Previous Winners:Dafne Keene (Logan), Tilda Swinton (Dr. Strange), Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Emma Stone (Birdman), Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle), Sally Field (Lincoln), Jennifer Aniston (Horrible Bosses), Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place), Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit), Margo Martindale (Blow the Man Down)
#15. Marisa Tomei (Spider-Man: No Way Home).
#14. Marlee Matlin (CODA)
#13. Zendaya (Spider-Man: No Way Home)
#12. Regina King (The Harder They Fall)
#11. Maggie Smith (A Boy Called Christmas)
#10. Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place II)
#9. Awkwafina (Swan Song)
#8. Nina Arianda (Being the Ricardos)
#7. Judi Dench (Belfast)
#6. Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)
#5. Caitriana Balfe (Belfast)
#4. Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
#3. Olga Merediz (In The Heights)
Olga returned to her role from the stage and she was one of the major points of In The Heights. I loved her song and she was an emotional key.
#2. Florence Pugh (Black Widow).
Florence Pugh feels like such a natural. She was one of the best parts of the Black Widow movie. She is going to be a mainstay in the MCU for years to come.
#1. Rita Moreno (West Side Story).
This year’s winner is an iconic legend who won an Oscar for the original West Side Story. Rita Moreno brings so much energy and a powerhouse performance for the new film in a new role. She is an amazing woman.
We find ourselves in the year 1952 and there is a noir thriller, filmed in black and white, that stars the iconic Joan Crawford and the one and only Jack Palance. It was called Sudden Fear and it was a film with several twists and turns.
Crawford played playwright Myra Hudson, who was casting her new play on Broadway. She had to reject actor Lester Blaine, played by Palance, as the lead. After this awkward encounter, she met him aboard the train that she was taking back to her home in San Francisco. They become close on the train and end up getting married.
However, Myra discovered that he was only in the marriage to get her money and that he and his co-conspirator/mistress Irene (Gloria Grahame) were planning on killing her and making it look like an accident. Shocked by the betrayal, Myra started her own plan to take care of the situation.
Joan Crawford is great here. She is not anybody’s fool. There are some things that she did that made me yell at the screen, which you find in most films like this. She kept most of it reasonable, but there were a few things that happened that made me immediately question why it happened, besides that the plot needed it to happen.
Jack Palance is always great, especially playing a villain. You never quite trust him from his arrival on the train until his plan is revealed to Myra and the audience.
The ambiance of the flick is very effective and the final act is filled with tension and an uncertainty of what was going to happen. The last 20 minutes or so of Sudden Fear kept my attention 100% and had me on the edge of my seat. It was a very effective thriller and, despite some questionable decisions made by characters, Sudden Fear builds to an excellent conclusion.
2021 was supposed to be better than 2020, and, to an extent, it was. Theaters were opening back up, COVID-19 was not as deadly (though it has some variants), and the world was getting back to “normal.”
Some of the biggest stories of 2021 affected all of us, geek or not. The Jan. 6th events are a good example. That was a huge story from 2021, and could work with the Geek brand (I actually heard about it for the first time at my comic shop), but I am leaving it out. Sticking with the pop culture references that stand out.
In no particular order, here are the Top Geek Stories of 2021 from EYG
Disney + Marvel Series create cooler talk. When Disney + first released WandaVision in January, there were plenty of people calling for them to drop the entire series, ala Netflix. However, Disney + used the weekly method and it brought all kinds of buzz to the series. First WandaVision, then Loki, What If…? and finally Hawkeye. It was appointment viewing with people staying up into the night to watch the premiere. With more series in 2022, Disney + should continue its excellence.
Spider-Man: NoWay Home Trailer…where is it? The internet lost their minds this year as they waited for the first Spider-Man: No way Home trailer to drop. With the rumored cameos expected in the movie, fandom lost their minds wondering what the studio was going to show us. There were YouTube videos everywhere detailing every little detail. Clickbait articles popped up everywhere.
Shang Chi Labor Day Weekend Dominance. Shang Chi destroyed the record for any movie released over the typically slow Labor Day weekend. It made over 70 million (and 90 million over the five day period). It was another massive success for Marvel Studios.
William Shatner in Space. Yes, Captain Kirk himself found his way into outer space aboard the Bezo’s aerospace company Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-18. The 91 year old actor made it up and back safely.
