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

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. 

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

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If you’ve been following my reviews lately you know the big budget blockbusters have been letting me down. So maybe the smaller films will be more my jam? As a Sundance veteran I know indies can be as hit and miss as anything else but they often at the very least have more heart in them than the massive calculated to please everyone entertainment the big studios release. So here we go:

Make sure to check out Mars Express if you get the chance. I previously reviewed it last year as part of Animation is Film Festival but did a deep dive analysis along with Ghost in the Shell with my friend Stanford this week. It’s a bold piece of sci-fi crime noir animation that deserves to be seen!

I SAW THE TV GLOW

First up we have I Saw the TV Glow. This is a film I heard buzz about at Sundance but I shied away from it fearing it was too scary (I watch some scary movies but at Sundance it can be a risk when the film is brand new and sometimes I feel like taking that risk and other times I prefer to wait.) Anyway, it wasn’t scary at all and proved to be one of my favorite films of 2024.

Its story revolves around a kid named Owen who becomes attached to a television show called The Pink Opaque and he shares that experience with a slightly older girl at school named Maddy. That’s what I think director and writer Jane Schoenbrun nails in this film. Not only the power a piece of media can provide to our lives but the ritual of watching it and talking about it with others can be quite life-changing.

Owen’s Mother doesn’t allow him to watch the show which was something I connected with quite deeply as I had my fair share of sneak shows. Maddy leaves Owen a tape of the week’s episode each week and it gives him something to live for as a struggling teen. This profound connection to media really spoke to me. It is especially powerful when Owen watches the show as an adult and is so disappointed to see it doesn’t hold up well. It makes him question his entire childhood. Can’t we all relate to that?

Schoenbrun goes to some surreal places with it but it all worked for me and it becomes the kind of movie I immediately wanted to see again and talk about it with friends to see their takes. Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine are also excellent as Owen and Maddy respectively. The movie is perhaps a bit over-ambitious and confusing for its own good but I still loved it and highly recommend giving it a watch.

Smile Worthy

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST

Something cinephiles don’t want to admit is sometimes we aren’t on the same wavelength as a particular director and that’s okay. This has been my experience with Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. I didn’t get the high praise for his Oscar winning Drive My Car and his Asako I& II I found to be nothing special. I don’t mind a slow burn (I enjoyed last year’s toilet cleaner movie Perfect Days for example) but Hamaguchi fails to engage me with his characters and Evil Does Not Exist is no exception. As with all of his movies I’m in the vast minority on this but I can’t pretend to like something that I don’t.

Let’s start with the fact the title of the movie is a complete mystery to me. The only “evil” portrayed is a big bad corporation who wants to build a resort in the beautiful wildlife preserve. I was joking for a while that adda romance and this could be a Hallmark movie with its bad men of business plot. So if this is the evil then fine but it does exist so I don’t get the title.

The plot supposedly focuses on a widower Takumi and his daughter Hana and their love of the wilderness where they live. Unfortunately the film moves away from them for long stretches focusing on the 2 representatives from the company. So much of the film is council and board meetings about this land and that was not the least bit compelling or interesting.

Then in a last ditch effort to make something of the movie Hamaguchi gives a bizarre ending that makes no sense for the characters or the story. It was like he knew the previous hour and more had nothing so had to throw that in to leave people feeling like they’d seen something stimulating when they hadn’t. It certainly didn’t work for me and I left feeling like I’d wasted my time. I do not recommend Evil Does Not Exist.

Frown Worthy

GUY FRIENDS

In the world of cinema there are indie films like both the others in this post and then there are micro-indies made on a true shoestring budget- like under 50k. These mostly are terrible but every once in a while something creative comes along that’s worth watching. Such is the case with the new film Guy Friends from director Jonathan Smith. I actually enjoyed it enough I recorded an interview with him for Hallmarkies Podcast that will air next week.

The story follows Jaime (Kavita Jariwala) who after a bad breakup discovers all the guys that she’s friendzoned are suddenly in love with her. Even the taxi driver who she kids with each day professes his love. It’s a funny setup for a rom-com as she no longer can trust who may or may not actually be in love with her and what her male platonic friendships actually mean. Then she meets a woman named Sandy (Katie Muldowney) who may be her first actual platonic girlfriend. (I also really liked Justin Clark as Ted. He could be good in Hallmark movies!)

As someone who has almost exclusively had girl not guy friends I liked the premise of the movie and what it had to say about friendship. It clearly has Woody Allen as an inspiration and New York especially Central Park becomes a character in the story.

It obviously has huge constraints as far as practically no budget (around $5k!) but the cast is likable and I’m a sucker for a friendship story. I am sure Guy Friends will only be playing in a few theaters but I enjoyed it and would recommend it if you can find it.

Smile 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.