Category Archives: Doc’s Movie Reviews

A Complete Unknown

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I do like Bob Dylan, but I would not say that I love him. I enjoy some of his music and I got to enjoy him more when he became part of the Traveling Wilburys in the late 1980s. Even so, I was looking forward to this biopic A Complete Unknown from director James Mangold and starring Timothée Chalamet.

I had an undeniably good time with this movie as I was completely entertained.

This film takes a look at Dylan’s life and career spanning from 1961 until 1964. The first part of the film is the typical musical biopic with many of the same beats that you see in all of these, but, in the second part of the film, the story becomes less about Bob Dylan and his genius at writing and creating music, and more about his change from the basic folk music style into something more electric, which caused a great deal of anxiety among the folk community and the fans of the world.

If you excuse the pun, Timothée Chalamet is electric with his performance of the enigmatic musician. He absolutely becomes Bob Dylan and he does an amazing job here, as Chalamet not only acts, but he plays the guitar and sings the songs. And he does all of this with a wonderful proficiency that never breaks the illusion that he is building as Bob Dylan. It is an Oscar-worthy performance in my opinion.

The cast around Chalamet is sensational too. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger does a fantastic job as Dylan’s mentor before he pulls away when Dylan added electric guitar to his repertoire. Boyd Holbrook has a precious few scenes that he completely dominates as Johnny Cash. Scoot McNairy played a sick and unable to talk Woody Guthrie, an idol to Dylan and someone who inspired Dylan to push on. Monica Barbaro played folk singer Joan Baez, who carried on an affair with Dylan but struggled with some of his choices and Elle Fanning played Dylan’s girlfriend Sylvie, whose performance was fine, but whose character did not make a lot of sense and so was the weakest part of an amazing film.

The music of Bob Dylan (and a few others) was used brilliantly to keep the energy of the film flying through most of the two hour and twenty minute runtime. I could not stop tapping my toes or singing under my breath with the music as we got all of Bob Dylan’s classics from the time period (one of my favorites- Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door came out in 1973).

Admittedly, we do not go into too much depth of the characters in the film. We do not learn anything about Bob Dylan that wasn’t common knowledge, but I do not think that was a negative necessarily. There is an aura around Bob Dylan and this movie definitely creates that aura around Timothée Chalamet.

I loved this movie and I think it has a chance to make the top 10 of the year in a few days when I make the list. It is certainly going to find its way on the top 30 list for sure. I found this thoroughly entertaining and engrossing and I loved hearing this music. I was impressed with the performances, with Chalamet standing out as a major success.

4.85 stars

Elton John: Never Too Late

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Elton John is one of the greatest musicians from the 1970s and early ’80s, and there have been several versions about his life from A Life in Song to Rocketman. The latest Elton John documentary came to Disney + this month called Elton John: Never Too Late.

Fans of Elton John should love this documentary. The music is a highlight as they use some of his greatest songs as a soundtrack for the doc. There are moments in Elton John’s life that could have had more details developed within the doc.

Some of my own personal favorite parts of the doc included the section involving John Lennon, the details surrounding Elton John’s suicide attempt and his initial relationship with Bernie Taupin.

I also enjoyed how the doc used animated sections to visualize a series of interviews or tape recording that were used in the doc for the first time. Some of the pain from Elton John’s life was tough to hear and I appreciate how he was willing to go into the story for the doc.

I did enjoy the new song, ‘Never Too Late’ with Brandi Carlile, that played over the credits of the documentary.

This was an engaging documentary, but it could have gone into more depth than it did. However, it does touch on some things that are intriguing and the music is fantastic.

3.85 stars

A Different Man

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As the year is coming to an end, I went to Fandango At Home to see if I could find several films that I missed during 2024. I picked up a few rentals to watch over the next couple of days. The first one I watched was A Different Man, an A24 film starring Sebastian Stan and directed by Aaron Schimberg.