Squid Game. The show that influenced pop culture the most this year would be on Netflix and it came from South Korea. Squid Game was what everyone was talking about during a stretch of the year. The show was amazing, emotional and played with those emotions expertly.
ScarJo takes on Disney. Scarlett Johansson was unhappy when Disney released Black Widow on Disney + premium as well as in the theaters. She believed that that strategy cost the film millions of dollars and she filed a lawsuit. This created some real tension within the studio, though Marvel Studio head quietly supported Scarlett. They settled the lawsuit a few weeks later and ScarJo announced she was producing a secret project with Marvel. Maybe a story for the future.
Gina Carano Out of the Mandalorian. People still do not realize that they need to be careful with what they post on social media. Gina Carano, who played Rebel Alliance soldier Cara Dune, was released from her contract because of tweets she made comparing being a Republican these days to being a Jewish person in the Holocaust. Some were mad about her being “cancelled” but others thought it was the right thing to do. Watch what you put out on social media.
WWE Releases 80+ wrestlers. Citing money issues, the WWE spent much of 2021 releasing wrestlers from their company. And not just any wrestlers, but huge named stars such as Braun Strowman, “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt, Jeff Hardy, The Iconics, Keith Lee, Karrion Kross, Bronson Reed, John Morrison, Nia Jax, Eva Marie, Ember Moon, Fandango, Aleister Black, Buddy Murphy, Ruby Riott, Andrade, and Mickie James. Some of these performers were in mid storyline. It was a tough year to be a WWE Superstar.
Dave Chappelle and Netflix. The comedian Dave Chappelle had a big Netflix special, but it received a ton of backlash because of the topics that he covered, in particular, his remarks about transgender people. However, the cancellation did not seem to last too long as Chappelle is still scheduled to lead a Netflix comedy festival in 2022.
Spider-Man: No Way Home crosses $1B. After an opening weekend that was the second largest domestically ever at $260 million, Spider-Man: No Way Home became the first film to cross the 1 billion dollar club since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. The film holds a 94% critics response on Rotten Tomatoes as well as a 99% audience rating. The Marvel-Sony hybrid became the most successful film of the year in a week period and created amazing and spectacular word of mouth from audiences who loved the story.
Former Vaudevillian and silent picture star Lon Chaney was known as the Man of 1000 Faces for his ability to create characters with wild made up faces and masks. He became a legend for being a “mystery man” and a horror icon.
In this biopic, Lon Chaney (James Cagney) and his life is examined from his early days as a child in a home where his father and mother were both deaf to his career in motion pictures.
The first part of the film dealt with his first marriage to Cleva (Dorothy Malone), a singer who became pregnant with Lon’s son. However, when Lon took her to meet his family, Cleva responded with anger and repulsion over Lon’s parents’ disability and she claimed that she did not want to have a baby that had this passed along to her.
I found Cleva totally horrible. I hated this character so much because of her ugliness of spirit and her ignorant mind. She was selfish and mean-spirited, even after the baby was born with his hearing. The film tried to rehabilitate the character at the end of the movie, but her cruelness in the first half did not make me think any better of her.
There were some horrible things that happened to Lon during this time frame of the film, including having the custody of his son taken by the state until he could provide a suitable home, which was another thing that I found terrible. This was the emphasis for Lon to leave Vaudeville and head to California to get work in pictures.
James Cagney is great as Lon Chaney. I believed him as the actor from the minute I saw him and he does a bunch of physical acting, including dancing, that makes him stand out and shows what a talented person Lon Chaney was.
Cleva was the character I hated most in movies this year. I had a much softer place in my heart for Norman Osborn {Spider-Man spoilers} after he killed Aunt May {End of Spoilers} than I did for this woman. There had to be some form of mental illness involved in this woman’s life that could have helped suss her out more and help the audience understand why she took the extreme steps she took instead of what we got to see.
I found this picture to be an excellent movie and I learned a lot about the life of Lon Chaney. The film may have been 10-15 minutes too long, but that is a minor gripe.
Another film that I am catching up on for the 2021 year is on Netflix and it featured Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga in a period piece.
Thompson and Negga play old high school friends who have come back together. Both women are light skinned African American, but Thompson is married to a black doctor and Negga is pretending to be a white woman and she is married to a wealthy racist white man.
Once they meet back up, they become involved in each other’s life. Ruth Negga inserts herself into Thompson’s world in part because she missed the black culture that she had given up to pass as a white woman.
