X

First and foremost, I’m not a fan of titling your movie just “X.” It’s been done. Hell, even making a “X” out of a woman’s crossed legs on the poster has been done. It’s a title that’s not really evocative of anything, since you didn’t even have the confidence to go for a full “XXX.” And it makes your movie harder to search for, especially on older platforms that have character minimums. Won’t somebody think of the SEO optimization! You end up having to google “X (2022)” or “X Ti West” or “X A24” and while those work and are still very few characters to type, it feels sub-optimal in a way that grinds my gears. Anyway, X is all right.

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Hotel Transylvania: Transformania

Ok, I promise that next time I’ll actually review a horror movie since it seems all three of my movies so far have been either horror-hybrids or in the case of today’s movie, not a horror movie at all. Still, there is something to be said for movies that scratch that spooky itch this time of year, but are scary enough to be suitable for people that “don’t do scary movies”. The Hotel Transylvania series has been a pretty reliable presence in this genre for the past decade or so, as it’s not quite as lazy as you would think an Adam Sandler animated franchise would be. While this latest installment still has the same playful animation style established by Genndy Tartakovsky that has made these movies great leisurely watches, the fact that the Sandman is missing and the lack of doing much new with these characters (not to mention its streaming-only release) can’t help but feel like these movies might be on their last legs. Continue reading →

Smile

Some might see the three star rating sitting atop this review and think, “Oh, I guess he didn’t like it that much.” But I want to be clear, I have a lot of admiration for this film. The scares are effective, Parker Finn is a good director, and this film’s success is good for the industry. When a movie like Smile tops the box office in multiple weeks, that opens the door for more original projects from new voices. All that being said, I can’t help but feel Smile isn’t living up to its full potential.

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Werewolf by Night

Werewolf by Night represents several firsts. It’s Marvel’s first “Special Presentation,” the title they’re giving one-off Disney+ content. The Guardians of the Galaxy are also hopping into this new format, they’ve got their Holiday Special coming out this December. As an aside, I wonder if anyone watched those Groot short films they put out this summer? It’s also Michael Giacchino’s first special, as he works his way through every possible format until he gets his first feature film. Before this, Giacchino made a short film called Monster Challenge in 2018 and also directed an episode of Star Trek: Short Treks, the short-form anthology show that definitely would have been called “webisodes” if it came out 10 years earlier. We’re living in a brave new world.

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Pearl (2022)

On February 14th, 2003 (Valentine’s Day) I saw the immortal classic “Daredevil” starring Ben Affleck on the big screen. I had a good time–only to discover years later that the film was bad–but it was in the film’s closing minutes that I felt my Spidey-sense (or whatever Daredevil has) tingling. My bladder was going to explode! Finally, as the film faded to black and the credits started to roll, I was free! I hightailed it to the bathroom never to look back. This was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

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The House

As we’ve sped up the normalization of releasing new movies on streaming due to these rough few years for the movie business, it has caused me to ask when a streaming release does a disservice to a movie and when it actually benefits it. Obviously, there were a couple of movies released this summer that would’ve been considerably more enjoyable to watch in a theater, but at the same time, it is hard to deny that streaming can make a weirder, less commercial film easier to discover than it otherwise would’ve been. I would say that The House falls into the latter category, since I have a hard time seeing this movie becoming the kind of sleeper hit that another stop-motion film, Marcel The Shell with Shoes On, became earlier this year. Yet on Netflix, it’s a curiosity waiting there for anyone looking for something a bit off-kilter, though it’s hard to say if you could depend on The Algorithm to actually send you its way. Continue reading →