According to IMDB, “Aspiring actor Edward (Sebastian Stan) undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance, but his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.“

There are many A24 films that are like this one, though different. There are wild, bizarre situations that seem to be taken in a normal, typical way. In this case, there is a sci-fi technique that led to Edward, who had Neurofibromatosis- a genetic condition that sees tumors grow on the body, to fixing his face, and it just was a way to change his appearance in the film.

Stan was excellent as the twitchy, malformed Edward. His change of facial appearance did not truly change him at all. It just opened some areas up to Edward, but he was just as uncertain and shaky as he ever was.

Adam Pearson played Oswald, another misshapen man, who brought himself into the play Edward was working in and kind of took over the stage. Pearson was amazing in the role and he had a complex character who seemed to be trying to take over the play while still being extremely likable.

Renate Reinsve played Ingrid, the playwright who had lived next door to Edward, gave a fantastic performance. She was very compelling with her relationship with Edward and Oswald.

I thought this was a very interesting film that was difficult to watch at times. The scenes where the tumors were being peeled off Edward’s face was horrific. Still, it is interesting that the film clearly is saying that the looks were not going to make everything better and that Edward regretted his decision in the end. Sebastian Stan did a great job in this role.

3.75 stars

200% Wolf

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This was an animated movie that I missed during its theatrical run this year despite it being in our area. I spotted it on Disney + and figured it would be a nice film to add to the list of movies I saw this year.

As I was on Disney +, I discovered that this is actually a sequel to a movie called 100% Wolf, which I had never heard of before but had been released in 2020. It is also on Disney +, but I did not watch it, deciding to go with just this movie.

According to IMDB, “Heroic poodle Freddy Lupin has everything it takes to lead his werewolf pack. Except respect. If only he were more… wolfish. But when a wayward wish transforms him into a werewolf and deposits a mischievous moon sprite on earth, Freddy must restore the cosmic order before earth and moon collide. Oops. One thing’s for sure – Freddy will never question being a poodle again.”

This movie was fine. It was an enjoyable enough film. It looked great and the character designs were cool.

It was funny and clever. It would be a wonderful family film to share during the holiday season.

3.5 stars

Blink

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Disney + streamed this documentary entitled Blink, which is basically a travelogue film of a family with a tragic twist. Three of the four children of the Pelletier family are diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder that causes those with it to eventually go blind. In order to help their children log their visual memory, their parents, Sébastien and Édith, take their children on a year long trip around the world to do a bucket list.

The film then followed the family across the world to do things such as explore the rainforest or drink juice on a camel in Egypt or hike across the Himalayas.

Much of the travel aspect of the film was things that we saw before, but the real moments of this was the interactions between the family members and the moments where they approached the idea of being blind.

One of the toughest moments came when Édith realized that her youngest child, Laurent, did not understand what it meant to be blind. She handled it in as kind of a way as possible, but the boy’s reaction and responses were heartbreaking.

There was another moment where the family was on a cable car and it broke down, trapping them for hours. It got dark, it rained, they had little to no water. The inadvertent metaphor for being trapped in this cable car as everything went dark around them was almost to cruel to believe. It was the most harrowing moment on the trip that the family had to face.

It is definitely a challenging watch as the reality of what these children will be facing is always under the surface of what they were doing. Yet, it was able to maintain the joy and hope life can offer.

This is a very compelling documentary.

3.8 stars

Mufasa: The Lion King

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When the 2019 Lion King “live-action” remake broke the billion dollar club at the box office, you should have known that we were getting something more. My guess is that Mufasa: The Lion King will not be the same kind of demand.

Mufasa: The Lion King from Disney came out this weekend. The film was directed by Barry Jenkins and featured a “live-action” cast of CGI animals in a CGI generated African land. How this could be considered a “live-action” film is up for an argument.

Unfortunately, I did not like the 2019 remake of the Lion King and I am not a huge fan of this new film either. I do think that this film is better than the 2019 version. Specifically because this film does a better job of avoiding the uncanny valley of the 2019 film. Those lion characters in 2019 did not show us any emotion on their faces at all, lacking any ability to emote, making them all seem very distant from the audience. That is considerably better with this movie.