During this time, the strikingly beautiful Negga began to become close with Thompson’s husband (André Holland) and Thompson started to feel jealous as he began displaying tendencies that made Thompson suspicious and uneasy.
The performances in Passing are strong and the story flows pretty well. It is an intriguing concept that I did not know ever occurred. The film creates beautiful imagery as it is filmed in black and white, making Negga look even more like she was white. That helped create an illusion about the skin color of Ruth Negga, and her blonde hair made it all the mosre.
The ideas of the differences in race is very apparent in the movie, as the behavior of the different characters displays their feelings. Holland wants to inform his children about the dangers of living in Harlem, but Thompson wants them to stay children longer. These conversations are happening yet today in black homes and it is hard to grasp if you are white skinned.
This is a well done film that moves rapidly and has a sudden shock in the third act that will blow your mind.
We are up to the Best Director Award given out at EYG. We do not always match what the Oscars do since we focus in on some genre specific film more than the Academy does. Still… here are previous winners:
“All Right, Mr. Deville, I am Ready for my Close Up” Award for Best Director
Previous Winners: A.G. Inarritu (Birdman), Tim McCarthy (Spotlight), Damien Chazelle (La La Land), Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma), Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Spike Lee (Da 5 Bloods)
#12. Guillermo Del Toro, Nightmare Alley. Even though I was split with this movie, the atmosphere and direction cannot be blamed. De Toro did an admirable job.
#11. Wes Anderson, French Dispatch. The four stories told each required a deft hand and Wes Anderson brought his specific quirks to the film. It was a wonderful film.
#10. Sian Heder, CODA. The film on Apple TV + featured a family of deaf people with one daughter who can hear and wants to sing. The shots of the ASL and its use was important to the story.
#9. James Gunn, The Suicide Squad. James Gunn managed his large cast extremely well, although when you just kill a bunch of them off, maybe it is not handling it that much. This is way better than the first Suicide Squad film and much of the credit goes to Gunn.
#8. Kenneth Branagh, Belfast. I did not expect to love this movie as much as I do. Kenneth Branagh has a great touch at the young humor and the powerful images.
#7. Jon M. Chu, In the Heights. With such a massive cast and so many dance routines and songs, a musical of this scope requires a sound director and John Chu made In the Heights a classic.
#6. Chloé Zhao, Eternals. Last year’s Oscar winner, Chloé did a tremendous job with a huge cast of Marvel heroes that nobody really knew. The look of Eternals was not the issue people had with this film.
#5. Denis Villeneuve, Dune. Dune was a passion project for Villeneuve and it showed. One of the largest scale films of the year, it will be interesting to see what Denis does with the scheduled sequel.
#4. Steven Spielberg, West Side Story. Taking a beloved classic film and rebooting it for a new age is tough, but Spielberg is one of the greatest of all time. I actually liked this way more than I did the original.
#3. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tick, Tick…Boom. As a directorial debut, Lin-Manuel did a fantastic job with the dance numbers and songs of the musical. He placed Andrew Garfield in a position where he had to sing and only found out later that he could. Gutsy.
#2. Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog. A Netflix film with a great cast and a powerhouse story, all mixed into a Western. She has a complex tale with some wonderful characters and a top notch performance from Benedict Cumberbatch.
#1. Jon Watts, Spider-Man: No Way Home. He had to manage so much. Characters from other films. A bunch of story. Aunt May’s death. And he brought out the best performance we have ever seen from Tom Holland, and he brought out the best Spidey performance from Andrew Garfield and he brought out Willem Dafoe’s raw and powerful performance. I can’t wait to see Jon Watts with FF.
I had it in my head that this movie, A Boy Called Christmas, was an animated film instead of the live action film that it is. But I figured that I could do one more Christmas movie even though Christmas had passed.
I never anticipated this film hitting me as hard as it did.
A Boy Called Christmas is a story of hope, a story of love and a story of perseverance. It is filled with magic and mythology, packed to its brim.
Aunt Ruth (Maggie Smith) has to babysit for three precocious children whose mother was gone. Seeing that the children needed some magic, she told them a story about Nikolas (Henry Lawfull), a young lad whose mother had died and whose father (Michiel Huisman) was struggling. The village’s King (Jim Broadbent) offered a reward for anyone who could find some magic to renew hope in their land. Nikolas’s father departed with a group of other men in search of the mythical town of Elfhelm.
