It Used to Be That I’d Never Seen ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Before in My Life. Or Afterlife. But Now That’s Changed!

September 16, 2024

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Beetlejuice being Beetlejuicy (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, Arthur Conti, Burn Gorman

Director: Tim Burton

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: September 6, 2024 (Theaters)

After seeing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it made me want to:

  1. Figure out who Tess Parks is.
  2. Go Full Falsetto and perform “Tragedy” at karaoke.
  3. Wonder anew how and why so much of a song can be focused on a soggy cake.

Now, just because you’ve got an inspiring soundtrack, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a satisfyingly well-rounded movie. But I enjoyed most of the non-musical elements of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as well! Thank you, 2024.

Grade: I Like-a the ‘juice

Get Stuffed! with Songbirds, Trolls, and a Bloody Thanksgiving Feast

November 15, 2023

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Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving! (CREDIT: Pief Weyman/TriStar Pictures and Spyglass Media Group)

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Starring: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, Josh Andrés Rivera, Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman, Fionnula Flanagan, Burn Gorman, Ashley Liao, Max Raphael, Zoe Renee, Nick Benson, Isobel Jesper Jones, George Somner

Director: Francis Lawrence

Running Time: 157 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Kids Killing Kids

Release Date: November 17, 2023 (Theaters)

Thanksgiving

Starring: Nell Verlaque, Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Rick Hoffman, Gabriel Davenport, Gina Gershon, Tim Dillon, Tomaso Sanelli, Jenna Warren, Amanda Barker

Director: Eli Roth

Running Time: 106 Minutes

Rating: R for Having Some Friends Over for Dinner, and a Trampoline Striptease

Release Date: November 17, 2023 (Theaters)

Trolls Band Together

Starring: Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick, Camila Cabello, Eric André, Kid Cudi, Troye Sivan, Daveed Diggs, Amy Schumer, Andrew Rannells, Zosia Mamet, Kenan Thompson, RuPaul, Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Icona Pop, Ron Funches, Anderson .Paak, Kunal Nayyar, David Fynn, Kevin Michael Richardson, Patti Harrison, Walt Dohrn, GloZell

Director: Walt Dohrn

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: PG for Some Mild Worries About Being Eaten Alive

Release Date: November 17, 2023 (Theaters)

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‘Pinocchio, Pistachio, Toro! Toro! Toro!’

December 13, 2022

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What’s up, Pinocchio? (CREDIT: Netflix © 2022)

Starring: Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Burn Gorman, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro, Tom Kenny

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Running Time: 117 Minutes

Rating: PG

Release Date: November 9, 2022 (Theaters)/December 9, 2022 (Netflix)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – or as I refer to it, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pistachio” (because of that Rugrats episode where the babies call Pinocchio “Pistachio”) – is pretty dang lovely. It hasn’t quite inspired some baby-speak-style quoting from me to follow in the footsteps of the Rugrats version, but that’s okay. Furthermore, I thought that it was Cate Blanchett who was voicing the Fairy and her sister Death, but that was actually Tilda Swinton, while Cate was the voice of the monkey. That realization pretty much sums up my reaction in general to this whole movie, as Pinocchio’s stop-motion wooden walking was similarly mind-altering.

Grade: Cate Blanchett Voiced the Monkey?!

Who Watches ‘Watcher’? Should It Be You? Let’s Find Out!

June 2, 2022

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Watcher (CREDIT: IFC Midnight)

Starring: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman

Director: Chloe Okuno

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: R for A Bit of Blood and a Tease of Sex

Release Date: June 3, 2022 (Theaters)

First she was being followed, now she’s being watched! And come to think of it, that watching also involves plenty of following. Maika Monroe just can’t catch a break! In the past decade, she’s kind of established herself as a go-to scream queen for creepy flicks that prey on our most elemental fears. As It Follows demonstrated, it’s no fun to be stalked, and now as Watcher makes abundantly clear, voyeurism isn’t so hot either. It’s also extra unnerving when you’re feeling kind of lonely in a new country where you don’t speak the native language, which is what Monroe’s character Julia experiences. This is a simple fear, and Watcher keeps it simple through and through.

When Julia arrives in her husband Francis’ (Karl Glusman) native Romania, you can tell she’s a little anxious, but the picture doesn’t look so bad at first. The passion is certainly there, if a hot and heavy living room makeout session that plays like the Skinemax version of Rear Window is any indication. That romantic interlude is undercut a bit by the fact that there’s a bit of a Peeping Tom named Daniel (Burn Gorman) in the vicinity, although his peeks into his neighbors’ lives appear to be relatively innocent at first. But soon enough, he seems to be lurking in Julia’s path at the grocery store, movie theater, and pretty much anywhere else she’s hanging out.

