I feel like I should start out this review by saying I was a big fan of the 2 previous A Quiet Place movies. You can read my reviews here and here. They did a great job establishing atmosphere and creating compelling characters I could breathe with for the moment. However, they are not movies that bode well when examined under a critical eye. The aliens and their sound issues don’t make much sense especially with how distracted they would be by nature, animals, and everything else. Humans would actually fall pretty low on the sound levels when it comes to their daily normal interactions and talking.

It is for these reasons I was actually looking forward to a prequel for the films in A Quiet Place: Day One. My hope was they might help explain more about these aliens and how they came to figure out that sound was their trigger. I was particularly intrigued when they had a quality actress like Lupita Nyong’o on board and Michael Sarnoski writing and directing who was the man behind the compelling film Pig from a few years ago.

Unfortunately those expectations were ill-founded because A Quiet Place: Day One proved to be another disappointment from 2024. Not only is it a rinse and repeat of the previous 2 films except in New York City but it literally provides none of the backstory the title promises. Everyone immediately knows to be quiet and it is blasted from a helicopter in the sky. So Nyong’o’ s character Sam has to make it to the water in order to be saved because the creatures can’t swim. That’s it. That’s the story. That’s all the insight we gain. Everyone immediately knows how to handle the creatures and that they can’t swim or tolerate sound. I was left gobsmacked thinking ‘why does this movie need to exist?’ It does nothing different than the previous 2 and I can just watch those if I need an A Quiet Place fix.

Nyong’o is good and does what she can with the material and Joseph Quinn is fine but one can’t help but wonder why the aliens aren’t distracted by the noise from all the rats and birds in New York City? I would think they would be making plenty compared to the relatively small noise from a human. The whole thing is really quiet stupid when you think about it but the truth is I shouldn’t be thinking about it because the movie should do something compelling to keep my mind from wandering. It shouldn’t be the same movie we’ve already gotten twice before! I guess the cat is great.

Unfortunately A Quiet Place: Day One is a day you can skip.

Frown Worthy

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Hi everyone! I hope you are doing well. I have been crazy busy this month with my normal responsibilities plus I have taken on 2 part-time temporary jobs at Canyon School District, which has been a big learning experience (very positive!)

I have had the chance to catch a few new releases as well as the very disappointing 3rd season of Bridgerton. I will be writing more about that in the future (my reviews of season 1 and 2 (as well as Queen Charlotte) are some of my favorite pieces for this site. In the meantime, please listen to the breakdown with my friends on Hallmarkies Podcast 

But let’s talk about what else I have been watching:

ULTRAMAN: RISING

While I wasn’t crazy about Godzilla x Kong this has been an exciting time for kaiju movies with Godzilla Minus One being one of the best ever and now we have an animated offering in Ultraman: Rising.

In this film we have a know-it-all baseball player Ken who is sent back to Tokyo when his Mother dies and he ends up taking over for his father who is Ultraman. Along the way he comes to forgive his parents and save the city along the way.

This is a very kid-friendly version of a kaiju story with none of the monsters feeling particularly scary. In fact, one looks like an adorable little baby kaiju.

Where Ultraman: Rising shines most is in its action scenes. The animation is truly hypnotic and mesmerizing. It’s just shame it is on Netflix because I would have loved to have seen it on a big screen. Nevertheless, you can watch this with your entire family and they will love it. It’s got that right mixture of action and heart.

Smile Worthy

FIREBRAND-

I love me some period piece drama and a pretty good entry is just being released last week called Firebrand. It tells the story of Henry VIII’s final wife Kathryn Parr who despite having written 3 books is the wife that is known the least about. Alicia Vikander is always great in these type of roles and she is here. Parr proves to be a fascinating character who seems to be the smartest person in any room at any moment.

As good as she is in the role, Vikander is upstaged by Jude Law as Henry in a captivating performance. He’s nearly unrecognizable with the makeup and clothes and yet he captures the mania and savagery of this man. He also looks so much like the famous painting of Henry you so often see.

Some will find Firebrand a little boring as there isn’t much action or excitement but if you like historical character pieces you’ll enjoy this one. I certainly did.

Smile Worthy

BRATS

If the new documentary Brats works at all it is because of the captivating characters being interviewed more than the filmmaking involved. As a film fan it’s hard to not be interested in what has happened to these once 20-somethings now they are 30 years older.

That said, the filmmaking by Andrew McCarthy could be better. He asks his subjects the same questions repeatedly and they all have basically the same responses to how being in the Brat Pack changed their lives. As it is it’s fine. It just could have been more interesting if the interviewer asked more interesting questions.

