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Lady Parts (2024)
Jump in, the water here is warm and welcoming
Based on personal experiences from writer/producer Bonnie Gross and director Nancy Boyd. If you read the film's description, you may go 'vaginal surgery? Eh, not for me', but you'll definitely be missing out. This film is filled with so much laughter and joy that the medical aspect - vaginal health care - really takes a backseat to the heartfelt, entertaining, family dynamics. Lady Parts is more about finding yourself, even if it means you must return to your childhood bedroom to locate what you lost. You'll adore Paige (Valentina Tammaro) and her parents, Linda (Amy Lyndon) and Steve (Peter Larney) as well as the men who support her on her journey to mental, emotional, and physical health. Some of the best scenes take place around the dinner table and in bathrooms. Lady Parts is not just about sex. It's not simply about malformed body parts. It's about recognizing that when a women internalizes mansplaining, it only makes that woman feel less able to be strong and powerful. And we are. We definitely are.
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
After 30 minutes, I was wondering what the point of the movie was
Sometimes you're sitting in the theater and you think to yourself, "this movie is not for me."
That was not my initial reaction to the new film I Saw The TV Glow, but after 30 minutes in, with no idea what the point of the film was, that thought not only crossed my mind but solidly took hold.
It's an A24 release, which, based on past experiences, usually means I'll be in for a treat. Well, the best thing I can say about it is that I'm glad there are still production companies taking a chance on independent films. This film has an intriguing trailer. But the trailer does what a trailer is supposed to do - entice you to see the movie. Kudos to the trailer production company.
After sitting through the thankfully short film, it's only 90 minutes, and talking with other reviewers outside, I still can't tell you what the point of the film was. I expected creepy. Didn't happen. I expected sci-fi. Didn't happen.
In all honesty, what I feel I watched was an uninteresting 90-minute peek into the mind of a conspiracy theorist with ADHD, who convinced herself that the television show she was addicted to was real. What was happening to the characters was really taking place on some other plane of existence that only they could see. Ok, to me, that's what I imagine watching 90 minutes of Fox's 'The Five' panel is like. Completely removed from any semblance of reality, which circles back to my conspiracy theorist theory. But I digress.
In a nutshell, a young, very shy boy named Owen (Ian Foreman), who is pretty much friendless and never looks directly at people when he's talking to them, loses his mother. He's the kind of kid who is never noticed in school. His mother seems to be the only person he speaks to. I don't recall an actual conversation he has with his dad.
And then he meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who is older and much, much hipper than he could ever hope to be. They bond over a sci-fi teen TV show called The Pink Opaque. The characters have tattooed irridescent pink ghosts on the backs of their necks, which somehow allows them to commune with beings from another world, including a man with a dripping ice cream cone for a head.
One of the first shots we see of that show is of what looks like a moon with a face that is scowling... so reminiscent of the 1902 sci-fi silent classic, "A Trip To The Moon", that everyone in the theater started laughing. I don't think that's what the Director was going for, but I could be wrong. I believe they were going for more of a Smashing Pumpkins set, with all the feels of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness being projected by every cast member. That album was released in 1995, so it definitely fits the timeline of the film. But again, I'm definitely not the target audience.
When the film opens, we hear the line "It can't hurt you if you don't think about them." The school they're attending in 1996 is VOID HS. Yes. Literally VHS is on the school banners. With those two pieces of threads right off the bat I thought, hmmm, a little foreshadowing, ok, great!
Sigh.
It had potential. Sort of like a reverse Poltergeist or The Ring, except people get sucked INTO the tv set. Maybe with a touch of Lisey's Story, by horrormaster Stephen King.
But no.
What did surprise me was that a teen in 1996 was completely comfortable talking to her friend about being queer. Maddy makes it extremely clear to Owen that she feels she doesn't belong in the small suburban town, and that she must find her way out, at any cost. To find herself. The journey she takes is the second act of the film, leaving Owen behind to find his own way.
So is this film meant to be less of a sci-fi creepout and more of a metaphor for finding out who you really are and following that path, wherever it may lead? Possibly. But I had to read through the production notes to gain that understanding.
In the production notes, Writer/Director Jane Schoenbrun discusses her really dark obsession with all the shows that ran on Nickelodeon, such as Are You Afraid Of The Dark, YCDTOTV and Salute Your Shorts. Most of which were comedies, and not remotely creepy. Even Nick's gak and slime play imporant roles in Glow, but I'm not going to tell you how, because maybe the film is for you, and I don't want to spoil the surprise. As the saying goes, you pays your money and you takes your chances. Maybe Glow is the kind of film that you should read the production notes before walking in the door. But, to me, that means the film doesn't really hang together.
Asphalt City (2023)
As gritty as the city in which it's shot
"You can't save everyone."
That's the most important lesson that rookie FDNY paramedic Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) needs to learn from his veteran partner Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn) in the dark and edgy new film, Asphalt City.