After awhile, as Nikolas was having troubles with his wicked Aunt Carlotta (Kristen Wiig), he took off with his mouse friend Miika (Stephen Merchant), who Nikolas had taught to speak, to try and find his father.
Nikolas met a reindeer who had been injured by an arrow, helped him out and named him Blitzen. Nikolas found the village but discovered that the elves are mad because a group of humans had kidnapped a child elf.
Nikolas took off to try and find his father and save the child.
Honestly, I am not a huge fan of Christmas. I haven’t been for years, but this film is so filled with magic and emotion that you cannot help but love it. It does take a little while to get going and I was disappointed with Kristen Wiig’s character, but once this gets underway, A Boy Called Christmas pushes all the buttons. It is a beautiful origin story for Father Christmas and it has some totally powerful and legitimately painful moments. This is not just a movie for kids. This deals with serious topics, including grief.
The wonderful Dame Maggie Smith has the best quote of the film when she said, ” Grief is the price we pay for love, and worth it a million times over” which, of course, immediately made me think of Vision’s classic quote from earlier this year, “What is grief, if not love, persevering?” These are wonderful quotes to help approach the concept of loss for kids. Something this movie does extremely well.
You can add this to Klaus as classic Christmas movies to watch on Netflix. A Boy Called Christmas is everything that is great about Christmastime.
Animation was pretty good in 2021. There were several decent films and the worst of the animation was really combination live action/animation.
And with that, we’ll start with the worst of the animated movies.
Worst Animation: America: The Motion Picture.
I heard such good things about this and I thought it was such a horrid, disgusting film, with mean-spirited humor and filled with hatred. More vicious than satire, I will never feel the need to revisit this piece of “history”
Dis-Honorable Mentions: The two live-action/animation mash-ups were Tom and Jerry and Peter Rabbit2. Both are huge flops and so unfunny. The other animated film that I did not enjoy at all this year was The Addams Family 2. I disliked the first one and the sequel did not improve much. I was disappointed in Encanto, but that is one that I am hoping to revisit on Disney + before school restarts. I have a feeling this will be one that I like more on a second viewing.
Previous winners:
EYG Frame Award- Best Animation
Previous Winners:Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Coco, Moana, Inside Out, Big Hero 6, Flashpoint Paradox, Paranorman, Winnie the Pooh, Klaus, Wolfwalkers
Best Animated Movie: Mitchells vs. the Machines
The biggest surprise in animation this year is Mitchells vs. the Machines from Netflix. Produced by Lord and Miller, this was funny, brilliant animation, full of color and bright imagery and a banging story of family and love and fun.
Honorable Mentions: Luca started the year off with a solid Pixar film, but I just thought it was not quite up to par. Batman Long Halloween came in two parts to the specialty market. Raya & the Last Dragon is another wonderful Disney release. Wish Dragon was another Netflix animation that was fantastic. I just saw Ron’s Gone Wrong on Disney +. It was a very enjoyable story with fun characters. I really enjoyed the music of Sing 2 this past weekend.
Best Animation in Television
We’ve added the TV category once again. Here are the top 4.
#4. Hit Monkey. I am still working on this. It is fun, bloody Marvel fun.
#3. Masters of the Universe: Revelations. I don’t care what the internet said, Kevin Smith’s adaptation was a lot of fun and exciting adventure.
#2. Invincible. Amazon Prime’s comic adaptation was shockingly good and bloody as could be.
#1. What If…?
Marvel Studios’ first animated series looks to be important in the MCU after all. We get great voice work from a bunch of returning MCU actors and The Watcher! Vision as Ultron? T’Challa Star Lord? Captain Carter? Evil Doctor Strange (who looks as if he is going to be in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in May). What If…? has been renewed for season two and the possibilities are endless.
After watching the 2003 movie Monster starring Charlize Theron this morning, I went flailing down the rabbit hole. I watched a 1992 documentary by Nick Broomfield called Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer that looked upon the life of the subject from the movie, Aileen Wuornos, popularly known as the first female serial killer.
However, as I was looking over the information on the documentary, I discovered that Nick Broomfield made a second doc with Aileen Wuornos as a topic, this time entitled Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. I figured this would put a bow on the day’s topic and so down the rabbit hole I went.
Whereas The Selling of a Serial Killer was showing how the people in Aileen’s life, her adopted family, her lawyer, were using the tale to make money, there was less of that here. Steve, Aileen’s original lawyer does make a return to the documentary during a hearing to attempt to get a new trial for Aileen on grounds that his representation was ineffective (and Steve was considerably less out there than he was in the first doc) but we also go to see Nick Broomfield take the stand to defend the doc itself.
