is okay, but idiosyncratic it is not. The ratio of tension to dead air is off. Skarsgard adds to his gallery of creeps. Does include best use ever of Harpers Bizarre’s “witchi tai to”.

Secrets, lies, and awkward silences between parents, kids & siblings in 3 sections- - also some snoring moviegoers in the cinema where I watched this. Putting the weakest chapter last didn’t help. As a long-time fan of Jarmusch’s deadpan long-take style, I was appreciative of the hang.

No Sympathy For Mr. Yoo. Doesn’t make my Top 5 Park Chan-Woo’s (“Lady Vengeance” for the win). Adapted from an American noir novel, seems to be reaching for some of that dark, twisty satire shine (and international box-office) of “Parasite”. Looks great, as expected, and the murder set-pieces are excruciatingly tense.. but one to admire rather than love.

The multiplex could use more Amyl & The Sniffers needle drops- but this moody, low-budget Tasmanian teeth-grinding zombie road movie (thanks to the U.S. President detonating a chemical weapon) is far too low-key for its own good.

Anyone who is or ever was a 12-year-old boy will squirm mightily. The stress of gaining-maintaining-losing status in the cut-throat world of ‘tween boys told in nearly arthouse horror film beats. Vivid debut by this director & excellent young cast.

Perkins gets points for keeping the budgets rock bottom & showcasing interesting actors. This is a compelling watch, slow and druggy, until the ending which it definitely Does Not stick. Would make a smart double bill with similar-ish (but superior) movies like “Men”, “The Night House” or “Oddity”. Not designed for the sorts of fans that think the Conjuring movies are actually good. There’s enough here to sustain conversations/arguments on the car ride home.

The little Finnish B-movie-that-could gets a turbocharged sequel, with GWAR levels of slapstick mayhem & gore spray. It’s easy to laugh at this, it’s still a B-movie. An 88-minute godsend to parents & caretakers who’ve just dropped their 10-year-old daughters off at Wicked 2 in the auditorium down the hall.

I like sentimentality when it’s artfully done. Here it’s fairly artless, but it got me anyway. A couple of times.

Lovely tribute to American decency in a pastoral style. A somber reminder that most of us are unremarkable and we are all just passing through.

Unsurprisingly beautiful looking arthouse adaption, but the script is strictly Classics Illustrated with a heaping helping of daddy-issues. Lavish & expensive looking, I am glad I was able to see it on a large cinema screen and pleased there were many others there eager for the same experience.

A very San Francisco movie, with a genuine feel for the boho cheap rent life of the 1970s & 80s. Honestly earns a few tears without jerking them.

A decent amount of care was taken in the 3D conversion & the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack (occasionally sounding a little bit Vangelis, a little bit Radiohead) is nearly continuous. Both elevate the knuckleheaded action plot. All in all, a pretty fun afternoon at the movies.

A perfect, full-course big budget Hollywood studio movie. Funny, scary, exciting, emotional-

Seems to exists as an 88-minute excuse to ogle Ms. Qualley, and that’s as good an excuse as any.

Went in hoping for more of Beau Is Afraid’s showy surrealism, but the weirdness here is mostly the common experience of pandemic 2020 spring & summer with its slurry of tik toc, q-anon, and BLM, all skewered here. It’s nearly 2-hours of (very) slow burn, but when the mayhem erupts it’s 38-minutes of the scariest, freakiest filmmaking Aster has done yet. Those first slow 2-hours though. Phoenix commits to the ordeal.

If ever a film were desperately in need of 66–and-2/3 percent more Chiwetel Ejiofor this is it.

Director Coogler takes a break from the formula Marvel salt mines to go full auteur with this original grim American folk tale. Some poetry here, nervy musical numbers too, in a place where arthouse meets popcorn crowd pleaser-

Sweet tribute to music artist fandom delivers the warm and cozies with gorgeous Wales scenery, a few mild chuckles, and a pleasing reminder that some Carey Mulligan can lift any film skyward-

Low budget, plenty scrappy, very Oakland, and committed to mayhem and entertainment . Points for cameo by defunct hardcore band Gulch-

If they show you a hockey puck in the first act, you can bet it’ll be used in the third act. Making the case for bringing back the double-feature: if the main feature was a stinker, a quick, silly, entertaining B-movie thriller like this one could save the evening.

A pure pleasure machine. Mostly pretty funny, bright, optimistic, with heart. A female buddy comedy with a relatable end goal (rent’s due) & a countdown clock. Great to see the scene stealer from “Nope” get to shine in a lead, and Keke Palmer glows. If she headlined every other movie from here on out, I’d be fine with that.

