Author: Caillou Pettis

Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays as students travel home to spend time with their families. But as Riley Stone (Imogen Poots) and her sorority sisters prepare to deck the halls with seasonal parties, a mysterious cloaked figure starts to leave a bloody trail throughout the campus. Refusing to become hapless victims, Riley and her friends decide to band together and fight back against the psychotic Christmas killer.

If anybody knows me, then they probably know that I am a big fan of horror movies. On top of that, I am a big fan of horror movies that are centered around the Christmas holiday, or are winter-related. One of my favorite films of 2015 was Michael Dougherty’s devilishly exciting Krampus. While it certainly had its fair share of issues, it was still a highly effective, atmospheric and fun horror flick.

While the Krampus storyline is fairly well known, perhaps just as well known, is the 1974 Bob Clark-directed film Black Christmas. It’s an unsettling and relatively grounded approach to the Christmas horror genre, and it has unnerved audiences for decades. With an incredibly low budget of just $620,000, everything about the film felt authentic. Nothing about it felt like the Hollywood norm. It was creepy and extremely raw.

Throughout the years though, we have gotten a few remakes of this beloved scary story. In 2006, Glen Morgan helmed a retelling of the story, and it was met with overwhelming critical and fan backlash, for its plot and due to its violent nature. Plus, it raised eyebrows due to the release date being Christmas Day.

Now, we have a brand new 2019 reimagining of Black Christmas, this time directed by Sophia Takal. While it is respectably directed and it has a clear vision, it is still absolutely riddled with problems, and is nowhere near as excellent or stylish as the 1974 original.

One of the biggest issues with this picture is its rating. I mentioned earlier how the Morgan directed version of this tale was met with a ton of criticism for being too violent. The opposite is the case this time around. A PG-13 rating genuinely hurt this film. A lot of the kills and violence depicted here is so tame, to the point where you never really feel like you’re watching anything extremely intense.

In the original version, the violence felt realistic. It was bleak and brutal and it got under your skin. Even the Morgan remake had that going for it. But Takal’s film feels so bloodless, which was such a shame. It genuinely felt as if screenwriters Takal and April Wolfe were trying to make a fairly bloody and exciting film, but perhaps studio interference happened, where they wanted to get as many teenagers in the theatre possible. If this was rated R, it would have been a lot more entertaining to watch. It felt like they were really holding things back.

Sadly, Black Christmas also has a ton of frustrating tropes on display. We have the groan inducing character walking down a dark hallway when they shouldn’t trope. We have the running away from a masked killer but the victim trips trope. Finally, we have the trope where somebody sees something creepy appear behind them in a bathroom mirror. It is so annoying to see horror films in the year 2019 still do this. It has never been effective and it never will be. A large portion of this screenplay is like that.

Speaking of the screenplay, it is relatively slow and uneventful. It takes about thirty minutes in this ninety two minute movie for something even remotely creepy to happen. The first half hour of the film honestly kind of came across as some sort of romantic comedy with some dramatic elements sprinkled in. There are numerous scenes where teenagers party, listen to music, and drink coffee together. Watching these scenes, it became apparent that not a lot of fun was going to be had.

It is additionally chalked full of extremely cringe-worthy dialogue that made me wonder how it was even written in the first place. The vast majority of the dialogue not only came across as extremely unnatural, but unintentionally hilarious too.

Now, throughout the film, the screenwriters set up a mystery of sorts. We keep seeing this masked killer walking around at night and inside this sorority house killing innocent women. The problem is that the identity of the villain is kept under wraps for so long, and it shouldn’t have been, because it was blatantly obvious who it was. Whenever certain things are uncovered in the story, they do not shock and surprise, because you already saw it coming. The villain was incredibly predictable.

This is not an entirely awful film, though. One of the biggest praises I can give Black Christmas is the acting on display, particularly by Imogen Poots, who portrays lead character Riley Stone. Not only did she deliver an emotionally charged and riveting performance, but her character was the only one that I actually rooted for. I did not care about any of the other characters, despite the actors doing a good job in their roles.