Frown Worthy

THE BEACH BOYS

Another documentary that’s a bit of a mixed bag but enjoyable enough is The Beach Boys which is available on Disney Plus. I’m a big sucker for rags-to-riches docs on famous people and that’s basically what you get here. We see how each member of the iconic band dealt with fame and how they came up with so many of their memorable songs.

Where the documentary starts to lose me is in all the quotes they have with fans and other performers that seemed to have nothing to do with the band. It’s confusing why they didn’t have John Stamos on the doc if they were going this approach as he actually played with The Beach Boys. I didn’t really care what most of these famous people had to say about the songs especially when their reactions were basic generic reactions anyone could have.

Still, if you are fan of The Beach Boys give this documentary some of your time you’ll enjoy it.

Smile Worthy

So there you have it. Everything I’ve been watching lately

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BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE

I’m not sure what I expected from my first exposure to the Bad Boys franchise but what I got in Bad Boys: Ride or Die was definitely different. Whether it is in keeping with the rest of the franchise I’ll obviously leave for others to determine (my friends who are fans seem very happy with it so I guess so?)

I suppose I was anticipating a lot of action and pithy banter between our two leads. What I got instead was a lot of shouting, an existential crisis with a near-death afterlife experience and only momentary action that was shot in the most bizarre ways. When it leans into the friendship dynamic it can be quite enjoyable but most of the rest of the movie felt tonally discombobulated with one of the most predictable plots of the year.

 

In particular if you don’t know a character is a villain within the first 5 minutes of meeting him then you need to watch more movies. Some of the humor works like a sequence involving a Reba McEntire song but a lot of it falls flat and then the same joke that didn’t work the first time is repeated multiple times. Why are skittles so funny in this world?

Like I said, the movie should be saved by the action but it was shot in the strangest ways that took me out of the movie. For example, the director decides to shoot major action from a first person shooter perspective like we are all the sudden playing Grand Theft Auto instead of watching a movie. I’ve been told this was a stylistic choice for this movie and not a part of the franchise but it made the entire scene feel artificial; thereby taking away any stakes that might have been there.

Again, Bad Boys: Ride or Die was my introduction to this franchise so take my response with a grain of salt. If you enjoyed it I’m happy for you. I gave it a shot but it wasn’t for me. Oh well. On to the next Summer blockbuster.

Frown Worthy

Make sure you check out the patreon for perks, exclusive reviews and to be part of our monthly events and watch alongs. Find out more here.

Film and film criticism is such an interesting world to be a part of. We all share in a communal experience watching a film together, often times notepad and pen in hand getting ready to write our reviews. But so frequently we leave that theater having had such radically different reactions to what we have just seen. In particular lately, I seem to have taken some kind of grumpy potion because I have hardly liked anything that has been presented to me on the big or small screen. Even my beloved Bridgerton was disappointing this morning. Sigh…

I say all this because my response to the latest from distributor A24, Tuesday, was decidedly more negative than nearly all the other critics that I saw it with. Artpiece films are always going to be somewhat divisive but in this case it seems to be me divided against everyone else I know. This fact doesn’t change my opinion. Of course. But it is always fascinating to wonder why I didn’t appreciate what was moving to so many others.

The film in question, Tuesday, is directed and written by Daina O. Pusić and it tells the story of a young lady named Tuesday who finds out that she is going to die in a quite literal way from a giant macaw that symbolizes Death. Her Mother Zora who seems quite distanced from Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) at the beginning doesn’t want to accept this prophecy and does whatever she can to remove the bird (or death) from their home.

There are a lot of reasons why this particular metaphor didn’t work well for me. To begin with the main point is rather pedestrian and obvious. Death sucks. We all get that. Nobody likes it. So, having this grim reaper in the form of a bird doesn’t really ask any new or insightful questions to that basic hard life fact. The closest it gets is a brief conversation about the afterlife and if God exists but this script quickly moves on from such insight to more declarative statements about how death is a reality. Yep…

Then we have lots of scenes of the bird in various phases throughout the the film. He’s big. He’s small. He’s in Tuesdays’ ear canal. He’s eaten by Zora (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and then regurgitated back up (a lot of gagging in the film.) None of this transformation of the bird makes the central questions more interesting or the story more compelling. It’s just more bird scenes.

Did I mention I’m not much of a bird person? This is why I didn’t love The Boy and the Heron as much as most- even though I did recommend that film. It just wasn’t a favorite of mine aesthetically or story-wise. Here we are given far less story and even more creepy bird scenes.

