I finished off the four Wes Anderson shorts on Netflix that adapted stories from Roald Dahl tonight with Poison, a short that was both funny and ridiculously intense.

Benedict Cumberbatch played Harry, a British man in India who had a poisonous snake slither onto his chest and go to sleep as he laid on his bed. Woods, played and narrated by Dev Patel, rushed for help from Doctor Ganderbai, played by Ben Kingsley, while Harry tried to stay completely still and quiet.

This was beautifully played by the three main actors in the short. Their interactions and reactions to the situation was glorious. There were several times that I laughed out loud, even though I had that same feeling of trying not to make any noise.

However, the end of the short left a bit to be desired by me. I don’t want to spoil it, but to say that the ending was not what I would have wanted is clear.

In fact, before the end of the short, I would have placed this at the top of the list of the four Wes Anderson shorts released on Netflix, but with the conclusion of Poison, I found that lacking.

This was a cool experiment with the four shorts released on the streamer. These were all very entertaining and great to watch.

4 stars

Moving back a week on the release calendar because of Taylor Swift next week, The Exorcist: Believer was released as a sort of sequel to the original classic horror film from 1973. Blumhouse gave the reigns of this new version of the franchise to David Gordon Green, who was behind the recent Halloween trilogy.

Sadly, this film was about as good as those Halloween movies.

Two young girls, Angela (Lidya Jewett), and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), walked from school, going into the woods and disappeared. Angela’s father Victor (Leslie Odom Jr) desperately tried to find his daughter. Three days later, the girls returned without knowing how long they were missing.

It does not take long to realize that there was something terribly wrong with the girls. Ann Dowd played Ann, who directed Victor to go see Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) who was an expert in the possible situation.

I’ll start off with the good things about the movie, because this was not a total failure in my opinion. The two little girls did a nice job with their performances. I enjoyed Leslie Odom Jr. a lot. He carried himself as a star.

The start of the film spent a decent amount of time building the character of Angela and Victor. Of course, the film did almost nothing for Katherine or her family. They were just there.

That is about it. The film’s story was derivative. There was nothing different or new about the film, outside of the fact there were two possessed children instead of one. Very original (sarcasm).

Ellen Burstyn was forced into the story in an attempt to make this connect to the original. Burstyn played the mother in the original The Exorcist and she is so wasted in this movie. She was barely in the film. In fact, most of her appearance in the film was found in the trailer.

The ending of this movie was just terrible. I did not like that third act at all. No spoilers, but it did not work for me at all.

Overall, I did not hate myself for watching this, but I did not enjoy the film. I am not sure why this is considered a sequel to The Exorcist because it could have been any generic possession movie. There was nothing new or worthwhile about doing it.

2.4 stars

Spoilers

I watched the third of the four new live action shorts from Wes Anderson on Netflix, shorts that adapted work from author Roald Dahl.

Tonight’s film was The Swan, and it had the same original presentation that the other two films that I had watched so far on the streaming service. The actors, in this case, Rupert Friend, was our narrator and walked through the story. I love this style for these shorts as the narrators seem to be telling us the story and we see other actors almost pantomiming the situations as he explained it.

There was not much of a cast behind him though. Only a young boy named Asa Jennings who played the main character, Peter Watson. Peter was tormented by a pair of bullies who wound up killing a swan and strapping the wings to Peter, forcing him up a tree in an attempt to fly.

I was quite engaged with this story, which was fairly shocking to me. When they made poor Peter lay down on the train tracks as he was tied up, I was really rooting for these bullies to get there’s. Sadly, that did not happen, which left me a bit empty after the end of the short. It did feel like one of those darker endings that Roald Dahl was known for.

Three for three so far with these Wes Anderson shorts.

4 stars

The second of the live action shorts from Wes Anderson adapting short stories from Roald Dahl that I watched on Netflix was called The Rat Catcher and it was amazing.

The Wes Anderson/Roald Dahl combination has been a successful one as Anderson seemingly adapts the darkness and humor of Dahl extremely well.

According to IMDB, “In an English village, a reporter and a mechanic listen to a rat catcher explain his clever plan to outwit his prey.”

This featured Ralph Fiennes as the Rat Man, Richard Ayoade as the Editor and Rupert Friend as Claud.

I loved how the story was told. I felt like laughing every time one of the three actors looked directly at the camera. They all three shared the narration responsibility depending on what was going down in the story.

The three actors also did a magnificent job of presenting the story in a specific manner. They used pantomime with some of the props that they used as well as some animation on a particular rat.

