Micro-budget thriller ‘Ma’ razor-sharp

Posted on June 13, 2019 by reelentropy

Spencer’s performance defines Ma, oscillating from genuinely maternal to unhinged, sometimes within the same shot, without it feeling like a shift. Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

8/10 I came into Ma wondering how they drew in talent like Octavia Spencer, Luke Evans and Juliette Lewis for this $5 million goof. I stayed for a spectacular, nasty horror movie.

After losing her job in the city, Erica Thompson (Lewis) moves back to rural Ohio with her teenage daughter, Maggie (Diana Silvers). Maggie and her new friends, including her crush Andy Hawkins (Corey Fogelmanis), looking for an adult to buy them booze, come across Sue Ann Ellington (Spencer), who not only supplies them with drink, but also brings them to her basement for a place to party away from prying eyes.  Owning what quickly becomes a hub for underage drinking, Ellington, nicknamed “Ma,” hatches her revenge on Erica Thompson and Andy’s father, Ben Hawkins (Evans).

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‘Rocketman’ can’t break through

Posted on June 13, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Paramount Pictures.

3/10 Hollywood biopics have grown more and more uniform as they’ve grown more lucrative over the years. That goes doubly for musician biopics, all of which seem to follow the same plot regardless of who they’re about and none of which seem to incorporate the artist’s music in any meaningful way.

Rocketman took off to fix all that. They weren’t going to take the work of Elton John and just play it over the same boring “Spinal Tap, but serious” rockstar movie you’ve seen a dozen times, they were going to make it big and real, incorporating it into a uniquely cinematic genre where they had room to make it as imaginative and flamboyant as John himself.

And yeah, Rocketman delivers on all that, I guess. It does. Technically, it does. It’s just not very good.

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‘Godzilla’ sequel no king among monster movies

Posted on June 3, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

3/10 Godzilla: King of the Monsters tries to be almost everything to almost everyone. Unfortunately, the one thing it isn’t trying to be is a giant monster movie for people who just wanted to watch a giant monster movie.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters focuses on the Russell family, parents Kyle and Emma (Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga) and daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown). The family was torn apart in 2014’s Godzilla when Madison’s brother was killed during the monsters’ rampage through San Francisco. Now, five years later, Emma Russell has developed a sonic device that can control Godzilla and the other “titans,” but she, Madison, and the device are all kidnapped by eco-terrorist Col. Alan Jonah (Charles Dance). Kyle Russell, who had been helping his wife develop the device but turned to drink after their son’s death, is called in by Monarch, the secret government organization that handles giant monster business, to help track the device down and rescue his family.

Emma Russell awakens several other monsters, including King Ghidorah and Rodan the Fire Demon, and they have fights with Godzilla, but that’s mostly in the background – Warner Bros. knows that nobody came to see monster fights and wanton destruction. The Russell family dynamic is what really matters here.

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‘Booksmart’ a vapid non-film, do not waste your time on it

Posted on May 30, 2019 by reelentropy

Watching other people having fun isn’t necessarily fun for you, the viewer. Images courtesy United Artists Releasing.

2/10 At long last, our suffering is over! There’s finally a Superbad for girls!

Because the first one is such a fucking classic!

In Booksmart, a pompous asshole called Molly (Beanie Feldstein) discovers that, after an entire high school career of working hard and never going out, she’s not the only one in her class getting into Yale, because she attends a rich, white Los Angeles high school and obviously everyone around her is also getting into big-name colleges because that’s how life works. Devastated that she wasted her youth pursuing ambitions that her family could have just bought, she and best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) determine to go out to the last party of the year, which turns into an ordeal because no one will give them the address because they’re stuck-up losers.

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‘Brightburn’ soft on satire, complex take on family disfunction

Posted on May 30, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

6/10 Brightburn is a minimalist, almost frustratingly simple film. That’s what might be disappointing about it, and it’s also what might be great about it.

In Brightburn County, Kansas, Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) struggle to conceive a child. Their prayers are seemingly answered when, one night, a pod from another world rips the sky open in the wooded area behind their farm, and in it, they find a seemingly normal baby boy, whom they raise as their own.

Twelve years later, Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn), who is not aware of his true origins, begins to hear strange sounds coming from the pod that brought him and displays astonishing powers. His parents, who think he’s merely hit puberty, only tell him that what he’s going through is normal. Realizing his power, Brandon takes over the world.

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