Author: Caillou Pettis

A veteran D.C. journalist (Anne Hathaway) loses the thread of her own story when an errand for her dying father (Willem Dafoe) turns her from author to unwitting subject in the story she’s trying to break.

Political thrillers come quite often it seems. Throughout the years, we have been blessed with some gratefully emotionally investing and interesting films in this genre such as Steven Spielberg’s The Post, George Clooney’s The Ides of March, and my personal favorite of the past couple years, Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.

But to be honest, we haven’t really had a great political thriller in at least a couple of years. It is a shame because, with the right screenwriter and director attached, political thrillers can be some of the best films of the year.

Dee Rees is a director who I greatly admire. Although she has not directed a whole of films, the films that she has directed up until this point have all been greatly impressive, namely 2017’s Mudbound, which was a favorite among critics when it was released, and was even nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress.

However, her latest feature The Last Thing He Wanted is nowhere near as good as her previous efforts. In fact, it is the first movie directed by Rees that I would flat out say is bad. It is a film that falls flat in virtually every way possible, but particularly in the way it tells its complex story that ultimately leads nowhere with an unsatisfying conclusion.

Throughout the course of the film, we jump between different time periods rather rapidly. The opening sequence alone jumps between different days and we are never really given any time to breathe and follow the story in an easy and coherent way. A large portion of the dialogue written by Marco Villalobos and Rees feels empty and lifeless in a way that has never happened before in Rees’ films. Usually, her films are rich with interesting and moving dialogue that propels the story forwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL5Ac0NP6CU

The characters in Mudbound are ones that were deeply interesting and you felt sympathy for them. Their motivations were one hundred percent clear. With The Last Thing He Wanted, we got long sequences filled with expository dialogue that feels like the two wrote it thinking it was smarter than it actually was. Confusing, bland, and lazy are just a few words that would best describe the screenplay here.

As a whole though, that’s really the film’s biggest issue – it’s a thriller that’s not thrilling. It’s a nearly two hour picture that feels longer than that even, due to the fact that there is never a time in the screenplay where anything all that exciting happens. There are a couple of scenes that feel like they could be going in a great direction, but they ultimately fizzle out being bland and uninspired like the rest of the film.

In terms of the positives here, the acting on display is pretty great for the most part. Ben Affleck and Anne Hathaway are at the front and center of The Last Thing He Wanted, and while the characters that they played were not all that interesting to follow, their performances were strong. It’s rare when Affleck and Hathaway have an acting misstep, and this is gratefully not a misstep in terms of their acting. Everybody else does a good job here as well, particularly Rosie Perez and Willem Dafoe in smaller roles. I wish they would have gotten more to do than spew expository dialogue.

It’s also a decently shot picture by Bobby Bukowski. It does not contain some of the best cinematography of the year or anything of the sort, but in terms of presenting things in a gritty and stylish way, it did the trick.

But at the end of the day, The Last Thing He Wanted has an abundance of problems, mainly relating to its script. It has some good aspects to it as well such as the performances and the camerawork, but as a whole, it is a film that feels bland and dull which is all the more disappointing since it was helmed by such a talented filmmaker.

The Last Thing He Wanted has an incoherent screenplay with poor character development and lacks in entertainment value. It’s a thriller with no thrills.

Sonic (voice of Ben Schwartz) tries to navigate the complexities of life on Earth with his newfound best friend — a human named Tom Wachowski (James Marsden). They must soon join forces to prevent the evil Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) from capturing Sonic and using his powers for world domination.

If you are an avid film lover like myself, you probably know that video game movies are almost always terrible. It almost inevitable at this point that films based on video games are going to be bad. It’s kind of a big shame, really. Video games are home to some of the most immersive worlds and storylines you can find in the entertainment industry.

Throughout the years, we have seen the lows of films such as Paul W. S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat, and its sequel Annihilation. We have also seen the incredibly bad Super Mario Bros. movie, Assassin’s Creed, DOA: Dead or Alive, Doom, and Double Dragon just to name a few. It truly seems like there exists such a thing as the “video game movie curse”.

With that being said however, there are some highly rare instances in which these types of films turn out to be either okay, not bad, or actually good. One of the good ones in recent years was Roar Uthaug’s Tomb Raider, which was a reboot of the series. Another one that was not all that bad was last year’s Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, which was highly successful and was faithful to its source material.