In fact, the strength of Mufasa: The Lion King is easily the CGI. This film looks absolutely gorgeous and it has some of the most realistic artwork that you are ever going to see in a film. In fact, I could see people claiming that some of these animals were real and not contrived on an artist’s board.

I did have some major issues with Mufasa: The Lion King, most notably that there was not much new in the story. It was basically the origin story of Mufasa and Scar as the two lions went on an adventure and met other characters from the original Lion King. Not much else.

There was a devise used to tell the story with Rafiki (John Kani) telling the story to Simba’s daughter Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogan) which was a total waste of time. Nothing that happened in this framing device was funny or worth taking away from the main story.

I also thought that the sound mixing was horrendous. Perhaps this is the theater I was in, but I had trouble hearing a lot of the dialogue because the music in the background was playing so loudly or dominating the moment of the scene. Speaking of the music, I did not find any of the songs interesting or song that I would remember later. Even the songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda were unremarkable. They were fine when watching it, but there is not one song that I can recall as of this minute.

Mufasa: The Lion King had its moments for sure. It is a stunning accomplishment of visual arts, but there just seems to be little else that makes this an important story to tell. While it is not a waste of time, it is anything but a great movie.

2.8 stars

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

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The Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy is a pretty decent trilogy, as the third film in the franchise debuted this weekend.

I liked this movie, although, to be fair, it felt very much like the last one, with the arrival of Knuckles. This time, we get Shadow and the beats are similar to the previous film.

According to IMDB, “Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched in every way, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance in hopes of stopping Shadow and protecting the planet.“

Shadow is voiced by Keanu Reaves and he does a solid job as the villain. The film does take a different step at first with the use of Doctor Robotnik, played once again by the amazing and manic Jim Carrey, who also plays Robotnik’s grandpa, Gerald Robotnik. Carrey feels as if he is always having the time of his life playing this character as he has a free and compelling flow to everything he does as Robotnik.

The action and the CGI are all top notch, and the final act of the film was filled with tension and unexpected action. It is just that everything seemed very familiar leading up to it.

Since I am not familiar with the video game or Sonic’s general world, watching the post credit scenes did nothing for me. I bet this is the way that others feel at the end of Marvel Studios movies when I am flipping out over some reveal of a character. Both post credit scenes were definitely designed for fans of the video game. That is okay.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is better than it had a right to be. It was fun, had a lot of humor and was an exciting family friendly adventure with a good message. Jim Carrey is outstanding as always and the rest of the returning actors feel comfortable and confident in their roles.

3.75 stars

Carry-On

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Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman star in a New Netflix action flick called Carry-On, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who was known for The Shallows, Orphan, Non-Stop and Black Adam.

Carry-On is like Die Hard 2 meets Phone Booth. It is an exciting action movie with some preposterous situations that should not work. However, everything is so thrilling and dramatic that you excuse the improbable and embrace the excitement.

Egerton played Ethan Kopek, a down on his luck TSA agent whose girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) is pregnant. Kopek, who was denied his dream job of joining the police force, is going through the motions at his TSA job at the airport. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Kopek gets blackmailed by a man (Jason Bateman) who wants him to make sure a carry-on case gets through the security check and he says that if he does not, Nora will be killed.

Most action movies requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and this is no exception. However, the film is very exciting and everything is put together so well that even on those time when it feels like the film has stretched credibility, you are okay with it because of the well done story.

Egerton and Bateman carry on a conversation over a headpiece for much of the film and they are very engaging during this time. I did not expect Bateman to be able to play such a cold monster as he does in this film, but he does it exceedingly well. Egerton is a perfect foil for Bateman as he played the young, lacking confidence hero beautifully and we see him slowly gaining more strength as the risks pile up.

It does a good job of building the tension in each scene and the anxiety of the situations. The over the top scenes are still set up and executed well. If you have to pick apart the situations, a lot of the film would not hold up, but you could say that about most action/adventure movies, especially this type of action movie like Die Hard.

There is one scene involving a car crash that has some wonky special effects, but most of the movie is practical effects and looks pretty solid.

And I suppose we could argue about this being a Christmas movie.