With his sunken eyes, oily hair, and slenderman-esque skin tone, Gorman is pretty much the perfect guy to play the local creep. It’s almost like oil is oozing out of every pore of his body. I hope that’s not coming off too harsh, because I also think that Gorman is handsome in a “modest English gentleman” sort of way. But I suspect that he knows the offputting stereotype he can tap into, thus (I imagine) why he accepted this part. Perhaps Julia has similar conflicting feelings about Daniel. After she reports his ostensibly threatening behavior to the police, he calls them in turn to report her for pretty much the exact same thing. Is this all just one big misunderstanding? Is Julia going loopy from spending so much time at home alone and having her mind become permanently lost in translation?

We get a pretty straightforward answer to those questions in the explosive climax, which is quite viscerally thrilling. Although, it all escalates rather abruptly and then peaces out just as quickly, so you don’t get a whole lot of time to process the worst of it. I’m thus tempted to ding Watcher for being a little bottom-heavy. But I’m not ready to definitively do that, as I’m writing this review less than 24 hours after my viewing. Maybe one day, I’ll find myself cooped up in some strange new home just like Julia and wonder who’s watching me…

Watcher is Recommended If You Like: It Follows, Rear Window, Lost in Translation, The thriller subgenre of women being told that they’re losing their minds

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Windows

 

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Pacific Rim: Uprising’ Has a Few Interesting Moments Buried Within an Indifferently Presented Spectacle

March 22, 2018

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CREDIT: Legendary Pictures/Universal Pictures

This review was originally posted on News Cult in March 2018.

Starring: John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Charlie Day, Rinko Kikuchi, Burn Gorman, Jing Tian

Director: Steven S. DeKnight

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Kaiju Guts, Tech Sparks, and Human Cuts and Bruises

Release Date: March 23, 2018

Pacific Rim: Uprising does not offer much in the way of a new paradigm in the annals of giant mecha or giant monsters. Honestly, the first Pacific Rim did not really offer that either. To be fair, this series’ purpose in terms of concept and design has never really been about establishing something groundbreaking (to my eyes, anyway). It has been more about the distillation of the gigantic tech and creature genres into something approaching an ideal form. That approach is all well and good as an academic exercise, but it does not have enough inherent oomph to ensure a fully entertaining feature-length film.

It is ten years since humans won the war against the interdimensional beings known as the Kaiju. There has been no hint of another breach by these creatures into Earth, but the training programs designed to fight against them are still operating. There is a weird mix between a sense of security that the threat has been permanently neutralized and an ever-present emphasis on defense. This seeming paradox is never commented upon, which gives the sense that this film has an ill-defined understanding of its own world. But it doesn’t really matter, because sure enough the Kaiju do return, and it is a good thing that the Jaeger program never folded.

The Jaegers were the one great concept of the first Pacific Rim, but in Uprising, their usage is rather perfunctory. As the mental stress is so great, these metallic war machines must be simultaneously operated by two pilots. They are neurally connected to each other, creating a partnership so intimate that they share not just responsibilities but memories and physiology as well, for a connection that lies somewhere between artificial and chemical. The main partnership this time is that between Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the son of a hero from the first film who gets his personality across mostly through his ice cream eating habits, and Amara (Cailee Spaeny), who gets cool points for building her own Jaeger but mostly comes across as the thinnest of archetypes. These two have only one notable memory-sharing moment, and it registers as little more than just hitting a necessary story beat.

The PR:U trailers position Boyega as the star, and while he does lead the way in screen time, the only notable degree of star power among the cast comes from Charlie Day, returning as the eccentric Dr. Newt Geiszler. He is emblematic of how this film has no idea what to do with its best assets. Newt has been in a bit of a mind-meld relationship with a Kaiju specimen, which might just have something to do with why they have returned. So to a certain extent, he is the main villain this time around. But inexplicably, he spends the entire climax just overlooking the action and not participating in it at all. This is a film that has its toys lined up but little in the way of a plan (or an interesting plan, that is) for how to deploy them.

Pacific Rim: Uprising is Recommended If You Like: Kaiju Fever, John Boyega Making Himself a Sundae, Charlie Day Given Plenty of Space (But Not Enough) to Go Crazy

Grade: 2 out of 5 Kaiju Wives