Also, it does have some really great cinematography by Mark Schwartzbard. His camerawork here is incredibly intricate and well thought out. A ton of the shots throughout this film looked honestly beautiful, and the framing of certain shots were great.

But perhaps the best aspect of this film was its third act. Was it goofy and over the top? Absolutely. But it was honestly a lot of fun to watch and it was what I wished the entire movie was like. It was full of exciting slasher moments and was filmed with a sense of style. It’s really the only time we get to see anything fun happen.

As a whole though, this was a massively disappointing film. It has an immense amount of problems, mainly relating to its script and character department. It has some great cinematography and good acting plus a fun third act. But despite that, I can’t really say that I enjoyed this movie overall, because the negatives were so overwhelming that the movie as a whole greatly suffered.

Black Christmas ends up being a lump of coal with its poor screenplay and weak character development, even if it has some fun moments.

Six individuals from all around the globe, each the very best at what they do, have been chosen not only for their skill, but for a unique desire to delete their pasts to change the future.

Think of all of the things that Michael Bay places in his movies. There are plenty of so-called “Bayisms” to be found in pretty much every single one of his movies to date. Firstly, there is perhaps the most well known Bayism, known as “Bayhem”, which is usually just his excuse to put as much carnage and computer-generated explosions on screen all at once. This can be seen in practically every one of his Transformers films.

Now, there are also the three hundred sixty degree pans he loves to use, tons and tons of slow motion sequences, and of course, product placement. The most notable instance of this is probably in 2014’s abysmally bad Transformers: Age of Extinction, where Mark Wahlberg’s character Cade Yeager, while in the middle of a crazy battle with the Autobots and Deceptions, stops to drink a Bud Light.

All of these hilarious Bayisms are present in his latest feature 6 Underground, which has a more quiet release, as, instead of releasing in theatres worldwide, it can now be viewed on Netflix from the comfort of your own home. It’s a good thing they decided to release it on there, because I get the feeling that a lot of audiences would have had a hard time sitting through this overly long, headache inducing mess.

However, there is one point I desperately want to get across here – I think that Michael Bay is absolutely incredible at visual effects and action. Him and his team work tirelessly on creating some genuinely beautiful scenes, and, whether you like his movies or not, you have to give the guy credit where credit is due.

This film does definitely have Bayhem, and for the most part, it can be a ton of fun to watch, as there are plenty of scenes here that are incredibly wild and really don’t make a ton of sense, but boy are they fun to watch. If you have ever wanted to watch Ryan Reynolds run around causing chaos outside of the Deadpool franchise, than you are in luck here.

The biggest issue with 6 Underground is its story, however. It is simply dull and extremely boring. It never attempts to go anywhere, and they never try to make the plot juicy enough for us to care. Every time you think things may get exciting in terms of a story, it falls back on the tried and true action sequences in hopes that you will forget about a competent story.

If I am going to be honest, the biggest praise I can give this movie is that it is a wholly fun experience and there is usually always something exciting to look at visually. Whether its ridiculous, over-the-top action set pieces or its goofy display of its Bayisms. Also, I have to admit, the cinematography here is pretty good too, shot by Bojan Bazelli, although the film does come complete with a lot of lens flares, which can get really old really quickly. Just like the rest of the film.

6 Underground certainly has fun, over-the-top action that Michael Bay fans are used to, but its story is ridiculously bland and incompetent.

Jumanji: The Next Level – The BRWC Review. When Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff) goes back into the fantastical world of Jumanji, his pals Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner), Anthony “Fridge” Johnson (Ser’Darius Blain) and Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman) re-enter the game to bring him home. But the game is now broken — and fighting back. Everything the friends know about Jumanji is about to change, as they soon discover there’s more obstacles and more danger to overcome.

It may be hard to believe, but I actually saw the critically acclaimed and highly beloved Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle just this past week. When it was released in the theatres, it managed to gross a whopping $962.1 million at the worldwide box office. On a budget of $90-150 million, the box office profit on that film was incredible. But I only saw it recently, because at the time, so many other movies had come out that my time was occupied with.