But, since most of these projects turn out to be awful cringe-inducing nightmares, I was really not looking forward to Jeff Fowler’s Sonic the Hedgehog at all. None of the trailers looked too promising, and the marketing as a whole seemed heavily misguided. Why would you put “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio in a trailer for a film that is aimed towards families and young children?

Plus, you have more than likely seen that picture of Sonic’s original design for the movie. It was also in that aforementioned initial trailer. It probably isn’t a stretch to say that practically nobody liked the design of the iconic blue speedster. Everything about it looked off and it did not look anything like the video game character counterpart.

However, surprises are always welcome, and yes, Sonic the Hedgehog is exactly that. A welcomed surprise. This is by no means an amazing movie that is going to win awards. Not even close. But in terms of being a fun action film that has some heart and good jokes along the way, this succeeds greatly.

Firstly, let’s talk about the performances here. Ben Schwartz is the voice of everybody’s favorite fictional hedgehog, and he does a terrific job in the role. He sounds great as the character, and brings such a sense of warmth to him. He is incredibly likable and charming which is also thanks to the writing by Pat Casey and Josh Miller. While their script is nothing groundbreaking, they both did a good job at making an entertaining family flick.

James Marsden, who I feel is a fairly underrated actor, does well as Tom Wachowski too. We get to learn a little bit about him and his home life too. We know that he has a wife named Maddie (Tika Sumpter), and that he desperately wants to be a cop in San Francisco, instead of being one in Green Hills, Montana, because there, all he does is little things. He doesn’t feel like he is being a true cop. He wants to get a chance to prove himself. Out of all the characters, he was the one that was probably given the most of a backstory.

Usually in a movie where the lead protagonist is some kind of creature like Sonic, cutting back to human characters is annoying and frustrating. It makes you question why they don’t just focus on the creature characters. The humans in these films just tend to be annoying and unlikable, but that gratefully was not the case here.

Now, last but not least, let’s talk about what I feel is one of the best aspects of Sonic the Hedgehog – Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik. This is some seriously brilliant casting. In the source material, Robotnik is quite the character. He is always portrayed as being insanely bonkers. Screaming and yelling and just acting crazy. Carrey is an incredible character actor. When it comes to over-the-top comedic performances, I always think of the same two actors – Nicolas Cage and Jim Carrey.

Casting Carrey as one of the most zany video game characters of all time was a great idea, because he is truly hilarious here. Sure, there are definitely some scenes in which it somewhat felt like he was overdoing the performance, but at the end of the day, I would be lying to you if I told you that I did not enjoy watching him have the time of his life in this role. He brings it all here and he is perfectly over-the-top and wild.

Since this is a family/children’s movie, there needs to be some sense of fun and action involved. The kids are going to want to see this movie to see Sonic fight some bad guys and race around really fast, and they are going to have a blast. There are plenty of sequences here that are actually filmed quite well and all of the action was done in a great way. It was fast moving, fluent, and never boring to watch.

If you really boiled it down, you can pick apart this film like there is no tomorrow. It’s filled with problems. The humor, while good at times, also has its issues. A lot of the jokes fall incredibly flat, and there was a shocking amount of product placement here too, with one of the biggest ones being for Olive Garden. Several characters mention the restaurant in the film and it just made me shake my head.

Its story is nothing original, either. It’s probably one of the most familiar film stories I have seen in quite some time to be honest with you. It does not have a lot to say and doesn’t reinvent anything. But, this is Sonic the Hedgehog we are talking about. This film does not need to be the most incredible movie of all time. It was never going to be. It just needed to be a greatly entertaining and fun time at the theatre, and it was exactly that.

Sonic the Hedgehog manages to delightfully impress with some truly entertaining action sequences, and contains yet another wildly fun Jim Carrey performance.

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You – The BRWC Review. As her relationship with Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) continues to grow, Lara Jean Song Covey (Lana Condor) reunites with another recipient of one of her old love letters, John Ambrose McClaren (Jordan Fisher).

A couple of years ago, Susan Johnson released a feature film adaptation of Jenny Han’s novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and it was met with heavy critical and general audience acclaim. It was a movie that was released all the way back in 2018, but I never checked it out until very recently.

The reason why is simple – romantic movies are almost always weak in my opinion. The majority of them usually follow the exact same storyline and plot beats, and they just don’t offer a whole lot of meat. Sure, they can be fun and entertaining to watch. You can put a romance movie on Netflix during a rainy day when you are bored and there is nothing else to do. They’re just disposable movies usually.