The Rat Man was a disturbing character, even though there was not a lot of special effects involved. Even the amount of costuming was kept at a minimum as the narration did most of the heavy lifting in creating an image in the audience’s head.

Overall, I liked this a lot, even more than I liked the previous one I watched, which was The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.

4.1 stars

I was watching a YouTube video with Dan Murrell today and he made a mention of a short film called The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. I was then surprised later when I pulled up Netflix and there it was.

The new short was 38 minutes long and was directed by Wes Anderson. This was faithfully adapted from a long short story by Roald Dahl.

Henry Sugar was played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and several Wes Anderson regulars appear in the film including Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade.

This felt like a great blend of Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl. The Fantastic Mr. Fox was a previous Dahl story adapted by Anderson.

I loved how this was presented and the style of storytelling was great.

4 stars

Gareth Edwards’s latest film is a massive sci-fi epic which is a strictly original film, not based on any preexisting content. One of the most impressive feats of the film is the fact that the budget of this film is reportedly around $80 million and they give us an unbelievably beautiful film with special effects everywhere. How did they do it and why can’t other films create such an amazing story at this price tag. It would help make the box office so much easier for films if they did not have to constantly make $500 + million to break even.

How about the movie? It was really good.

According to IMDB, “Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua (John David Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war-and mankind itself.”

John David Washington does a great job as your lead, Joshua. He played his role beautifully and was able to bring life tp a character that could have been a typical sci-fi character. He was able to bring way more to Joshua than you would expect.

And Madeleine Yuna Voyles, a young 9-year old actor in her first movie appearance ever, absolutely stole the film. She was completely brilliant as Alphie, the ‘weapon’ created to help end the war between humankind and the A.I.s. This little girl brought so much emotion and heart to her role that she dominated every scene, She had a great connection with Washington which was so essential to the movie. She gave a fantastic performance.

The special effects were out of this world. It was so spectacular that I am so shocked that the budget was what it was. I already talked about that, but the look of this movie is absolutely a huge piece of the film and should be considered for Oscar nominations for special effects.

The film does get a little long and the storyline was okay, but it did have a ton of intriguing ideas dealing with the human condition and how humans reacted to threats. There are not as many themes dealing with A.I. despite what you may think.

Overall, this was a wonderfully epic film with a great pair of performances, beautifully constructed in a futuristic world that we could certainly see one day. Sci-fi fans should love this and I do think it transcends the genre with a truly emotional ending.

4.1 stars

Creepy, creepy, creepy!

No One Will Save You is a new sci-fi/horror film that is currently streaming on Hulu, and, I have got to tell you, it was a seriously scary, creepy film that left me a little uneasy after seeing it.

Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is a young, isolated girl who lived in her deceased mother’s house while everyone in the town treated her like a pariah. Brynn was dealing with anxiety and guilt over something that happened when she was younger that turned the town against her.

Then, one night, a home invasion turned out to be extraterrestrial in nature and Brynn has to desperately struggle against a variety of alien creatures to survive.

The gimmick of the movie is that there is almost zero dialogue in the entire 90 minute movie which creates a feel of anxiety and stress throughout. I wasn’t sure if she was mute as the film went along but it got to the point where you could see that she was not speaking because of what had happened in her childhood.

The sounds that were used in this movie, from the score to the sound design was epic and helped create that mood that the film was targeting.

The alien design is cool for the most part. Some are fairly typical aliens that you might see on the X-Files but there are a couple that are really scary and unsettling.

Kaitlyn Dever does an admirable job in this movie as Brynn, who spends nearly the entire runtime of the film without any dialogue. She had to express so much with her face and eyes and she does it beautifully. This could be a star making performance for her.

This was a mind-bending horror film that does a great job of building atmosphere and keeping the audience off-kilter. This was a good time with a neat idea that took a lot of the concepts in original ways.

4.25 stars

After the bad film Expend4bles in the morning, I was really hoping that the second movie of the day would be better. Thankfully, I was entertained considerably more by Dumb Money than I was with that other film.

According to Imdb, “Dumb Money is the ultimate David vs. Goliath tale, based on the insane true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (yes, the mall videogame store) into the world’s hottest company. In the middle of everything is regular guy Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock and posting about it. When his social posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets rich – until the billionaires fight back, and both sides find their worlds turned upside down“

This true story that took place during the heart of the pandemic was amazing and really showed a conflict between the big money and the small investing individuals during this time over the GameStop stock. The movie focused in on several of the individuals and their own stories as well as Keith Gill, who was the driving force behind the movement through his online social media posts.

