MOVIE REVIEW: Wander

What folks are going to find with the escalating thriller Wander is a screwy little movie saved by committed performances. The trouble comes when the committed performance comes from the character that should be (and ends up) committed in the clinical sense. Be ready to question everything in Wander because the audience lens and main character is a rooting-tooting conspiracy theorist, yarn-and-tape boards with newspaper clippings and all, who makes his scratch as a private investigator. The unreliable narrator energy is strong, but that’s the entertainment when you make it to the finish.

MOVIE REVIEW: Happiest Season

The tug-of-war in Happiest Season between head and heart is everything. Even as a fictional holiday yarn, the setting of Clea DuVall’s comedy is rooted in a present social landscape where even the legalization of same-sex marriage five years ago has not reduced or healed all of the emotional risks and scars associated with being out on the matters of love. Poking fun at the hijinks of going back to a conservative home for Christmas is one thing. Layering the very tangible anxiety of LGBTQ+ societal fears within those laughs is quite another. Happiest Season earns worthy pride for its willingness and openness to hug out that daunting task.

2020, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on Demand, 2 STARSDon ShanahanNovember 23, 2020Happiest SeasonComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Sacha Baron Cohen, and a team of nine (yes, 9) other writers, resurrected his most successful and audacious disguise and snuck a production through the COVID-19 pandemic just in time for Election Day. His mocking aim matches Lesson #1. Through his hedonistic character once again gracing the U.S. of A., Cohen and company expose the problematic silliness of lies being lived to their fullest by fine people on both sides.

2020, 2 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, Video on Demand, StreamingDon ShanahanOctober 22, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Is there brilliance in the indecipherable within this adaptation of Iain Reed’s horror fiction? That’s both the knock and modus operandi of Charlie Kaufman. That’s where peculiarity pisses on a good piece of art. His abstract creations are wholly unique, yet aimless and tedious to the nth degree. For every poetic word, cinematic moment, or striking idea that ignites a challenging neuron in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, a triple helping of something obscure destroys momentum and snuffs any flicker. When he’s right, lucidity outshines the oddity, but that is not this film.

2 STARS, 2020, Independent Film, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanSeptember 5, 2020 Comments

MOVIE REVIEW: Project Power

Whether it’s initially scribbled on a shitty cocktail napkin in a fog of bong smoke while occupying a disheveled couch or composed neatly on a souped-up MacBook atop a Feng Shui desk in a posh nook of some creative person’s living space, a potent idea can propel a writer’s bender to attempt a screenplay. Netflix’s Project Power has one of those high concepts where the mere thought of it gets you to hear late announcer Don LaFontaine in your head. Putting on his pitch voice, imagine a world where people can gain temporary superpowers from a mere pill. Picture the intriguing implications, suspense, and spectacle and your popcorn starts cooking already.

2 STARS, 2020, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Home MediaDon ShanahanAugust 15, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Tax Collector

The Tax Collector feels like David Ayer’s 2 Samuel 1:27 moment for his current career. He elevated his settings and craft with Fury. He aimed behind his grasp with Suicide Squad. The “mighty have fallen.” That puts the stung and smeared David Ayer back to Los Angeles in a B-level movie and the three things he appears to be good at: 1) urban criminal underworlds, 2) seedy ethnic flavorings, and 3) spurts of graphic violence. These are his comfortable and dirty roots that brought forth Training Day, Dark Blue, Harsh Times, and End of Watch.

2 STARS, 2020, Independent Film, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanAugust 9, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: The King of Staten Island

The “semi” in front of the “semi-autobiographical” label for Pete Davidson’s quarter-life crisis movie memoir The King of Staten Island is both ambiguous and chancy. Formally, the prefix is meant to signify “half” while it often means “partially,” “incompletely,” and “somewhat.” The adjunct is fitting. At its fullest and best, Judd Apatow’s newest comedy coming to VOD on June 12th is a collection of half-hearted beats and half-witted mischief. That’s it. Just half.

MOVIE REVIEW: The High Note

Each time Maggie’s employers, the fictional world-renowned recording artist Grace Davis played by Blackish’s Tracee Ellis Ross and her manager Jack Robertson played by Ice Cube, summarily dismiss her to stay in her lane or fetch some inconsequential thing, The High Note gets better because the real talent is allowed to emerge. To love underdog moxie, or any moxie for that matter, you have to have it. The flimsy Dakota Johnson doesn’t. She, and the movie, would be better served by her getting out of the way just like her shunned Maggie.

MOVIE REVIEW: Scoob!

One of the classic catchphrases of the old Scooby Doo franchise is the vocalized signal, often from the eager mouth of their de facto leader Fred, of “looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands.” The new CGI reboot Scoob! now on VOD platforms answers that rhetorical realization with both possible extremes. The movie doesn’t have one and the canyon-sized narrative hole because of it leaves us more perplexed than satisfied with a shoulder shrug and a chin rub of our own.

2 STARS, 2020, Animated Film, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 17, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: True History of the Kelly Gang

In true western, or in this case, bushranger movie fashion, the edgiest and most intense moments in Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang come in the moments when someone is being held at gunpoint. Drama properly peaks with the potential power released by one little curved metal lever hinging a mechanism of murder and mayhem. The action itself to squeeze that trigger is easy. The decision and ramifications, as we well know, are not.

REWIND REVIEW: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Big as a billboard in some places and as small as a mobile ad in others, the marketing imagery of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker touts the tagline “The Saga Will End.” There’s something to be said for finality, especially with a 42-year-old franchise as venerated and cherished as this one. The virtues of remembrance, culmination, gratification, and other such lofty notions loom so much larger when an entity is billed to be the last of something important. The movie in disc form hits store shelves everywhere today.

2019, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on Demand, VIDEO REVIEW, DISC REVIEW, 2 STARS, 2020, 3 STARS, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 31, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Vivarium

Vivarium earns very positive credit for its premise and aim. Bending relationship dynamics of survival and gender roles around the middle class dreams of homeownership and building a family is, no question, both absorbing and ambitious. The social commentary is as frank as it is smartly bleak. The graying realities are well-masked by the colorful production dwellings. Their dreamscape trap of the Yonder development is rightly simplistic yet imposing.