The whole thing just felt incredibly pretentious, heavy-handed, repetitive, and annoying. I also felt Tuesday being disabled was a bit of the sacrificial lamb being offered up so the Mom could live her big full life plot and that didn’t sit quite right with me. It wasn’t as bad but it had tinges of Me Before You in it (a film I abhor.) Couldn’t they have made Tuesday more grounded and their relationship more complex? It might have been more interesting to have Tuesday be the one surviving with Zora being the one sick or dying? What would our Death bird have to say in that situation? (I’m not sure much of anything insightful but it at least would feel more fresh and unique.)

Like I said, seemingly everyone else I know loved this and it resonated quite deeply with them so maybe I’m just dead inside and a bird is going to visit me soon? I have no idea but if it does it’s been real, and I hope it makes my family gag less than Zora does in this film… We can all hope.

Frown Worthy

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Hey everyone! I hope you are doing well! I have another diverse and interesting group of new films to tell you about. I’ve been a contrarian of late on a lot of the big releases so it’s nice to have a group of movies I overall enjoyed. Let’s talk about them:

JIM HENSON: IDEA MAN-

I’m a huge Muppets fan. In fact, I just finished up my 7th year of Muppet May on my channel and the final entry is a new documentary about Jim Henson entitled Jim Henson: Idea Man and it’s a wonderful celeb bi0-doc about the creator of the Muppets. As a big Muppet fan I must say most of the information in the documentary wasn’t new to me but I still enjoyed hearing it again and all the archival and new interviews with Jim’s friends and family (I think 4 out of 5 of his children were interviewed.)

There actually have been several good Muppets documentaries including I Am Big Bird and Street Gang about Sesame Street. Both of which I’ve reviewed for Muppet May.

Smile Worthy

YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA-

If you are new to my reviews you might not know that I am an avid swimmer and have even completed over 15 open water swims in my lifetime. There is nothing better than being in the water trying to get to that finish line! Several years ago I read a wonderful book about female open water swimming pioneers that was highly entertaining called The Great Swim (ad) One of those women profiled in the book is Gertrude or Trudy Ederle who was the first woman to cross the English Channel in 1926. Her story is thrilling show of determination and grit and I was thrilled when I saw that Disney was making a movie about her story.

Swimming is a hard sport to make cinematic because unlike a basketball or running the athlete’s face isn’t visible because it is in the water. This is particularly difficult in an open water event which takes many hours. How does the director keep interest with so little happening to the athlete in question?

It’s tricky but director Joachim Ranning meets the challenge by carefully setting the framework of the risks of Trudy’s swim and having enough side characters (even her Mother in New York waiting at the radio station to hear news) to build tension through them. Jerry Bruckheimer produced the fim in and in many ways it has that 90s feel-good picture approach to it. It’s got a nice message, about appealing people and makes you want to go out and finish whatever goal you’ve been sitting on.

I also loved the tiny lap pool they found hidden away in a boiler room in New York City. I’m not sure if that was a set or not but it was very convincing and cool. The dialogue was a little clunky at times but it reminded me of Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken or even Rudy in its old-fashioned charm.

Smile Worthy

BUTTERFLY IN THE SKY-

I guess this is just the week for sweet documentaries about icons of public television because we have one on Jim Henson and one on LeVar Burton and his program Reading Rainbow. It’s called Butterfly in the Sky and it is another sweet documentary that fans of the show like myself will really enjoy.

Reading Rainbow ran for many years and it sought to introduce kids to great stories and encourage overall reading. It was neat to get the backstory on how Burton was hired, what books they chose and why and the writing of the iconic theme song. They also have a lot of interviews with now grown kids who read stories on the show and celeb fans who were influenced by the show. This is not groundbreaking film like Won’t You Be My Neighbor was but it’s a pleasant watch on Netflix I’d recommend.

Smile Worthy

BARBIE & STACIE TO THE RESCUE-

If you don’t follow my youtube channel you might not realize I have been reviewing the Barbie movies for many years. I still have 4 more to go but I recently caught up with the latest entry Barbie & Stacie to the Rescue. Like most of the Netflix Barbie movies it’s a serviceable entertainment for little kids but these latest instalments have lost some of the moxie and ambitious storytelling of the early part of the series.

In this 43rd entry in the series we have Barbie becoming a hot air balloon pilot and her sister Stacie wanting to help her as co-pilot but she is too young. Sister Skipper is also there with her own attitude and problems. It’s fine and pleasant enough but just to give you an idea of the change in ambition here’s the plot summary for To the Rescue:

In contrast here is the plot for Barbie: Fairytopia:

And I get it. It’s probably ridiculous for me a grown woman to be complaining about the simplicity of animated Barbie movies but nobody else is going to point it out so why not me? The animation is better in these Barbie movies but like so much in streaming ends up as pale imitations of what once was.

Frown Worthy

Make sure you check out the patreon for perks, exclusive reviews and to be part of our monthly events and watch alongs. Find out more here.