Paul Dano is excellent as always as the man who “just likes the stock” and who made millions through the stock market. Seth Rogen and Sebastian Stan are great as billionaires on the other side who were looking for a way to squash the online grassroots movement. There is a great cast here as well as those actors including Pete Davidson, Anthony Ramos, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Myha’la Herrold, Clancy Brown, Kate Burton, Shailene Woodley, and Talia Ryder.

Some of the technical aspects of the stock purchase is a touch complicated and could confuse some, but I feel as if the director, Craig Gillespie, does a decent job of making it accessible.

This was a lot of fun and enjoyable film and it told me about a story that I did not know about that had just happened in the recent past.

4.1 stars

I was not much of a fan of any of the previous Expendables franchise, though there were none that I truly hated. I did not want a fourth film, but you never know. Perhaps it is a good one after all.

Well, after seeing this, I can say that it is not a good one. Not even close. In fact, it is easily the worst of the franchise.

The Expendables are off on a mission to try and prevent a terrorist from getting his hands on nuclear detonators. When that mission goes south, the team deals with a loss and Christmas (Jason Statham) has to go rogue to prevent the dangerous situation.

There really is not much of a story. There is a mole inside the organization, but it was painfully apparent whom that was. Something happened in the first act that was so clearly not what happened that you were just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The dialogue of this movie was utter crap. It was legitimately some of the worst written dialogue that I have ever heard. It was meant to make Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham seem like they have fun banter, but it was so eye-rollingly bad that it only served to make me dislike these two characters all the more.

And the remaining characters I couldn’t care one thing about because the movie didn’t give me any reason to care for any of them. Megan Fox looks great, but her character is lacking any sort of personality. Andy Garcia, the new boss, is a nothing character. Randy Couture and Dolph Lundgren were old and looked it. 50 Cent, Jacob Scipio, and Levy Tran all have newer characters that I have no idea who they are or why I should care about them. The only one with any sort of characterization is Tony Jaa, and that was basically because he looked cool.

The green screen was obscenely noticeable for a film from 2023. The action was consisting of a lot of shaky cam and boring gunplay. Even some of the martial arts was not up to par, considering some of the top notch martial artists that they had in the film.

I would have considered this the worst movie of the year, but I did watch Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey this year and, while this is horrible, it does not reach that level of bad.

0.5 stars

I saw a trailer for this earlier in the year, but it never came around to any theaters in my area. I figured it would arrive some day on streaming. The other day, I found it on Hulu and I was excited to get a chance to watch it.

Filmed as a mockumentary, Theater Camp is a comedy directed by first time directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman.

According to IMDB, “As summer rolls around again, kids are gathering from all over to attend AdirondACTS, a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York that’s a haven for budding performers. After its indomitable founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma, her clueless “crypto-bro” son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) is tasked with keeping the thespian paradise running. With financial ruin looming, Troy must join forces with Amos (Ben Platt), Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), and their band of eccentric teachers to come up with a solution before the curtain rises on opening night.”

This was a lot of fun. It was very funny and had a plethora of characters that fit into the idea of a theater camp. While I am not a theater camp kid, I have a feeling that those who were would really relate to the situations presented here.

There were very top notch comedic performances throughout, led by Ben Platt and Molly Gordon. The kids in the film all do an awesome job, carrying a lot of the musical numbers, especially in the finale.

There is a lot of absurdity in the situations in play during the movie, but they all feel more like truth than parody.

Theater Camp was funny and breezy quick, with an enjoyable first two acts and, dare I say, an inspirational third act. It was definitely worth the wait. I would have liked to have seen this in a theater with a crowd instead of at home, but it does work anyway.

3.8 stars

This is the third film in the series featuring director Kenneth Branagh adapting Agatha Christie’s classic detective character Hercule Poirot. We have seen Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, both of which were fine, if unremarkable. The next film was A Haunting in Venice, based on Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party.

A Haunting in Venice, however, is definitely my favorite of the three films by far.

Poirot has retired from detective work, practically removing himself from society in Venice, despite people hanging out outside his home hoping to get him to work cases.

When his old friend, author Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who had made Poirot famous with her novels, came to see him, she asked Poirot to accompany her to attempt to debunk a psychic named Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh).

The psychic was brought to a haunted house in Venice where a young girl (Alicia Drake) had committed suicide and her mother (Kelly Reilly) was desperate to contact her again.

The film did a fantastic job creating the mood. There was so much tension and anxiety throughout the story. Some of the shots from Branagh created an amazing feel, a claustrophobic or uneasy sense for the viewer.

Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Hercule Poirot has been the highlight of all three of these movies. Branagh and his mustache are the stars of this story. I love how the story incorporates Poirot’s own troubles and self-doubts from years of challenges and stress. He had lost himself from the years and part of this movie is the attempt to find his mojo.

The ensemble cast of the film is great, including Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Alicia Drake, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Camille Cottin, Riccardo Scamarcio and Amir El-Masry.

The mystery really worked well. I loved how the pieces of the story was revealed slowly through the interrogations of Poirot and his superstar observations. Even when you believe that Poirot was not firing on all cylinders because there was something supernatural going on, he comes through big time.

This movie is creepy, stylistic, and filled with suspense. I have very little to criticize here. I can see some people may think it is a little slow with some of the scenes, but not for me. For me, this was paced beautifully. There were amazing shots of Venice and individual shots that were constructed with purpose and artistic flair. A Haunting in Venice was an excellent film.

4.75 stars

A few years ago there was a 2014 horror movie that I hated called Ouija. Two years later there was a sequel to that terrible movie called Ouija: Origin of Evil and I went to it expecting another flaming pile of crap, but it turned out that the sequel was considerably more entertaining.

This is what I had hoped for with The Nun II. I disliked The Nun, a film from the Conjuring universe, very much as it made #5 on my year-end list of worst movies.

Sadly, though I do think this is better than the first one, The Nun II is most likely still on target for the 2023 worst movies list.

Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) returned to face off with the Valak, the evil nun, who is in search of an artifact that would give the demon more power.

There are so many dumb things that happen here and the story just does not work very well for me. I will admit there are some cool scenes, such as the newspaper stand. Unfortunately, those were in the trailers (as many of the best moments were) so the shock value was not there now.

I was really bored for the first part of the film. Things picked up a bit as it moved along, but there was nothing new or interesting to carry the story early.

Taissa Farmiga did a decent job and it was cool to see Storm Reid as Sister Irene’s ‘sidekick’ Debra, even though Debra had nothing to do.

This was not a film that I enjoyed much, though the film looked good. It was a step up from the garbage pile of the first film though.

1.8 stars

This was a weird and bizarre farce of a movie, which I enjoyed very much.

Bottoms is a teen sex comedy, in the veins of American Pie or Porky’s, but taking the genre in a new and over-the-top way. I literally wondered aloud about several of the details that I saw in this film that at times felt like a parody or a satire of the type of film.

PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) were two young girls who came up with a plan to start a “fight club” at their high school in an attempt to sleep with their crushes from the cheerleading team.

The thing is the world that they exist in is so bizarre that it seems more like a dream. In fact, the first five-ten minutes, I kept waiting for a character to awaken. They did not though.

The football players always wore their football uniforms (including shoulder pads) even at school. Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch) was a teacher going through his own problems so he did not seem to care about anything else. The whole school and town culture treated quarterback Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) as if he could do no wrong and he and the other football players ran the school.

There were so many of these little details that the entire story felt ridiculous, but in the good way. It definitely did not prevent this movie from doing silly things because common sense says you wouldn’t do it. There were even a couple of jokes that I cringed on because it felt as if these jokes were not appropriate. The film clearly did not believe that any topic was off limit and it approached it with some real guts.

Bottoms was very funny, but it did get fairly mean-spirited at times, which made it harder to laugh at some of the situations. As soon as I was able to get past the unrealistic aspects of the film, I was able to enjoy the warped nature more.

Directed by Emma Seligman, who directed 2020’s Shiva Baby (which also had Rachel Sennott), Bottoms played with the genre of teen sex comedies. There are a lot of the typical tropes in here, but everything is so weird that you are never sure how it is going to play out. Definitely an original film in the genre.

3.6 stars

Near the end of the movie, main character Mike said “It was a good little movie.”

Au contrare.

This is an adaptation of author R.L. Stine novel Zombie Town, which, much like his Goosebumps series of books, is meant to be targeted to young readers to give them an introduction to horror, so you can expect this film to be a younger skewing movie. Still, skewing young does not excuse a film from being so stupid.

Reclusive director/filmmaker Len Carver (Dan Aykroyd) lived in a town named for him, after disappearing and stopping creating zombie movies at his high point during the 70s. Today, Carver prepared a new film for release.

Mike (Marlon Kazadi) did not like zombie movies, but he did work at the theater that had the exclusive release. However, Mike was more interested in what the girl he had been crushing upon, Amy (Madi Monroe) was up to.