The pressure of knowing you're the only thing that might be keeping a victim from turning into a fatality haunts the duo as they drive the overnight shift on the mean streets of East New York.
Gunshot victims, heart attacks, premature births, dog bites, gang violence, and schizophrenics are just a sample of the people who we briefly meet and are just as quickly dismissed and disguarded in Director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire's new film. Like the EMT crew, we're never given time to care about these people, especially those who may be one short push from the grave.
And that's the point that Rutkovsky continually tries to impress on his new partner. Do what you can, in the time that you have, and move on. Don't remember their faces. Don't remember their families. Because to carry that with you will drive you insane. Above all, don't feel responsible because you didn't put them on the ground with a fatal gunshot wound in their femoral artery.
Unfortunately, as the movie unfolds, "Rut" has a change in his personal circumstances and takes one case too much to heart. Meanwhile, Cross is struggling to keep his head above water. Between the low pay, his horrible living situation, and the lack of friends or family, Cross feel he is continually drowning in unending tragedies. He has zero confidence in his ability to save anything - not a gunshot victim, not even a dog.
One has to wonder, are the people who seek these jobs craving the absolute psychosis that comes with it, or are they made psychotic by the stream of crazy?
Cross does have a goal: to pass the MCAT and leave this dark, depressing world behind for the more regulated system of a hospital. But it's obvious that he's learning far more with his on-the-job training than he'll learn in any study guide.
Mike Tyson pops up as Cross and Rut's superior officer. Michael C. Pitt is cast as the EMT who's chiefly entertained by picking on the new guy. Every one of the EMT's seems to be walking PTSD victims.
Gritty. There's no better word for Asphalt City. It's a film as gritty as the city it portrays. You'll be exhausted, but go for the rush.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
PLEASE - Let the dead stay dead
"When it comes through your door
Unless you just want some more,
I think you better call Ghostbusters."
That pretty much sums up how I feel about the new film, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Leaning heavily on the nostalgia factor, it's sweetened for those that who sang "busting makes me feel good" with the 1984's OGs. But please, I'm calling on ALL the Ghostbusters, past and present, to put the final specter into the wall-mounted Ecto-Containment System, Storage Facility and Protection Grid, hang up your proton packs and call it a day. I really, really don't want some more.
I mean, come on, when even Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) feel comfortable mocking their own theme song, it's time to stop crossing the streams.
Mckenna Grace definitely carries the bulk of the busting load in Frozen Empire. She sparkles, she's sullen, she's relatable. Her Phoebe Spengler feels she's all grown up, having previously saved the world from a spectral takeover. Yet Gary, Callie and brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) still see her as a kid. Which, naturally, 2024's target audience of young teens will relate to.
In trouble every time she turns around, even ending up in jail, simply because she loves busting ghosts with the adults. Phoebe is also definitely lonely, living in a firehouse, seeing herself as weird and nerdy. She ventures out into the adult world, sneaking around, poking a toe in a fiery relationship that is certainly doomed from the start. A relationship that might just end her life.
Kumail Nanjiani's cast as the out-of-work, living in his dead Grandmother's apartment and selling her collectibles Nadeem Razmaadi. He tries and partially succeeds in harnessing the sexual innuendos that made the scenes between Signorney Weaver's Zuul The Gatekeeper and Rick Moranis' Clortho The Keymaster so hysterically memorable in 1984. Razmaadi learns he is a Firemaster, which is sort of like an Airbender, but with the ability to control great balls of fire.
However, this firestarter doesn't have a foil to play against, unless you consider the Icebringer, an evil, horned spirit who has been freed from his ancient metallic jail and is intent on settling a permanent chill on all the citizens of NYC... and beyond the Brooklyn Bridge. But seducing the enemy is NOT where the writers went this time.
Patience and Fortitude even make an appearance in Frozen Empire. The Public Library's beloved big marble cats are enlivened, and are once again spitting and snarling their outrage toward lowly humans. Naturally, cats gonna cat. And you can't have a Ghostbusters without the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and Slimer, who are definitely running amok among the weird science.
Yes, the OG are back, some in body, some in spirit. The love for all the characters is nuzzled along by co-writer Jason Reitman, son of OG Ivan Reitman, who previously directed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with Gil Kenan, who is also the director of Frozen Empire. But please, it's been 30 years. Let the dead stay dead.
Chlopi (2023)
Visually and emotionally captivating
I've participated in the Claude Monet Immersive Experience when it visited Orlando, You sit at a table while famous pieces of art, greatly oversized, pull you into their frame. That's the best way I can describe it. You enter gardens, watch water lilies float, experience wheat fields bowing to the wind in famous paintings by Monet, Renior and other artists of the era. The Peasants, the new film from the creators of the Academy Award Nominated Loving Vincent, has an identical feel, and with advances in oil painting animation techniques, this film takes their unique art to a higher level of texturization.