However, I was met with a massive surprise when I finally went ahead and watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before earlier this week when I saw that it was actually a great film. Filled to the brim with charm and energy and boosted with amazing performances from Lana Condor and Noah Centineo as the two leads, it worked in a ton of ways.

But if I am going to be honest with you, I was rather nervous to check out this new 2020 Michael Fimognari-directed sequel. The ending of that first movie was really great, and it seemed kind of strange to make more of these movies. Yes, I am aware that there are three books in the series (and they are already making a third and final installment in the film trilogy, supposedly in post-production), but I was just unsure of how they were going to handle this second chapter.

From the bottom of my heart, I was really hoping that, much like the first entry, this movie would actually end up surprising me, but it just didn’t. This is not an awful movie by any means necessary. It’s really not even all that bad, but what it is, is a massive step down from the first installment.

Let’s talk about the best aspect to this film. Once again, much like the first, it is the performances by both Lana Condor and Noah Centineo. Their chemistry is seriously so wonderful, and it is incredibly endearing to watch these two do literally anything on screen. I am convinced that it would be amusing to watch them just drinking coffee or something so incredibly simple. Their performances are some of the best you’ll be able to find in the young adult/teen romance genre.

Also quite strong here is Jordan Fisher as John Ambrose McClaren, a boy that Lara used to know and be friends with back when she was a child. Even though his performance in To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You is definitely strong, his character sadly is not much else besides the “guy in the middle of a love triangle” character. That is pretty much the extent of his character, and he isn’t given much else to do in this screenplay.

If you really boil it down, the only two characters that have a lot of substance and development to them are Lara and Peter. The other characters feel pushed to the side, which was disappointing. Trezzo Mahoro delivers a deeply comedic and likeable performance as Lucas, one of Lara’s best friends, but the only thing he gets to do here is comfort her. That’s it. I really wish these side characters were given more to do.

Much like the aforementioned original, this is, for the most part, a pretty cute and adorable movie to watch. It is sadly kind of cheesy, which the original was as well, but actually, this one was not as cheesy as the first. Watching Lara and Peter on screen is always extremely sweet, but there needs to be something else present to make this movie truly come alive – a great script. This movie just doesn’t have one.

The story this time around was nowhere near as investing as it was the first time. Not a whole lot of interesting or dramatic things happen in this film until much later on. We’re never really given anything to care about for a while, which is strange.

It’s also paced rather strange, too. The first film was always entertaining after the first act came and went. It had plenty of things to enjoy. But To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You feels like multiple movies into one. You can definitely tell that this is not directed by Susan Johnson, who was behind the camera for the first.

One of the biggest examples of this movie not feeling the same and feeling like a bunch of different movies crammed into one, happens during a scene in the second act that took me off guard, and not in a good way. It features an extremely bizarre and borderline cringe-worthy song and dance number. It happened so suddenly that it made me open my mouth in shock, because it was just so bizarre. I thought that would be the end of it, but there is another musical number later on that also comes out of nowhere. It just felt so strange and out of place.

Something about this film that was certainly on the same level of excellence as the first however, was the cinematography by director Fimognari. It is kind of exciting to see that the cinematographer behind the first picture got to actually direct this time around. His camera work is utterly stunning, and it is one of the best looking romance movies you can find.

It is just such a shame that the rest of the movie as a whole was rather disappointing to say the least. It takes everything that was great about its predecessor and somehow manages to make it all so uninteresting. Don’t get me wrong, there were still some really cute, funny, and charming sequences to be found here. But as a sequel to a really strong movie, it let me down.

To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You doesn’t offer a lot of greatness with its bland script, even if it still contains great performances from Lana Condor and Noah Centineo.

Greed tells the story of self-made British billionaire Sir Richard McCreadie (Steve Coogan), whose retail empire is in crisis. For 30 years he has ruled the world of retail fashion, bringing the high street to the catwalk and the catwalk to the high street. But after a damaging public inquiry, his image is tarnished. To save his reputation, he decides to bounce back with a highly publicised and extravagant party celebrating his 60th birthday on the Greek island of Mykonos.

Michael Winterbottom is a director that has plenty of great ideas up his sleeve, and has impressed me on numerous occassions with his previous films, especially The Trip series, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Everyday. My family has always greatly enjoyed The Trip the most, though. It’s kind of a favorite in our household.