Carry-On is a lot of fun and brings an electric action thriller despite some of the most implausible moments. Egerton and Bateman were excellent and carry the film on their backs.

3.75 stars

Kraven the Hunter

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Kraven the Hunter is the final film in the Sony Extended Spider-Man Universe, which has included the Venom movies, Morbius, and Madame Web. And I think I can speak for everybody when I say, THANK GOD!

I had a lot of hopes that Kraven could be an exception for the Spider-Man-less films. Unfortunately, this was the rule instead.

Kraven the Hunter was terrible.

I am not sure what this movie was supposed to be. The story was all over the place and the film jumped about willy-nilly.

Where to start? I mean… everything that we saw in this film made no sense and the film did not seem to care much about making it make sense.

There was a tremendous cast here that somehow brought some of the worst acting you have ever seen. Aaron Taylor Johnson was okay as Kraven, but Russell Crowe and Ariana DeBose, both who had won Oscars, gave some of the worst performances I have ever seen. How does this happen?

Part of it was that the writing was some of the worst of the year. The dialogue was horrendous, laughable and did no favors for any of these actors. It was on the level of Madame Web which was one of the worst of the year.

Another part of the dialogue that was terrible was all of the ADR. This is a thing when the movie will have voice overs, re-recording scenes for whatever reason. The fact is that the ADR is done really poorly. I swear the character The Foreigner never moves his mouth. It was very noticeable and distracting. All movies do ADRs, but why does the Sony Spider-Man movie do this so badly (because Madame Web was terrible too).

There were some action that was okay, particularly a chase scene with a car and Kraven on foot. However, most of the action of this movie were average, at best. With the action being okay, the film needed it to be much better to overcome the other negatives of it.

Sadly, it feels like Kraven the Hunter has joined the race for the worst movie of the year. There are legit 6 films that could be in that number one slot at the end of the month for my Worst Movie List. There was just no life or any sort of joy here. Every time Kraven cracks a quip, it was totally flat and felt out of place. Some of the CGI was as poor as you would expect. There just is not much to enjoy about Kraven the Hunter. He has always been one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but this does not work on any level.

0.9 star

The Outsiders (1983)

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At my school, I had a chance to teach The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton this year. I had not taught the book since 1999. After we finished the unit, we watched the movie. So over the last two days I watched the Francis Ford Coppola film three times. I knew that I had not seen this movie in a long time so I figured that I had never reviewed the film. This is the chance.

Honestly, I did not love this. My memory was that the first time I watched this, I thought this was better than I did this time.

According to IMDB, “It is 1961, and Tulsa, Oklahoma is divided in two along social lines. The youths of each side form gangs in line with these two camps: the working class Greasers and the wealthier South Side gang, the Socs. The two sides use any opportunity to niggle each other and whenever they meet, there is friction. Then one night, a gang of Socs attack two Greasers with a knife. This sets off a chain of events“

There were several things that bugged me about this movie. Top of the list was probably the performance from Matt Dillion as Dally Winston, which felt about as over the top as it could possibly be. His overacting really bothered me in most of the scenes he was in.

The second thing I noticed was the horrendous sound mixing. There are several times that I couldn’t understand or hear certain lines of dialogue from characters because of the music or because it was just too messy.

I also feel like they did not do a service to a bunch of the characters from the book. Sure, I understand they wanted to focus on the main characters, but Sodapop was neglected and he should be a more vital part of the story. I do not feel that they did a good job of connecting Johnny to any other character outside of Ponyboy and Dally.

I do think that C. Thomas Howell was excellent as Ponyboy, and I loved Ralph Macchio as Johnny. I thought Macchio was really consistently good for the scenes that he was in. I will say though, one of the moments of the church fire, Johnny moved through just like Daniel LaRusso moved through the storm in Karate Kid II. That was funny to me. Anyway, Macchio was really good as the doomed Johnny.

Patrick Swayze had some good scenes, but could have used more time. Tom Cruise was in the film, but he was basically a background guy. Emilio Estevez was in the film as Two-Bit and, again, was just a shadow of the character of the book. I understand there is just not enough time for every character to be illuminated, but I do think we should have a bit more from these major characters.