But, I saw it eventually, and I genuinely really liked it. A lot. I was honestly not expecting too much out of it. The whole style of these Jumanji films seemed just too weird and campy and I was not expecting Jake Kasdan to craft an exciting, adventure filled film with a ton of heart, but that is exactly what it was surprisingly.

To be completely honest with you, I was unsure about how I felt regarding a sequel to that movie. Welcome to the Jungle was a blast at the movies, but a lot of the things that were shown in Jumanji: The Next Level turned me off a little bit. The whole idea of swapping out the characters and having these new additions to the cast play the old avatars from the first film seemed like such a bizarre choice. Why would you not just continue having Spencer and friends play the same avatars they played in the first outing?

But, to my surprise, The Next Level handles this pretty well, and although at times it can be a bit confusing as to who is who, it still worked and definitely made for some greatly comedic moments.

Much like the aforementioned installment, this new chapter in the series is absolutely hilarious at times. Each and every one of the cast members bring their comedic A game to their roles and I would say that nearly all of the jokes landed. One of the funniest actors in this one was definitely Dwayne Johnson as well as Karen Gillan, which was a delightful surprise.

Before, Gillan’s character Ruby Roundhouse did have a few funny moments, but she did not get enough time to show her comedic skill. Here, however, it is the exact opposite. In fact, there is one scene in the second act with her and Jack Black that was really funny and is one of the film’s funniest and most memorable sequences.

Speaking of Ruby Roundhouse, she is one of the most entertaining characters to watch on screen. She is almost always doing something crazy, wild, and adventurous and Gillan’s chemistry with the rest of the cast is truly amazing.

As this is a Jumanji movie, most audiences are going to want to see a ton of chaos ensue in this crazy video game world, and I can gladly report that we do get a whole bunch of it. Although I do overall enjoy the predecessor more, the action here is better and a lot of it was in camera and extremely fun to watch, albeit effects heavy.

Something that I found was incredibly clever about Welcome to the Jungle was how each character had only three lives before they were dead, and so the film had its tension and stakes instantly raised. The same can be said about Jumanji: The Next Level too for the most part. Even though the stakes do not necessarily feel as high as they did before, I still did feel a little bit anxious towards whether or not certain characters would make it out alive in some situations.

Also, the villain here, Jurgen the Brutal (Rory McCann) is ridiculously weak. Much like the previous outing, the villain is the definition of a cliché villain. The type that you would expect to stroke their mustache and laugh evilly. There is literally no character development given to him and it would have been so much better if the film had given us some backstory behind his character.

At times the editing can be a bit jarring too, as some sequences have us in a zany video game world and then the next second, we cut back to some characters in the real world, and the transition there was not smooth and felt bumpy.

But overall, this is yet again a surprisingly good movie that a ton of families and audiences will have a blast watching. If they do want to make a third entry down the road, I am sure that I would be perfectly okay with that. As long as Kasdan is returning, as well as the cast that we know and love, then it should hopefully be a great time, because this one sure was.

Jumanji: The Next Level is yet another wacky and greatly funny movie with a big heart and boasts tons of fun action and adventure.

A troubled college freshman named Luke (Miles Robbins) resurrects his imaginary friend Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger) to help him cope with a violent trauma.

Daniel Isn’t Real is an absurdly weird movie. It is a movie that is filled with imagery and scenes that don’t really make any sense when you first look at them, and even some that just don’t make sense at all. Sometimes, these moments can make for some memorable sequences upon reflection of the film as a whole. The first shot of this film is honestly jaw-droppingly beautiful, weird, confusing, and hypnotic all at the same time, as is a large portion of the cinematography and use of visuals.

But, sometimes, when a film relies too heavily on its style and not too much on its style, we get something known as “style over substance”, which is exactly what Daniel Isn’t Real is, sadly. This film’s concept is honestly great, and it is an idea that I never knew I wanted until now. There are glimmers of greatness in Adam Egypt Mortimer’s latest feature, yet it is too often undercut by a strangely jarring and messy story that is never quite sure of what it wants to be.