Since I do quite enjoy his filmography, I was excited to see what his latest feature Greed would have to offer. Something that is instantly noticeable about Winterbottom’s movies is that a lot of them star Steve Coogan in the leading role. It’s not hard to see why, either. He is an actor with a great amount of range and can pull off a large variety of characters. While Greed is not one of  my all-time favorite Winterbottom movies, Coogan’s portrayal of eccentric billionaire Sir Richard McCreadie is among one of his most wild and devilishly entertaining to date.

Right from the opening few scenes alone, we can tell that McCreadie is a highly cocky and greedy man. A lot of people even refer to him as “Greedy McCreadie”. He is always trying to find a way to make money and he doesn’t want to give any of it away. His money is his money, and nobody else’s. Watching a character like this would usually be infuriating because they are just so annoying and it is hard to root for somebody like that. But with a funny and likeable actor portraying said character, it becomes easier to sit back and laugh at all the insane things that he does.

This is a satire film, and that is nothing new or original. How you execute any film in any given genre is what makes it new or original. Winterbottom’s script is quite good for the most part, although it does suffer from some issues. One of the biggest issues with it is that it does somewhat feel like other movies. Not necessarily the story, but how it was written. Some parts of it reminded me of Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and the way that movie portrayed its protagonist.

Sometimes, the screenplay is a bit uneven. The first act takes a while to get going, and a lot of it is because it is almost all setup. We ease into the life of McCreadie and we see his life play out starting from when he was in school. I appreciated the fact that we got to see how this larger than life presence came to be, but there was just too much exposition in the bunch.

Similarly, a lot of the humor did not land during that first act. Some jokes would go by and fall completely flat. Gratefully though, the humor and really, the movie as a whole, does improve after a rocky first act. From that point onward, it becomes a massively entertaining satire that has a lot to say.

It’s a film that talks about social class and how our lead protagonist handles his wealth and it takes us on a journey with this man as we get to learn more about him. Like I said, it is nowhere near perfect. It’s not a satire that is as good as other satires such as The Death of Stalin or Jojo Rabbit or anything like that. But Greed is incredibly different from those movies. It’s a comedy that has some dramatic elements sprinkled throughout, and also doubles as a commentary on social class.

It is often times too long, especially the first act, some of the jokes don’t work that well early on, and some of the characters (except for McCreadie) don’t get too much to do. Yes, it does improve later on which is a great thing, I just wish that the preceding parts of the movie were just as entertaining.

But perhaps my favorite aspect of Greed is none other than Coogan as the lead protagonist. He is such an interesting character to follow here, as we get to see how cocky this man truly is. Watching his life play out was a series of baffling moments but in all the right ways. Seeing him earn his money and interact with other people around him was a treat. The film does have its problems, but this is an amusing enough movie that doesn’t always work in its execution, but when it does get going, it never lets up.

Greed‘s satirical and wacky script feels bizarre in the first act, but it improves later on and offers some humorous moments and an entertaining performance from Steve Coogan.

The enigmatic Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña) makes the secret dreams of his lucky guests come true at a luxurious but remote tropical resort, but when the fantasies turn into nightmares, the guests have to solve the island’s mystery in order to escape with their lives.

You may think of me as somewhat as a fool, but yes, I was actually a little bit skeptical about Jeff Wadlow’s newest feature Fantasy Island. Not because of his past work or anything like that, though. This is not his first film under the Blumhouse Productions banner – that would be 2018’s abysmal Truth or Dare, which was one of the worst horror films in recent years.

The reason why I was cautiously optimistic about his newest project with the beloved horror studio was because it was taking the Fantasy Island television series that has been adored by many people since its inception on January 14, 1977 and spinning it on its head.

Those that are fans of the series of the same name will tell you that it is most certainly not a horror series. It is a simplistic drama set on a wonderful island, and not a whole lot of crazy things happen throughout the series. It has its fair share of dramatic moments, but nothing about that original series is insanely intense or dark.

What Wadlow is doing with this movie, is taking the same concept behind the show of the same name and making it a fully fledged horror film. It actually sounded heavily enticing to me. In fact, it left me thinking “How has this not been done before?”. In a world where we see hundreds of remakes coming out in theatres left right and centre, how is it possible that we haven’t had a film remake of Fantasy Island, one of the most iconic shows from the 70s?

