I had not intended on heading to the theatre this weekend. Then, I saw a Twitter review of the new film Barbarian which said that it was a lot of fun and that you should approach it with as little knowledge as you could (I believe it was a Dan Murrell Tweet). I had no idea about what Barbarian was and I am not sure I had ever seen anything about it, so I decided that this would be a good opportunity to check it out.

I came into the film with zero knowledge. I do think I had seen a trailer once, but I barely remembered it. I wasn’t even sure that I knew the style or genre of the film before it came on screen. (Horror, by the way).

Having said that, I 100% agree with Dan Murrell. Going into this film without any pre-existing knowledge is absolutely the way to go. It keeps you off balance and things happen that you have no idea is coming. The unknown really helped out Barbarian for me.

Because of that, I am going to pass on the typical synopsis that I would normally place in my review to keep it as surprising as possible.

The film starred Georgina Campbell as Tess, our main protagonist. Bill Skarsgård played Keith. Justin Long appeared in the movie too, as a character named AJ. Georgina Campbell brought a great performance, leading the audience through the mysterious goings on of Barbarian. This was one of my favorite performances from Justin Long too. He had some of the more emotional and questionable moments in the film.

There were some amazing moments of suspense, built by the mood and the tone of the film. Combine the setting with the unknown aspect of what was happening and Barbarian did a great job of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.

The film has a fantastic look to it and the effects are truly frightening.

That’s about all I can say about the movie without spoiling it, so all I can say is, if you are a horror fan, or if you enjoy a tense suspenseful thriller, give Barbarian a try and go in with as little info as you possibly can. It was worth it to me.

4 stars

It is Disney + Day and that meant we were going to be seeing a brand new “live-action” adaptation of a past Disney classic animated movie. We have seen Cinderella, Jungle Book, Aladdin, The Lion King, Dumbo, Mulan, Maleficent, 101 Dalmatians, Pete’s Dragon, and Beauty and the Beast. Now, it was time for the remake of the 1940 iconic Pinocchio.

Tom Hanks starred as Geppetto, the wood carver who created the puppet Pinocchio in response to his son and wife’s recent death. After Geppetto wished upon a star, the Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo) arrived and brought the wooden boy to life and appointed Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) as his conscience.

Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) was told that he had a chance to become a real boy if he showed the ability of being brave, truthful and selfless. This leads to a series of weird adventures as Pinocchio heads out into the world.

There are several issues with this new version of Pinocchio. First, the design of Pinocchio is nearly identical to the original version and that makes Pinocchio a little creepy. The animation style also stood out against the rest of the film. Pinocchio did not look like it fit in the world.

A second problem I had was that this was a basic shot for shot remake with little new material. Some of the scenes were fine, but were not any better than the original. The scene where Pinocchio watches Lampwick (Lewin Lloyd) get turned into a donkey is not as scary as the animated version, but it was adequate. I liked the Monstro section but it was done too quickly.

Tom Hanks did not have much to do. Geppetto just kind of wandered around yelling for Pinocchio. The inclusion of the death son and wife was potentially a rich addition for the actor, but the scenes with his grief disappeared early.

I am not sure the reason for the remake outside of just making money. Not that making money is a bad thing, and all films are trying to make money, but there felt like little purpose.

The film is not the worst thing I have seen, but it was not very good and it didn’t reach the level of the 1940 film.

2.6 stars

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul streamed live on Peacock this week while the film is still in the theater, which helped me be able to watch this.

The movie was written, directed, and produced by Adamma Ebo, which was her feature debut. This was based on her 2018 short film of the same name.

The story featured Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) and his beautiful wife Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall), who were, at one point, running a highly successful congregation until Pastor Childs became enthralled in a scandal that led to the closing of their church. This movie had a documentary inside the film taping the attempt by Lee-Curtis and Trinitie to try and reclaim their past success.

The best part of this movie is clearly the two main leads, Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall. The film only works because of the power of their performances. Both actors brought excellent energy and elevated the satire of the script wonderfully.

There are some definite moments where the satire of the organized religions. Some of these moments work well and others fell a little flat. The story never quite went into specific of what the scandal was, but there were some definite hints that the movie showed about what had happened.