There was a lot of rehashing the first documentary in the early part of Life and Death of a Serial Killer, but it found its voice about midway through as Nick was granted several interviews with Aileen herself and he came out with some golden moments.
She said that everything she had said about self defense was not true, that everything they had said about her killing in cold blood was true and that she wanted to make sure that she was not lying as she was preparing to meet God after the execution.
Then, the most gripping moment came when she thought that Nick was no longer recording. She whispered to him that she had to say these things and that it was self-defense because she wanted Nick to continue her message about the crooked cops that she believed allowed her to continue to kill people.
At this point, the film began to focus on the fact that Aileen had left reality, that she had gone crazy, but that the execution would still press on. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush continued to push for the execution (it was implied that he was doing so because of an upcoming election). A state appointed psychologist was sent into see Aileen and, according to Nick, spent 15 minutes with Aileen and determined that she was mentally fit to face her execution.
Watching the lunacy come and go from her face during the times Nick was interviewing her was amazing. She was obviously paranoid about the police and their responsibility in her crimes. Nick had talked to her birthmother and when he mentioned her to Aileen, she transformed into pure hatred. Her eyes were dark and frighteningly full. It was the most uneasy moment of the entire doc.
After spending just a little time with her on the screen, I can not understand how anyone could consider her mentally capable. I suppose in a legal manner, that she knew what she was doing was wrong was what would have been used to determine but watching her change from friendly woman happy to see Nick to a raving firebrand whose eyeballs seemed to be bulging from her skull.
Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Her final words were read in a statement: “I’m sailing with the Rock, and I’ll be back. Like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I’ll be back, I’ll be back.”
After watching Monster with Charlize Theron this morning, I was interested in learning more about Aileen “Lee” Wuornos and the true story that Monster was based upon. I found a documentary from 1992 on YouTube from filmmaker Nick Broomfield.
This documentary spent more time dealing with the time period of Aileen Wuornos was in prison and was awaiting for her time on Death Row, with the murders she committed being used as a background to the story.
Part of the documentary focused on the people who were in Wuornos’s life, a religious fanatic Arlene Pralle, who legally adopted Wuornos and wound up giving the accused serial killer advise that may not have been in her best interest. We also meet Wuornos’s attorney, Steven Glazer, was a bizarre and clearly questionable lawyer for Wuornos. His continual guitar playing and song singing made this guy look vey much like a reaper.
In fact, there sure seemed to be a focus here on a group of people who were more concerned in cashing in on the infamy of Aileen Wuornos than they were in giving her the best representation possible or support in the final days of her life. It seemed very much so that these people were vultures attracted by the corpse that would be America’s first female serial killer, as Wuornos was dubbed.
The interview at the end of the doc with Aileen was compelling and she said some things that made a lot of sense. I am not saying that she came off as innocent, because she did not, but there are some factors, especially with the testimony from her first trial, that could have changed the outcome of the trial.
We heard a lot more from other people about Aileen and they all felt as if they had their own motives for doing what they were doing. Honestly, Aileen came off in her own interview as easily manipulated and maybe even somewhat confused. The fact that she was on record making negative comments in courts including swearing and threats did not help her case at all.
This doc makes a great companion piece to Monster and gives the case even more potential depth.
This was a tough one to watch the day after Christmas.
Monster is the story of Aileen Wuornos, a Daytona Beach prostitute that became a serial killer, who would lure men in and kill them for their money and cars. Patty Jenkins wrote and directed this biopic about Wuornos (Charlize Theron) and her relationship with Selby (Christina Ricci).
I’m not sure the definition of a serial killer fits in this case, at least from what the movie lays out, but the deep, layered performance from Charlize Theron was easily the standout part of this movie.
Theron is practically unrecognizable as Aileen, a battered and abused woman looking for a way to survive in life. After meeting Selby, Aileen attempted to leave the hooking profession and go straight, but her lack of skills and education doomed that dream immediately and Aileen’s brashness and bluntness rubbed people the wrong way.
So when she returned to turning tricks to raise money to support Selby and herself, she found herself in a violent encounter with a man who had a gun. This first incident was self-defense, but she seemed to realize that she could get ahead killing these men.