It felt too melodramatic for my tastes. It was still a decent movie, but I found it to be nowhere as effective as the first time I watched it years ago.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

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It was a strange path to arrive at me watching this movie. After seeing trailers, I had zero interest in going to see this Christmas movie. It looked very much like a Lifetime special and Christmas is down my list of holidays. I had pretty much decided I would not go to this.

Then I started doing the Year in Review and I realized that the only Christmas film that I had seen this year was Red One, and that was, at best, okay. It felt wrong to give it the X-Mas Movie of the Year Award so I watched an animated movie called This Christmas on Netflix. Sadly, it was just around okay too. I then looked at the Rotten Tomatoes score for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and it was at 91% critics and 97% audience. This made me wonder if I should take this basically open weekend and go see it. It was only an hour and a half. How could that be painful? So even with a doubt in my head, I went to Cinemark this morning for a 9:15 AM showing.

This was really a good movie. I liked this way more than I ever expected.

Historically, I have not been a fan of the faith-based movies, but that is not what this is. This is a movie featuring characters who are being reminded about what Christmas means to them, and how important the Christmas story can be for them. It was about characters. And it was really well done.

Based on a popular novel, we are introduced to The Herdmans, a family of six children who were the biggest troublemakers in the town of Emmanuel. They were feared by children and adults alike.

At this time, the director of the local pageant broke both of her legs, making her unable to continue to do her duties. Grace (Judy Greer) volunteered to take over the job. Unbeknownst to her, the Herdmans decided to come and join the church’s pageant (to get the snacks they were told would come with it). The Herdmans, led by the scary Imogene (Beatrice Schneider), forced their way into the main roles of the pageant, which just happened to be the 75th Annual event.

This was well written, solidly acted and had some genuine funny moments. You can’t but help to like the antics of the Holdman kids, and you can see the diamonds in the rough beneath their surface, especially Imogene. Young Beatrice Schneider does a fantastic job in the role, bringing a humanity to this character that is gruff and unappealing on the surface.

I will admit to getting kind of emotional during the film. I was amazingly impressed with the kindness and unbelievable patience shown by Grace, who could have easily bowed to city pressure and dumped the Holdmans from the play. As a teacher, I was inspired by the way she reacted to these troublesome children and watching the Holdmans respond to the play and trying to answer the questions they naturally had (by a trip to the library) was awesome to me.

You kind of knew what the film’s resolution was going to be, but it was well constructed and still managed to tug on those heartstrings. This was one of those times where predictability was not a negative.

As a Christmas movie, this is much better than much of the sentimental slop that is out there and it gives us a chance to really question if we know the true meaning of Christmas.

4 stars

That Christmas

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A new Christmas animated movie arrived on Netflix recently entitled That Christmas. While I do not think that this was great, it certainly is a decent Christmas film and beats out a lot of the typical schmaltz that we normally get this time of year.

According to IMDB, “It’s an unforgettable Christmas for the townsfolk of Wellington-on-Sea when the worst snowstorm in history alters everyone’s plans, including Santa’s.“

There were multiple characters and storyline from within this little town of Wellington-on-Sea, and, fact is, I was pretty bored through the first section of the movie. It took me awhile to come to be interested in any of those storylines. However, it must have worked on me eventually because I was feeling very moved by the third act and there were even a few signs of tears from the wonderful ending to this film.

The voice cast is excellent, including several great voices including Bill Nighy, Brian Cox, Jodie Whittaker, Fiona Shaw, Guz Khan, Rhys Darby, Freddie Spry, Zazie Hayhurst and India Brown.

The animation was well done, as one would expect these days. The colors and the brightness made everything better and the amazing work of the snowstorm in the third act helped build some real tension.

The film was mostly about the relationships between parents and their children and how they all fit into Christmas. Brian Cox’s Santa Claus and Guz Khan’s Dasher had a funny interaction through all of their scenes.

Sure, this is not a superb animated movie, but I did eventually enjoy myself with it. It did take some time for me to get into it, but once I did, I was pleased that I chose to watch it.