I’m usually there for a new Soderberg experiment & the haunted house genre is certainly need of a refresh- but I was disappointed by this low-key, scareless effort, and not just because The Presence never followed any of the characters into the shower…

A real sleeper in the folk horror sweepstakes. Bleed out the color, shrink the aspect ratio, scissor out the gore and you could almost have a lost Val Lewton classic with its fable & superstition (Lewton pretty much invented the jump scare in the 40s- although it’s a bit overused in The Damned). As a shiver delivery system, this is far more effective than the Nosferatu remake. Won’t play nearly as well on a television as it does in the cinema. It likely won’t play more than one week, don’t sleep on it-

This French film is evocative, strange & unsatisfying only at the very end. Fans of poetic films like “You Won’t Be Alone” will likely dig it. Is the heroine in full mental breakdown or is she really tormented by body-snatching aliens? The director pretty much leaves that to viewers to decide. Newcomer Megan Northam has the raw looks & intensity of the young Patti Smith (hello, casting directors)- I could have watched her all day.

The first movie was a cross-over hit with non-horror fans because it was clever and effective. Here we’re in the non-relatable world of pop music ****, that means enduring several awful pop numbers, high school musical choreography and many ridiculous stage costume changes. It takes the dense protagonist fully 90 minutes to begin piecing together the curse, which is exhausting because presumably ticket buyers have all seen the first and are way ahead of her. Occasional freight train-loud horn & whistle blasts pass for jump-scares but are more likely there to keep viewers awake. This seems aimed directly at 14-year-old babysitters.. I frankly can’t image anyone not in that demographic thinking this is a “good movie-

Well, this was nice. A gentle teen romance where all the characters are untroubled and decent. Delivers all kinds of low-keys feels. Maisy Stella gives a completely unaffected, real performance. You’ll like being in the company of these folks-

Not quite the feminist indictment some insist, but absolutely an aggressively nutty spin on the old Dorian Gray story. Gay men and drag queens with likely be the biggest enthusiasts for this campy “hagsploitation” hoot. Respect to Demi Moore for so fully committing. Once it gets going you will not be bored-

All of the advice on this one was “go in blind”. So I did. Good for the producers, because if someone had tipped the twist I probably wouldn’t have purchased a ticket. Extreme unpleasantness & a too-clever film school script. Willa Fitzgerald fully commits & the 35mm cinematography is fine, though. The indie folk chick mewling on the soundtrack was the perfect accompaniment to wanting to bolt for the exit, but stuck it out-

Went in expecting a sweet, funny junior high story along the lines of “8th Grade”. Instead got a bitter observation of a young teen with a lot to learn about being a good person.

We don’t see nearly enough low-budget German indies at the U.S. multiplex. This one emphasizes weirdness over scares. It gets increasingly silly as it goes along, but remains committed to being entertaining-

Indie Irish film where home invasion horror morphs into haunted house horror. Slow burn with the creepiness cranked to 9, and big scares all delivered with big jumps. Solid late night spook viewing-

Earns a few points for its student film style (hello, academy ratio) & the heavy lifting that the sound-effects editor brought to the table, but that all emcompassing dread just isn’t there. Turns out eliminating the scary music & jump scares only starkly exposes just how threadbare & tiresome these sorts of movies really are.

Like being stuck in the 2nd row during an especially cringy, angsty evening of self-indulgent Teen Slam Poetry. Sort of pulls a tragic rabbit-out-of its-hat at the very end, but you have to endure a lot to get there. Lots of style, though. “It’s not the Nightmare Realm, it’s the suburbs”.

The lesser of the pretty-young-nun-in-a-creepy-Italian-nunnery movies spooking around the multiplex these last 2 weeks. It’s a lot less fun than “immaculate”, and 32-minutes longer, but at least it doesn’t cheat when it comes time for on-screen devil-baby birthing. The brief tribute to Isabelle Adjani’s unhinged freak-out in “possession” (1981) is a nice bone to grindhouse fans, but it’s too little too late. Time would have been better spent staring at any black metal album jacket when it comes down to it-

The “Titaine” of 2024. Particularly intense slab of midwestern American gothic. Proof positive that the director’s “Saint Maud” was no fluke. Vivid, twisty journey though the dirt for adults who wish to take it-

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I love Kore-eda’s films. Love them. But have to say this is probably my least favorite. Takes the form of a mystery told from 3 vantage points and, with aching slowness, teases out a very gentle, lovely secret. This is first Kore-Edna’s film I can’t recommend to everyone, only die-hards-

Movies like this were built for double features. Nonessential, knuckleheaded old-school grindhouse revenge melodrama. To cinemas: if you want folks to come out for non-tentpoles, play double features- (or do “bank night”, or give out free dishes, or something..)-