Monster is a powerfully painful story of a woman who never had a chance. Charlize Theron is completely lost in the role, and she creates a tragic character out of this horrendous person who wound up being executed in 2002. Christina Ricci adds her own excellent work to the quieter role of Selby, whose relationship with Aileen drove the narrative.
The scene where Aileen killed a name named Horton (Scott Wilson, Herschel from the Walking Dead) was a painful and horrible scene. The man Horton was such a kind hearted man who was just trying to help this woman whom he saw as needing his assistance and, because her gun slipped out into sight, she had to kill him. It was a gut wrench of a scene.
Charlize Theron rightfully won the Academy Award for this performance. She transformed into this woman, having very little of Theron’s known beauty. The transformation is mind boggling and the performance was chilling. Theron’s talents should ever be doubted.
This movie has been on the watch list since the DailyView began back in April but the timing never worked out. When I extended the DailyView to be 365 days, I placed the image of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon on the banner so that I would make sure not to skip it.
Walk the Line is the biopic of country/rock music legend, Johnny Cash with a heavy part of the biopic focusing on the relationship Cash had with his eventual wife June Carter Cash.
Johnny Cash faced a lot of conflict in his life which led him to his marriage with June. Johnny went through drug problems, a violent temper, father (Robert Patrick) issues, the death of his older brother (Lucas Till) when he was a child, divorce, jail. Johnny Cash dealt with his demons with his music and the relationship to June Carter and she stuck by him despite his bad behavior.
Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon were brilliant in these roles, both receiving Oscar nominations for them. Witherspoon took home the Academy Award for June Carter. The film absolutely rested on the powerhouse performances by both of these two actors in the challenging life of the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Famer.
The music was excellent as well. Both Phoenix and Wetherspoon did their own singing for Walk the Line, the soundtrack winning a Grammy. Their roles are not an imitation of the iconic duo, but they bring the essence of John and June Carter Cash to the screen in many elegant and some not-so elegant ways.
A shout out should also go to Ginnifer Goodwin for her efforts in the role of Vivian Cash. She brought some serious acting chops into that role (and eventually went into Storybrooke as Snow White in Once Upon a Time). Goodwin was tremendous opposite Phoenix as Johnny’s first wife.
It was about time that this film made the DailyView. It is an exceptional biopic. There have been some controversy that they ignored a lot of Johnny Cash’s life and omitted some of the political aspects of his world, but it is not as if there was not already rich material to use. Walk the Line is excellent.
There have been a ton of horror movies again this year. Horror has had a renaissance over the last few years and there have been some high concept horror that have been great. There have also been several horror films that did not reach the levels you might hope for.
Let’s start with…
The Worst Horror Movie of 2021: The Devil Below
It has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Admittedly only 11 reviews, but still, 0%? The film deals with coal miners and their heading into an underground area in an abandoned place nestled deep in Appalachian country. They find something there that is deadly. Could it be…
Or not. Maybe just some horrible CGI demon of some sort. Either way it was not memorable and not enjoyable.
Dis-Honorable Mentions: There was a new Paranormal Activity movie called Next of Kin which did not feel like a Paranormal Activity movie at all. Unholy featured a hearing impaired girl who was supposed able to heal people after being approached by the Virgin Mary. Or maybe not. Could it be Satan, Again? Don’t Breathe 2 tried to make me cheer and root for the mass murderer/rapist from the first film. Didn’t want to do that. Spiral: From the Book of Saw was a film I saw coming. The Forever Purge lacked the power of some of the franchises previous films. Halloween Kills was such a disappointment and a bad, bad film.
Previous Winners:
Best Horror Movie
Previous Winners: A Quiet Place, It, Don’t Breathe, It Follows, The Conjuring, As Above So Below, Cabin in the Woods, Doctor Sleep, Black Box
Best Horror Movie(s) of 2021: Fear Street trilogy
This may be cheating, but I am connecting all three films, Fear Street 1994, 1978 and 1666, together as a trilogy. This three week release strategy on Netflix was awesome and the quality of the three films had me looking forward to the next Friday almost immediately.
Honorable Mention: I almost gave this award to PG: Psycho Gorman from Shudder. It was one of the most entertaining films, not just horror films, of the year. Antlers featured a fantastic performance from young Jeremy T. Thomas. Willy’s Wonderland showed Nic Cage in a role where he didn’t speak. A Quiet Place 2 was a solid sequel, though not up to the first one. Last Night in Soho was a supernatural story of two time periods. Just saw Lucky, also on Shudder, and it was a new take on slasher movies with a shock end.