3.1 stars

Juror #2

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Clint Eastwood’s new film is called Juror#2, a legal drama/thriller starring Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, J.K. Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland.

According to IMDB, “While serving as a juror in a high-profile murder trial, a family man finds himself struggling with a serious moral dilemma, one he could use to sway the jury verdict and potentially convict or free the wrong killer.”

Without spoiling the film, there is a central piece of the story that depends on you accepting a HUGE coincidence, one that is really implausible, and I had a real difficult time suspending my disbelief to make this possible. This story element made it very difficult for me to enjoy the movie.

I thought Nicholas Hoult was outstanding as Justin Kemp, who was the titular character. J.K. Simmons was great but he was not in the film enough. Toni Collette’s character, Faith Killebrew, the prosecutor, was okay, but not stand out. Kiefer Sutherland played the worst lawyer I have ever seen on screen.

I began to get past the issues I had as the film went on, but I was not a fan of the ending either. It felt a bit anticlimactic.

I have not been a huge fan of recent Eastwood directed films, and this one is a mixed bag for me. I did enjoy a lot of what was presented, but the whole center storyline element just was too much for me to handle. Overall, it was fine.

3 stars

Hate* [*A Comedy] (1999)

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So it is Black Friday and I went to Comic World in Dubuque to partake in the sale on back issues. I started talking with Ben, the owner, who was working the front of the store. We were discussing some of the movies I had watched recently, and i came around to talking about Rumours, which was totally crazy, a black comedy with some of the craziest stuff in it I had seen in a long time.

This led Ben to bring up a short that he called a ‘college’ short film, giving me a quick synopsis of the film. He mentioned a chicken moving next door to a guy. It certainly fit in with the weird films we were talking about (yes, we even mentioned Beau is Afraid).

Ben told me that it was available in full on YouTube, so I decided that I was curious to see what this comedy was and how I felt about it.

The film centered around a man named Paul Wilson (Paul Hungerford) who had a chicken move next door to him, and the chicken began tormenting him. Calling him Moriarty, the chicken, named Pembroke Arbaghast (voiced by Brian Carr), was trying not so subtle things to kill his new neighbor… or at least so Paul thought.

When his poker friends died from poisoned chimichangas, Paul decided that he had to do something to stop the chicken’s crazed spree.

This was hilarious. I loved this short. It was so funny and well presented. The key to something like this is to present it in all seriousness, despite it being totally ridiculous. Paul was really scared and bothered by the foul creature and so the silliness of the situation became funny instead of stupid.

It seemed as if every time the chicken was shown, I was laughing, because of its look, and yet, I found a lot of this to be fairly sinister. The puppeteers did a wonderful job making this chicken believable with its playing poker, driving or sending threatening emails.

The final confrontation between man and bird was excellent too. This was a lot of fun and definitely worth the time. The twist at the end was funny too.

The acting was very solid. In particular, Paul Hungerford delivers a strong performance. You are convinced that he is scared of this chicken and that he legitimately is afraid for his life.

This goes to show you how a creative mind can take even the weirdest of concepts and turn it into an entertaining film. Hate* [* A Comedy] was well worth the 22-minutes it took to watch it, available on YouTube, but do not forget the asterisk when searching.

Beatles ’64

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There is a brand new documentary on Disney + that dropped today featuring the Beatles. There have been several docs about the Beatles over the last few years and this one looks specifically at the year 1964, the year the Beatles came to the shores of the USA.

Told through the perspective of many of the people who saw the Beatles during this time as well as several behind the scenes interviews with the Beatles themselves, Beatles ’64 is a documentary that will be loved by the fans of the Fab Four.

It was cool to see the images of the younger Beatles, before they found their way to the music of the later sixties.

The music of the doc was great. “Love Me Do,” “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,” “This Boy,” and “Roll Over Beethoven” were some of the songs we heard during the doc, including the performance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

It is amazing that the Beatles have enough popularity even today to support yet another documentary focused on them. And that there is enough material on them to fill yet another entertaining doc.

4 stars