This is a movie that I would not have seen if I had to watch it in the theatre. By having it streaming on Peacock, I got to see it and it was a decent time with two powerhouse performers.

3.5 stars

Sylvester Stallone joined in with the super hero genre in the new film on Prime this weekend called Samaritan. However, Stallone is not unfamiliar with the super hero genre as he appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Judge Dredd.

Stallone played Joe, a garbage man who tried to stay out of the way and just fill his day by fixing junk that he would find in the dumpster. When Joe helped protect a young boy Sam (Javon Walton) from a group of bullies, Sam discovered that Joe had certain powers. Joe was a huge fan of the hero Samaritan, who had been believed to have died fighting his brother Nemesis years ago, but who Joe believed was alive.

Local criminal and gang member Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk) was looking to create chaos and burn the city down around him. He was able to find a powerful hammer that had been created by Nemesis as one of the only things that could hurt Samaritan. Cyrus, trending his best Arthur Fleck imitation from the end of Joker, roused up the street people into a mob to follow his orders. Cyrus had taken the identity of Nemesis for himself.

After that, the story gets a little too convoluted and the motives and desires of Cyrus was inconsistent. There was little development to the character and he was really just the old mustache-twirling villain.

Stallone looked like he was having quite a good time and Javon Walton was decent. The third act had the kid doing too much yelling and that never works for the subtlety of the moment.

Without spoilers, there was a twist in the film that I had guessed way back at the beginning. To be fair, I only thought it could have been a neat idea if the film went that way, but I did not expect they would. As the film went on, I thought it was much more likely, and I liked it when they actually went there.

There are some good moments in Samaritan and it gave us a branch of the super hero genre that we had not seen yet. It was a decent watch on a Saturday night at home. It may not be the greatest super hero flick we’ve ever seen, but it has some positives too. I liked watching it.

3.1 stars

I had been looking forward to Bullet Train for awhile. They had played the trailer for the movie all the time, but I had already been sold on it. I have been battling with some issues so I have not been able to see it until today.

An assassin called “Ladybug” (Brad Pitt) by his handler because of penchant for bad luck, is out on his next mission as a snatch and grab aboard the bullet train. He was trying to find a briefcase that had a ton of money inside. It seemed like an easy job, but, little did he know, this was anything but easy.

A group of other assassins were aboard the train and heading after the briefcase among other revenge ideas. Chaos ensues.

The beginning of the film felt a little off. It was not a very cohesive story at the beginning. Eventually, everything they showed us in the initial section of the film, though it felt somewhat boring, paid off later so I forgave it by the end.

Once we got all of the characters in place and we understood what their motives were, the film got considerably better. Honestly, this is more of an ensemble character piece with a group of characters that are eccentric and entertaining. There are some awesome characters in Bullet Train.

Starting with Brad Pitt, who is just tremendous here, we get a lot of info with Brad Pitt and his recently changed philosophy. Pitt was so great here and holds everything together.

The twins Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are trying to retrieve the son of the mysterious White Death, the leader of Japanese organization. Henry and Taylor-Johnson are absolutely standouts here. They are completely funny and engaging every time they were on screen.

There are a bunch of actors involved here. Bad Bunny, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Joey King, Andrew Koji, Michael Shannon, Sandra Bullock, Masi Oka, and several other cool cameos that I won’t spoil.

This movie is just a wild time and the action is over-the-top goodness. There is a lot of humor as these characters find themselves in bizarre situation after another and they all seem to have amazing chemistry with Brad Pitt.

It did feel a little long, and could have probably trimmed 15 minutes off the run time and not miss too much. Still, I do like how they spent a lot of time on the ensemble and not just make them typical assassin #1. Each of these characters felt like they were original characters that were their own people. That is a great point of the film. It is not just Brad Pitt and a bunch of faceless assassins.

I enjoyed Bullet Train. It may have been a little long, but the extra time devoted to character development was worthwhile and some of the actions scenes are tremendous. It has a humor to it and, once it got past the beginning sections, Bullet Train picked up speed.

3.9 stars

We’ve had killer sharks, killer crocodiles/alligators, killer primates, insects of all kinds, Hitchcockian birds, and a bear that mauled Leonardo DiCaprio nearly to death. This time, we have a massively dangerous killer lion.

Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) and his teenaged daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries), went on vacation to Africa after recently losing their wife and mother to cancer. As she was originally from Africa, they went to see where she was from and, during this time, they reunited with an old friend Martin (Sharlto Copley) who was acting like a guide.

However, when they came across a village of people that Martin befriended only to discover that they had been killed, the tension in the group rose quickly. Not too soon after the village, the family was attacked by a rogue lion that was apparently out for revenge after a group of poachers had slaughter the lion’s entire pride.

Yes, that bit of a lion wanting revenge and killing everyone he comes across is a little cringey, making on think of Jaws 4: The Revenge where the shark followed the Brody family to Florida. The difference is that the writing on this is considerably better and the scenes of with this lion were totally tense and anxiety-filled. There were plenty of times where the lion would attack and I gasped.

Idris Elba was sensational here and he showed some fantastic chemistry with the two actors playing his on-screen daughters. I believed every scene with the three of them together. The film made a wise decision too because at the first 15-20 minutes of the movie, they established a conflict between Elba and the girls dealing with the loss of the girl’s mother. Nate had been separated from his wife and had not been around for much of her battle with cancer or the struggles that the girls had been going through so they clearly had some resentment built up for him. These moments in the film really humanized these characters and allowed us to know them more, and thus care about them more.

The action was extremely well done and, although you could see the ending coming, that did not mean that it was not admirably done. The film had about the perfect run time for this type of film and it kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would and, if you like a tension-filled ride, this will give you the needs you are looking for.

4.2 stars

I have continued to be behind in my movie reviews, so when I spotted the animated DC League of Super-Pets appear on Vudu, I was ready to rent it and finally see the film starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, voicing pets of the DC heroes.

Krypto (Dwayne Johnson) had been the best friend of Superman (John Krasinski) since he was a baby on Krypton. Now, Krypto had a new rival for Superman’s attention, Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde), whom Superman wanted to marry. Krypto found himself feeling jealous of the attention Superman was giving Lois and was feeling that he was on his way out.

When the villainous Lex Luthor (Marc Maron) was trying to pull a meteorite of orange Kryptonite to earth, Superman and Krypto prevented him. A few pieces of the orange Kryptonite found its way to a local pet show where the evil guinea pig Lulu (Kate McKinnon) was waiting. The orange Kryptonite gave her super powers, but also gave powers to the other animals in the shop, hound Ace (Kevin Hart), turtle Merton (Natasha Lyonne), squirrel Chip (Diego Luna),and potbellied pig PB (Vanessa Bayer) were exposed too.

Lulu’s power was greater than imagined and she kidnapped Superman and secretly fed Krypto some green Kryptonite, which took away his powers. Can even the arrival of the Justice League help this situation?

This was a fun film. While there were a few moments that were eye-rollingly off, most of the bits worked. A lot of that is because of the chemistry between Johnson and Hart. They bring the voice acting here and it was very funny and entertaining.

Another voice that did a fantastic job was Kate McKinnon as Lulu. She brought the evil to the role and you believed everything that she said. She was just a guinea pig, yet there was a menace about her.

The Batman (Keanu Reeves) was a real hoot too. He had some of the best lines of the film.

I’m not sure how much I cared about the secondary characters after Ace. They all had roles to play in the movie, but I was not that interested in their story.

The film looked great, with the animation standing out. There were some solid character designs as well.

The story was pretty typical and predictable. You have seen most of this before.

This movie was better than it had a right to be, but I would not consider this in the upper echelon of animated films from 2022. It was decent.

3.5 stars

The other day I was watching Matt Knost’s YouTube show Settle the Score. This week’s episode featured Ethan Erwin, whom I had learned about from the Schmoedown, and, at the end of the show, he mentioned that he was producing a new movie coming out the day after the show would air. It was called Orphan: First Kill. I wanted to watch to support Ethan.

Turned out that Orphan: First Kill is a prequel of a 2008 horror film Orphan. Amazingly, the main protagonist Esther was played in both the original and the new prequel by the same person, Isabelle Fuhrman. I had never seen Orphan, so I was interested to see if I would be able to follow the story of the prequel without having seen the first film. That was not a problem.