Plus, setting any horror movie on an island seems like a really fun and creative idea. There really is so much potential there and there is so much a horror writer and director could do to make that idea come to life in a thrilling and creepy way. Unfortunately, Wadlow’s follow-up to Truth or Dare is yet another drastically disappointing and painfully dull horror film that barely has anything promising to offer.

One of the things I hate the most about some horror films is the way that the screenplay treats its characters. Often times they are portrayed as really stupid and they make some insanely baffling decisions along the way. We have seen numerous films do this throughout the years, and we have even had some movies do an absolutely brilliant job at poking fun at this tired trope.

Take The Cabin in the Woods for example. Virtually everybody thought that movie was going to suck because of the generic and bland looking trailers as well as the relatively dull posters. The marketing as a whole lead people to believe the movie was going to be awful. But then it came out and took everybody by complete surprise because it was actually kind of a horror parody. It was so self aware and constantly found genius ways to make fun of the tropes that we hate seeing in so many horror films these days.

But Fantasy Island is not self-aware. It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that it has tropes or anything of the sort. It just simply has tropes and they are frustrating. Character motivation is thrown completely out the window here. The whole premise of the movie is that a bunch of young adults travel to a fantastic island in hopes of a fun romantic getaway, and a charming snazzy man named Mr. Roarke makes all their deepest wishes come true. But they soon realize that they might be in for more than they asked for.

Whenever some genuinely off-putting and disturbing things start to happen on the island, there is barely an effort amongst the group to try and leave. Yes, they do question things that happen sometimes, but they just constantly make increasingly bad decisions scene after scene. A device that may help a character escape a certain situation such as a phone or boat always manages to get discarded or lost.

Speaking of the characters, they are all extremely unlikable. They are annoying, rude, and abrasive young adults that act like they are drunk highschoolers throughout the entire movie. It’s hard to feel sympathy for these characters because of two main reasons. One, we are never given any good reason to care about them. They are only in the movie for bad things to inevitably happen to them, and that’s it. They don’t feel like characters at all, but rather pawns waiting to be knocked off the map. Two, all of the characters are so incredibly annoying and genuinely rude that it is difficult to be worried for them because of the situation they are in. If all of these people were to die in the first twenty minutes of the film, I would not have cared one bit. In fact, I would have been glad, because then I wouldn’t have had to endure such a painfully boring film.

If I were to pick the best character, the one that was the least annoying, it would probably have to be Michael Peña’s Mr. Roarke. He is not a hero or anything like that, but the reason why he can be entertaining to watch is all thanks to Peña. It is genuinely always a blast to watch him portray any character. Ever since seeing him in 2015’s Ant-Man for the first time, I have always found him to be an excellent actor and great at delivering comedy. Here, he probably gets the most to do out of any of the characters in the movie, and he can be somewhat amusing to watch on screen.

Lucy Hale portrays one of the lead protagonists Melanie Cole, and while I did not like her character, I did think her performance was decent. She does a fair enough job in a movie that does not deserve her acting talent. Previously, she starred in the aforementioned Truth or Dare, but she has been in some good projects in the past. She tries her best here but she was unfortunately saddled with a poor film.

Now, since this is a horror movie, you’re probably going to see this movie in hopes of getting scared or at the very least, getting the creeps. While there are some entertaining and fun sequences, the majority of the movie feels extremely generic and does not have a lot to offer. I suppose it could come across as somewhat eerie to people that don’t watch too many horror films, but for seasoned veterans in the genre, this will feel like a walk in the park.

The biggest praise I can give Fantasy Island is its cinematography by Toby Oliver, who previously shot other Blumhouse pictures such as the phenomenal Get Out and the horror comedies Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U. It is honestly hard to make a movie set on a tropical island look ugly. Oliver’s cinematography here, like always, shines. Every shot looks well framed and it is full of great colors. It looks delightfully stylish and exciting. I just really wish he could showcase his excellent camera work in a different movie. Really, I wish everybody involved with this project could have shown their talents in a different movie. Because at the end of the day, I like all of these actors. Wadlow is not an awful director, either. His direction here is good enough. It’s just that the film that everybody came together to make, was a disappointment.

Fantasy Island is no tropical horror adventure. It contains a drastically dull script, unlikable characters, and doesn’t offer enough scares for its target audience.