Author: Caillou Pettis

Angelfish: Another Review – Summer in the Bronx, 1993. Brendan (Jimi Stanton) is a troubled but hard-working high school drop-out with a manipulative mother and a brother on the verge of self-destruction. Eva (Princess Nokia) is a bright, young woman about to start college in the fall, but with the pressure to make her family proud clashing with her own secret hopes and dreams for the future. Sparks fly when the two meet, and their respective worlds collide. As the young couple’s relationship develops, their home lives and dreams for the future threaten to tear their new and fragile love apart.

Peter Andrew Lee’s Angelfish starts off a little bit rocky. We get jolted fairly quickly into a scene in which Brendan is shown working at a deli that he doesn’t really enjoy working at, but does so because he is in need of money and it is the only job that he can get at the moment. One day on a regular shift, a customer, Eva, walks in and starts to get catcalled by a man. Brendan sticks up for her, and he instantly develops quite the crush on Eva, and it seems as though she feels the same way about him, too.

This is perhaps the biggest issue with the film and one of the reasons why it took a little while to get into it. The whole movie revolves around their relationship and the tries and tribulations that they must go through in order to keep their relationship afloat. However, for a long time, it felt as though these two really weren’t meant for each other. After all, they just met at a deli and barely said more than a few words to one another.

Luckily though, the script that Lee wrote ultimately fleshed them out a lot more by the time the second act comes into play. From that point onward, the movie became not only much more entertaining and genuinely funny and sweet, but it became much more believable as to why these two liked each other.

One of the reasons why I eventually ended up caring for our two lead protagonists was due to the excellent performances that Jimi Stanton and Princess Nokia give. Together, they exude brilliant chemistry and have a terrific screen presence. They genuinely felt as though they had known each other in real life for many years, and working on this film together was natural for them.

In addition to them, this is just a beautiful movie to look at as well. Director of photography Jamal Solomon presents a ton of lush scenery as well as run-down city roads in a brilliant manner. Everything stands out greatly to the point where I genuinely cannot recall a single bland-looking shot here.

As a whole, Lee has managed to craft a love story that, at first, seemed a bit jarring and a little unbelievable. Thankfully though, he turns it around fairly quickly into a genuinely compelling tale of two people falling in love and tells it in a sweet and charming way.

Angelfish has a rocky start but ultimately develops into a genuinely sweet and compassionate film with excellent performances from Jimi Stanton and Princess Nokia.

With hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby-Doo (voice of Frank Welker) and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever — a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global dog-pocalypse, the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone could have imagined.

Starting at about the age of six or seven and going until about the age of nine or ten, my mom used to drop my off at a babysitter’s house nearby to watch me for a few hours before I headed off to school for the day. At her house, she always told me I could put on the television and watch any show I wanted to.

Being a small child and loving cartoons, I naturally put on a ton of those. But one of my favorites was easily What’s New Scooby-Doo?, which I found to be deeply fun thanks to its childlike sense of wonder, its fun adventures, and great sense of humor. I still remember watching that and getting immensely excited whenever I heard that theme song.

So, as a result, I was quite curious and eager to see what director Tony Cervone had to offer with Scoob!, his new animated feature. Unfortunately, though, I found myself massively disappointed in the movie, largely in part due to its humor.

This was such a surprise but in a really bad way. As I mentioned earlier, the humor that was in the television series was one of my favorite things about it. I always found myself either laughing quite hard or smiling from ear to ear for a large portion of each episode’s running time. Here though, the comedy is just downright awful.

The screenwriters make a bold choice to include a large amount of references to pop culture and modern technology, movies, and songs here, and it was unfortunately a terrible idea. When The Peanuts Movie was coming out, I was incredibly worried that it was going to feature our beloved Charlie Brown make references to iPhones and how much he wants to talk to Lucy over Snapchat or something. Thankfully though, the film avoided that at all costs. Scoob! doesn’t.

In just the first act alone, we see an appearance from none other than Simon Cowell who voices himself. Shaggy and Scooby tell him that they are big fans of his, which leads them to then belt out “Shallow” from A Star Is Born. I’m not even joking.

But if that’s not bad enough, Cowell gets mentioned several more times in the film to the point where the fictionalized version of himself literally becomes a subplot that doesn’t work. And that’s the biggest issue with this movie – there are way too many storylines at play here and none of them feel exciting or adventurous as they should.