Adam McKay’s new satire on Netflix is going to split the viewers apart because it parodies plenty of current issues. To be fair, and I am not sure some will be such, it does not make either side look great. There was enough satire to go around.
Astronomy professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) made a startling discovery. There was a massive comet heading straight at the earth, preparing to strike the planet in 6 months, which would lead to a catastrophic event.
They went to see United States President Orlean (Meryl Streep) with their concerns only to be rebuked and told that their comet would be something that they would observe and reassess. This led to Mindy and Dibiasky to begin their own media campaign to get the message out to the public.
The whole comet about to hit the earth became a giant analogy for the COVID-19 struggles, with our science vs. disbelief with Mindy taking the role of Dr. Fauci. Dr. Mindy was not free of being parodied as DiCaprio took that character to several questionable moments, including an affair with a talk show host from the Daily Rip, Brie (Cate Blanchett).
Not only was the COVID response skewered by this movie, so was social media and what becomes important. Celebrity stories outweighing important news and the public turning events into memes are all over the film.
Jonah Hill played White House Chief of Staff and son of President Orlean, Jason, an obvious shot toward Donald Trump Jr. and some of the other nepotism that went on during that administration. But Trump was not the administration that had some shots fired. There was a photo on her desk of President Orlean hugging Bill Clinton.
The film shoots at the extremely wealthy and their disregard for the climate of the world in order to become even wealthier. Mark Rylance played a character named Peter Isherwell, who convinces President Orlean to mine the comet before breaking it away from orbit.
Political messages are another target here. When Dr. Mindy could see the comet in the sky, he started a campaign about just looking to the sky and, in response, we saw huge campaign rallies, led by President Orlean, with the message “Don’t Look Up.”
There may be too much satire in the story, as things get kind of ridiculous. The sad part is it also felt too real and familiar. I think McKay should have balanced out the satirical elements a bit more so his message didn’t become so obvious. He is going to lose people who claim he is “preaching” to them, even though, as I said earlier, there was enough mockery to go around.
There was a huge cast and some of the actors that I haven’t mentioned yet include Tyler Perry, Rob Morgan, Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Himesh Patel and Michael Chiklis.
As I said, I don’t think the audience will look past some of the divisiveness in Don’t Look Up, but I found it a funny, dark comedy with some real laugh out loud moments.
I meant to watch this first thing this morning for the DailyView, but I woke up to the internet connection being out. Not sure how long the internet would be out, I watched one of the Studio Ghibli films off DVD. However, it was not too long after I finished watching that movie that the internet returned. So I wrote the review for The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and then I went to Netflix for El Camino Christmas.
I had seen the Rotten Tomatoes score for the film and it was at 40%. My expectations were low.
I really enjoyed this movie. I found it funny, filled with some awesome characters with a fantastic cast.
Eric Norris (Luke Grimes) arrived in El Camino, Nevada hoping to find the father who deserted him as a baby. Unfortunately, his trip led him to a drunken former vet Larry Roth (Tim Allen). Meanwhile, crooked local law officer Carl Hooker (Vincent D’Onofrio) and his idiot partner Deputy Billy Calhoun (Dax Shepard) arrest Eric on suspicion of meth dealing, and Carl beats Eric up trying to get a confession.
To avoid the potential police brutality charge that was coming, Billy let Eric loose. Eric was seen by Carl and they engaged in a car chase. This ended up with Eric inside a Liquor store with Carl, shot in the leg by Larry, the owner of the store Vicente (Emilio Rivera), liquor store worker Kate Daniels (Michelle Mylett) and her five-year old son Seth (Ashton Essex Bright), turning into a hostage situation.
Sheriff Bob Fuller (Yearwood Smith) is out front with Billy, keep control of the crazed situation that was only being escalated by the local police intervention.
I really enjoyed this movie as it went from straight comedy to a thriller with some tense moments. It even takes some time to take the potentially one note Carl and give him some character motivation that makes sense and creates an understanding of why Carl is the way he is. Vincent D’Onofrio is great as always and brings a level to Carl that a less talented actor may not have been able to do.
Tim Allen is better here than I have seen him in a long time and he plays a character unlike any other Tim Allen character I have seen before.
This was dark and funny, with engaging characters in a terrible situation. It was not what I expected, but I like this a lot.
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EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 