The best way to describe this animation is that it breathes. Colors flow and melt together. Edges are roughened, smudged. It's multi-dimensional. One early sequence is striking. A woman sits at a table, crafting with paper and scissors, while you can see her reflection in the mirror to her left. It's small touches like this that infuse The Peasants.
For the story: Jagna, the village blonde-haired beauty, had no use for a husband. She's content with her life, creating beautiful things, living with her family, flirting innocently with the neighborhood boys. Though she does exchange not-so-fleeting glances with the handsome Antek, who is currently living with his wife, children and his father, Maciej Boryna. Everyone resents everyone in the Boryna home. The father, Boryna, is a rich widower, who resents son Antek for being young and handsome, but keeps him land-poor. Boryna's late wife had land that was supposed to go to their children, but instead, it's been consolidated into Boryna's own holdings. And his son resents him immensely for that slight. Boryna eventually throws Antek, his wife and their children, out of his home.
Meanwhile Boryna's friends, neighborhood busybodies, are trying to marry him off, telling him it's in his best interest. They run through the list of possibilities, eventually stopping on Jagna, the beauty who is more than half his age. Ah, even in the world of animation, some things never change. You can see the leering grin on his face as he contemplates the idea. They run into each other at the local market. Boryna flirts, gives Jagna an expensive gift, which she accepts even while rebuffing his advances.
A song, 20 minutes in, foreshadows what's to come. Two young people, hunger, passion. A local leader comes to Jagna's home to pitch for Boryna, and Jagna still refuses. Her mother, on the other hand, is very interested in selling off her daughter to the town's richest man, in exchange for land. Eventually Jagna gives in to her mother's wishes. Though she is miserable, wanting only the forbidden Antek.
And that sets the stage for what will, eventually, bring misery, violence and shame upon the townspeople in this 19th century Polish village. The film itself is divided into four seasons, moving the Lipce villagers from Autumn, through Winter and Spring to the following Summer. Over one year, Jagna and Antek come together, fight, separate, but still long only for each other.
Mud, dirt, muck, rain and snow. Even Mother Nature is given a feature role in this outstanding film-as-art treatment, based on Wladyslaw Reymont's Nobel-prize winning novel of the same name.
The Beekeeper (2024)
Tight Story, Explosive Action
If you're a producer in Hollywood and you want an action-packed film, the current writer of choice is Kurt Wimmer, whose film The Beekeeper just hit the big screen. With previous hits like Law Abiding Citizen and Expen4bles, Wimmer knows how to keep his story tight and his fight scenes explosive.
And The Beekeeper, starring Jason Statham, is no exception. Almost everyone in this film, male and female is a bad-ass.
Built around the premise that the only thing that might be worse than beating a puppy is scamming a senior, Statham wreaks almost 2 hours of havoc on those who have fatally wronged the people he cares about, all while almost never breaking a sweat. Though in that time he does break many noses, fingers, and ankles.
United Data Group are the big money-making scammers, overseen by Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons). What exactly does UDC do? Well, you know how you're always warned NOT to click on unknown links? They're the company that sends you the unknown weblinks and attachments, infecting and hijacking your computer and draining your bank accounts.
The Beekeepers is the code name for the secret elite force within a secret government agency who even the secret keepers know little about. But what they do know scares the crap out of them; Adam Clay (Statham) was the best of the Bees, one who never fails to protect the Hive. When those in goverment positions put out the word, for their own financial reasons, that Beekeeper Clay has gone rogue, they send a number of legit and illegitimate armies to take him down and, more importantly, shut him up quickly.
But they didn't realize that Clay, who only wanted to retire to his quiet life of beekeeping and honeycombs, is still the A-team Bee. In fact, he's the single member of this Bee team, dispatching multiple teams of nasty buzzing hornets left and right, smoking out the people who make their massive fortunes stealing other people's money.
There are times when the script gets a little bit "Wick-y" in that other Bees are sent to take out this particular Bee, for a fee. Think "High Table" but definitely not as classy. Agents Verona Parker and Matt Wiley (Emmy Raver-Lampman and Bobby Naderi) are cast as the duo who are determined to smoke out Clay, but will Parker do her job or do right by her mother?
Once Clay starts to follow the money trail, he's busy kicking the hornet's nest, one that has been skillfully hidden in the shadowy eaves of those at the highest level of power.
Next Goal Wins (2023)
Easygoingly watchable
Sometimes an 'underdog' film is too sweet and sugary for its own good. Next Goal Wins is not that type of film. Directed by Academy Award Winner Taika Waititi and starring Michael Fassbender, if this film's only goal is to make you smile without cringing, I can guarantee success.
Since this is an underdog story, I'm sure everyone expects that, in the final moments, the coach will come to appreciate all that the team has to offer. I can promise that Next Goal Wins offers up all that, and a whole lot more. The screenplay, written by Waititi and Iain Morris, offers up something positively delectable. You won't be disappointed because they kick that script straight into the cinematic net for a GOOOOAAALLLL!