The original cartoon was filled with plenty of stories that kids and adults alike could watch and enjoy. Here, not much happens in terms of a compelling story that you can get invested in. A lot of the events that happen here feel extremely flat.

One thing that definitely deserves to get a bunch of praise in Scoob! is the animation. In terms of a visual standpoint, I think this may just be the best looking animated film of the year so far, with Onward coming in quite close. The animation team clearly spent countless hours making sure that each and every character is brimming with personality and added small, minute details that are easy to appreciate.

But I just wish the rest of the movie was as good as the animation was. Don’t get me wrong; this film does have some good things in it. The animation is great, the voice acting is terrific, and the first twenty to thirty minutes were remarkably strong, but unfortunately, it all fizzles out into a generic, relatively bland mystery from there on out. Zoinks.

Scoob! may have a wonderous animation style and fun voice acting, but its sense of humor is painfully dry and its story is too underdeveloped to make this an adventure worth going on.

Once a ruthless businessman and bootlegger who ruled Chicago with an iron fist, Alfonse “Al” Capone (Tom Hardy) was the most infamous and feared gangster of American lore. At the age of 47, following nearly a decade of imprisonment, dementia rots Alfonse’s mind and his past becomes present. Harrowing memories of his violent and brutal origins melt into his waking life. As he spends his final year surrounded by family with the FBI lying in wait, this ailing patriarch struggles to place the memory of the location of millions of dollars he hid away on his property.

I genuinely feel bad for Josh Trank, who serves as the director, screenwriter, and editor on the film Capone, an unconventional and slow-moving biopic focusing on the infamous gangster in the last year of his life. Why do I feel bad for him? Well, it’s because his previous directorial effort was none other than the widely hated Fantastic Four film released back in 2015.

It’s a shame that the movie was as bad as it was. Even before that film came out, he proved himself to be a greatly talented filmmaker with 2012’s Chronicle, in which a group of high-schoolers obtain special powers, but soon have to face the deadly consequences of their actions.

He just seemed like a wholly unique filmmaker and many people were quite curious to see what he would do next after that film. Everything seemed to be going so well, and then… Fantastic Four was released. Apparently, there was a bunch of studio interference with that film and so I, and many others, were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Going into Capone, my excitement levels were decently high. I didn’t go in expecting an absolute masterpiece, but I was hoping it would be a lot better than Fantastic Four. And although it most certainly is, I have to admit that Capone is still not a good movie.

The main reason as to why is, unfortunately, due to Trank’s screenplay. This is genuinely surprising when you consider that in addition to directing Chronicle, he co-wrote the script with Max Landis, which was a suspense-filled thrill-ride. Sadly, Capone isn’t any of those things. I understand that the first act is usually there to set up characters, but who said it had to be this boring?

For the first thirty to forty minutes, all we see happen is a few things. To list just a few, Capone accidentally pooping his pants in bed, trying to shoot a fish he didn’t get catch out on a boat, yelling at various people, and smoking a cigar while grumbling.

Admittedly, Tom Hardy delivers a truly fantastic performance as the titular character. This is definitely one of those performances that is going to be sadly overlooked during the upcoming awards season, and it’s a shame. Here, Hardy feels remarkably cold and intimidating. Even though he may be an old man and can’t move around as well as he used to, you still get the feeling that if you cross him, you’re going to be in serious, serious, trouble. It’s brilliant.

I just wish that Hardy had more things to do here. He gets saddled into a story that doesn’t know what it wants to be. One minute it wants to be a slow-moving, fairly simple biopic about Al Capone, and the next it tries to be an over-the-top crime movie with no thrills. It almost feels like a day in the life movie.

This is so strange to me, considering that this is a movie based on one of the most notorious gangsters in human history. I get it. He is old here, and Trank wanted to tell that side of him, but just seeing a man’s day-to-day life simply can’t be entertaining, no matter who it is based upon.

Tom Hardy is remarkably cold and intimidating in Capone, an otherwise painstakingly dull and uninteresting story of a notorious gangster in the final year of his life.

Nineteen-year-old Vera Kall cycles home through the night. She arrives at a farm, leaves her bike and sneaks quietly in through the door. She enters the kitchen and doesn’t even have time to notice that she’s not alone. The sudden blow is heavy and knocks Vera headlong onto the kitchen floor where she is left lying. Henry is a successful copywriter in Antwerp. One day he is approached by Paula, a documentary filmmaker. Ten years earlier, she was Vera’s classmate.