When Carver was dropping off the film the day before the big release, he was hit on the head and taken to the hospital. With the film in his possession, Mike texted Amy, who hurried over to the theater, asking to see it early. Though he was not sure if this was a good idea, Mike acquiesced and played the film for her. Instead of a film, there was just white light and some magical power that transformed the town into zombies.

Mike and Amy was not changed into zombies so they ran across the town in an attempt to figure out what was going on.

This had a ‘so bad, it’s okay’ feel to it as this conceivably could turn into one of those cult films that are shown like The Room or Samurai Cop. In fact, I feel as if this film would be extremely entertaining as a film shown by RiffTrax Live. It absolutely has that level of quality (or lack there of) to it.

It was intended to be funny, but, at best, I may have chuckled once or twice. Would a ten year old find it funnier than I did? Maybe, though I am not convinced of that.

Clearly, the budget on this was all for Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase because the zombie makeup was basically some dark eye liner and maybe some powder for the faces.

Some things happen that defy total explanation. For example, Carver never made the hospital, but the theater owner (Henry Czerny), who had been coming with him to the hospital and had changed into a zombie, actually drove the ambulance with Carver… and he drove it as a zombie. What?

Characters were inconsistent with their motives and their actions. Carver himself was a mess of contradictions, flip flopping all over the place.

I did think that Marlon Kazadi was okay as the lead. He did not have a lot of material that stretched his acting skills, but he did have a decent screen presence. He did not have much chemistry with Madi Monroe though and unfortunately, they were supposed to have plenty. Their relationship felt mean-spirited at times and seemed more like siblings than anything else.

I intended on watching this on Saturday after The Equalizer 3, but my plans changed and I decided to go today on Labor Day instead. It was a poor choice as this was an hour and a half that I won’t get back again. There are considerably better films to introduce young people to horror, including films from the oeuvre of R.L. Stine, like the Goosebumps films or the film by Guillermo Del Toro, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Don’t waste your time with this one.

1 star

Denzel Washington returned for a third time as former government assassin Robert McCall, in the action franchise film, The Equalizer 3, directed by Antoine Fuqua. The movie was originally loosely based on a CBS TV program from the late 1980s.

While on a case on Italy, McCall is wounded and ends up in Altamonte, a remote coast side Italian town, where a kindly doctor Enzo (Remo Girone) was nursing him back to health. With his injury forcing him to slow down, McCall started to appreciate the quiet life in the small Italian village.

Unfortunately, trouble was still around as a pair of brothers in the local mafia the Camorra, Vincent and Marco Quaranta (Andrea Scarduzio and Andrea Dodero) are involved in drug smuggling with a terrorist organization to raise money for their plans. McCall tips off the CIA, specifically Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning), creating suspicion among the agent.

All McCall wanted is to be able to be left alone and to keep the people of Altamonte safe. Sadly, this would not be possible.

I really enjoyed this movie, as there was a lot to like about it. Let me start with the negatives though because there are not a lot of them. The biggest issue is that the villains of this movie, the Quaranta brothers and their assembled hoodlums never felt like threats to McCall even a little bit. They are one note villains that I never believed would cause any real trouble for McCall. Every time McCall stepped up to anyone, he destroyed the fools. Even when he was wounded, it was from someone that he did not expect (no spoilers, but that moment when he is shot feels tacked on and did not provide any closure.

Other than that, this movie was great. It felt like a classic Western where you had an aging gunslinger who found a place where he wanted to live out his life in peace, only to have the danger/threats still find him, forcing him back into action. There is a bit of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven here, though that is a better film.

Denzel Washington is great here, though this does not feel like the character that we see in the first two Equalizer movies as much. I really thought Washington was excellent as the former assassin who wanted to just not have to use his violent skills, but would take any actions to protect the people around him. Denzel Washington is always good, but he feels totally comfortable in the skin of Robert McCall. You can see how much fun Washington is having with this role.

He has a nice, easy chemistry with CIA agent Collins. There is a pretty easily guessed connection between these characters but they have some excellent scenes together.

There is a ton of action in the film, even though a lot of times it is hard to believe. Everything is filmed beautifully and there are many scenes that look fantastic. The action choreography really works throughout, and the visuals are stunningly brutal, including some real gory moments. The contradiction of the violence and the peaceful moments of tranquility in the Italian village serve as a wonderful counter-balance.

I enjoyed The Equalizer 3 quite a bit. I’d go as far as to say I liked it more than the first two, which blend together in my head. Yes, the story has some cartoony nature to it and the villains are not threats, but the work from Denzel Washington is top notch and the action is wild to see.

4 stars