This film showed us where the mysterious Esther (not her real name) came from. She was originally at the Saarne Institute in Estonia and her real name was Leena. She was considered to be the most dangerous patient they had. Though Leena appeared to be a young child, she was, in truth, a 31-year old woman. Leena pulled off a bloody escape from the institute, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. Learning that there was a girl in America named Esther Albright who was missing and whom she had a resemblance of, Leena decided to pretend to be the missing girl as a way to escape.

Our new Esther was “reunited” with her supposed parents, wealthy artist Allen Albright (Rossif Sutherland) and his wife Tricia (Julia Stiles) as well as her pretentious brother Gunnar (Matthew Finlan).

Despite the early joy from Esther’s return, it was not too soon when things started to go wrong.

This started off reminding me of a documentary from a few years ago called The Imposter, which told the story of a con man who stepped into a role of a missing child. Then, Orphan: First Kill went completely bonkers and the whole tone and idea of the film changed. It is a creative move and rolled the dice on the film.

Orphan: First Kill is not a film that you should sit down and pick through because there are a ton of details that could spoil the fun. If you are too picky on specific details, this film will not hold up. However, the movie is a fun and bizarre trip and, if you let yourself get swept up in the fantasy of the situation, you could enjoy the movie.

Isabelle Fuhrman was very creepy and presented a definitely sinister aura. She was the standout part of the film. Julia Stiles played opposite Fuhrman well and she took that character in so many unexpectedly different ways.

It was not much of a horror film, leaning more on the thriller aspect.

Orphan: First Kill was a preposterous movie with multiple crazy twists and plot devices. Yet, it brought an air of campy fun that raised the movie above what was in the script. Fuhrman and Stiles are wonderfully unhinged in their performances and they embrace the switch in the film with a robust insanity.

3.2 stars

Vengeance is the brainchild of B.J. Novak (from The Office). This was Novak’s first directorial film while he also wrote and starred. Produced by Blumhouse, Vengeance definitely had that independent film feel to it.

Ben Manalowitz (B.J. Novak) was a journalist and podcaster who had spent much of his recent time meeting and hooking up with several women, looking for nothing serious, nothing life altering. When he received a mysterious phone call in the middle of the night telling him that his “girlfriend,” Abby (Lio Tipton), had died, Ben was confused. He did not remember the woman, but the tearful story from her brother Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook) compelled him to go to her funeral in Texas.

After the surreal experience at the funeral, Ty told Ben that he wanted his help. Ty did not believe that his sister had overdosed, as the reports of her death indicated, and that he believed someone had killed her. He begged Ben to stay and help him gain vengeance for Abby. Sensing an opportunity, Ben decided to tell the story of Abby on a podcast and he would investigate the death and try and find out the truth.

Abby’s eccentric family took Ben in and tried to walk him through the culture of Texas, something that he had a difficult time adjusting to. The family included Abby’s mother Sharon (J. Smith-Cameron), her sisters Kansas City (Dove Cameron) and Paris (Isabella Amara), her brother Mason (Elli Abrams Bickel) and blunt grandmother Granny (Louanne Stephens).

The mystery of what happened to Abby deepened as the film progressed, all to the thrill of Ben’s podcast producer Eloise (Issa Rae).

I was looking through the Vudu new releases for something to watch today when I came across this movie. It sounded interesting and so I rented it. I am very glad I did. I loved this movie. I was completely engaged from the moment that the phone call from Ty woke Ben up in the middle of the night with an odd message. The mystery has several great twists and kept me guessing about what had happened to Abby. The script of the film was wonderfully written and took the story of the film in a direction to try and look at the problems of a divided America.

B.J. Novak does a excellent job carrying the narrative, but the eccentric characters from this small little Texas town really brought this to life. Like Twin Peaks, the surrounding characters helped make the tale special. Ashton Kutcher and John Mayer had roles in the film as well.

I loved the resolution as well. No spoilers obviously, but it was an extremely satisfying end to the movie.

Vengeance is one of those films that most people will miss, but it is well worth your time to watch for it when it comes available to see.

4.3 stars