Now she plans to make a film about Vera and wants Henry to become involved as he was their teacher back then in the city of Münster. Despite his plea of innocence Jakob Kall sits imprisoned for the murder of his daughter. This tragic and brutal story brings Paula and Henry together as they search for the truth behind what really happened, and why Vera’s body was never found. Both Henry and Paula carry well-hidden secrets which are slowly and inexorably forced out into the open. But the big question remains; is the man incarcerated in the maximum-security section of Bittinger prison really Vera’s killer?

Hearing that, you would probably be quite excited to delve deeper into Intrigo: Samaria and I don’t blame you. Its concept is quite interesting and sounds like a story that is ripe with clever twists and brilliant mystery/thriller storytelling. The previous Intrigo film in this loose-knit trilogy, Death of an Author, was similar in that regard. It has a greatly clever and genuinely intriguing plot synopsis, but unfortunately, they have something else in common as well. Both of them end up being quite disappointing.

Luckily though, Samaria is nowhere near as bland and unexciting as its predecessor. It doesn’t have a ton of sequences that make you scratch your head in a bad way. However, it does suffer from a relatively slow pace. However, after about thirty minutes, the overall story became a lot more gripping than it was earlier on. There were genuinely some moments where I was on edge.

But it still manages to be unrewarding in a lot of ways and its character development isn’t too strong for the most part either. The most fleshed-out character here is without a doubt Millie Brady’s Vera, who gives a truly terrific performance as an emotionally scarred woman and sells every single scene. In addition to her, Phoebe Fox as Paula and Jeff Fahey as Jacob also do wondrous jobs in their roles. The dynamic between the three was truly a delight to watch.

Altogether though, this easily could have been better with a better screenwriter. It is co-written by one of the writers of Death of an Author, and in certain scenes, it shows. It is nowhere near as frustrating, bland, and interesting as the predecessor, though.

It just takes a while for things to get interesting and doesn’t have a big enough emotional payoff. All of the performances are good, its a fairly beautiful movie to look at and is directed decently, but still has a lot of problems.

Intrigo: Samaria is a step up from the predecessor, but not by enough. Its story isn’t emotionally rewarding enough and is slowly paced, even if its performances are remarkable.

After an author named David plots the seemingly accidental murder of his wife, her body is never recovered, and he’s convinced that she’s still alive. Meanwhile, as David translates the final novel by a writer who also died mysteriously, he finds himself attracted to the man’s sultry widow. Fact or fiction, life or death… in this tale, nothing is certain.

Who doesn’t love a good old fashioned mystery? There is just something so incredibly fun about getting to experience a story that is constantly making you guess scene after scene. It gets you to use your brain a lot and essentially put it in full-use.

Over the course of the years, we have been blessed with a ton of great mystery movies such as last year’s Rian Johnson-directed Knives Out. But, sadly, Daniel Alfredson’s Intrigo: Death of an Author is no Knives Out. It not only fails at being a good mystery-thriller, but it just fails at being a good movie in general.

One of the biggest reasons as to why the movie is as boring and tiresome as it is, is due to its bizarre editing styles and its extremely sloppy storytelling. I get it. This is a mystery movie, and so we should all come to expect there to be some sort of a rug being pulled from beneath us, but the way Intrigo does it is not only unrewarding and frustrating, but these revelations that come to light just don’t make any sense.

The way the movie jumps from puzzle piece to puzzle piece is going to make you scratch your head in all the wrong ways. Gratefully though, along the way we do get treated to some remarkably good performances, namely Ben Kingsley as Henderson. He is quite raw and intimidating in the role and sells every single scene that he was in.

On top of that, he was probably the character that got the most amount of development along the way. Don’t get me wrong, Tuva Novotny and Michael Byrne are also quite exceptional here. It’s just that their characters don’t get as much to do as Kingsley does. They feel somewhat like side characters, unfortunately.

All in all, this is a disappointingly bland movie that doesn’t have a lot to say. It has some nice camera work from director of photography Pawel Edelman, the performances across the board are quite good, but besides that, it has nothing exciting to offer. Simply put, there is nothing worse than a thriller with no thrills. That’s exactly what Death of an Author is.

Intrigo: Death of an Author tells its story in a frustratingly complex and unrewarding manner even if its performances and cinematography are exceptional.