Some part of this movie wants to be a strangely mysterious coming-of-age tale, akin to Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko. Yet there is another part that wants to be a deep dive into mental illness and it rides this line in a strange way. There were a few times where this movie was genuinely interesting and it was exciting to see where everything would go, but it never really goes anywhere.

The acting, however, is quite good, although it is nothing exceptional. The best performance in Daniel Isn’t Real comes from our lead Miles Robbins, who portrays main character Luke. He is a character you can get behind and I am hoping to see more of him in the future, as he has been good in every single movie that I have seen him in. Schwarzenegger as Luke’s imaginary friend Daniel is also quite good, and really creepy whenever he needs to be. Frequently we will see Daniel in the background of the majority of this film’s shots and sometimes it makes for a delightfully creepy shot.

It also boasts an exceptionally strong score from Chris Clark, whose music here really elevates some of the more intense scenes in the film. It is also shot well, as I touched upon earlier. Lyle Vincent’s cinematography here can be full of greatly interesting shot structures, visuals, and use of lighting.

On a technical level, this movie is actually impressive and really strong. It is just that the story here is so messy and jumbled that it can be incredibly hard to get invested in. This movie tries to be too many things at once and unfortunately fails at a lot of them. Don’t get me wrong, this movie was not a chore to watch. There was never a moment where I was begging for Daniel Isn’t Real to be over. It is just that there was plenty of scenes where I couldn’t help but get sucked out of due to a jumbled script.

Additionally, I found the first act to be extremely rushed. We spend only a few small scenes with Luke as a young boy (portrayed by Griffin Robert Faulkner) and it would have been nice to have seen a little bit more of Luke’s life as a child. In these scenes that we do get, we understand that Luke’s imaginary friend Daniel has caused a great deal of trouble and distress on his mother, and I wish we could have seen more of this.

Daniel Isn’t Real is strong in its technical efforts, but it suffers greatly from a messy script and a story that isn’t sure of what it wants to be. 

Marriage Story: The BRWC Review. A stage director named Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) and his actor wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) struggle through a gruelling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal and creative extremes.

Noah Baumbach is a filmmaker that I deeply admire. Every single one of his films to date have been extremely exceptional and one of the many reasons as to why is because that they all feature characters that feel shockingly real and grounded. Whether its the titular Frances Ha or the Meyerowitz family in his 2017 feature The Meyerowitz Stories, every character featured in his films are written so expertly. They all feel like they could be real people walking among us.

Baumbach is somebody that is ridiculously skilled at making movies about people, and making them feel real but still managing to have a dramatic core as well as emotional beats. Making films about people that are this gripping can be a difficult task, but he makes it look easy. A lot of his films are ones that I think are phenomenal, so I was excited to see what his latest feature Marriage Story would have to offer. I went into it expecting it to be great based on the incredible response it has been getting. I was not expecting it to be the best in his filmography, but it is.

This is a painfully real movie. Nothing about this story feels faked and none of it falls into tired clichés that movies centered around relationships especially, fall into. It is a story that is masterfully crafted and is so heart-wrenchingly real and powerful that it can be difficult to watch at times, because it is just so real. I have never had to witness a divorce in my life, but even still, this movie was deep and thought-provoking and it left me staring at the credits in awe.

Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are big actors. That would be an understatement honestly. I have been familiar with them and their work for years now. Driver is highly recognized for his portrayal of Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and Johansson is widely known for her performance as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

They are terrific actors and they are ones that I know of. Yet every single time they were on screen, I never once saw the actors. I saw the characters. They feel so realistic and its thanks to the writing and direction of Baumbach. Once again, he proves to be one of the most talented people working in the industry today, and he directed their performances beautifully.

Both of them deserve to be nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress at the upcoming Academy Awards and it would be an utter travesty if their work goes unrecognized this year. There was a scene towards the third act of the film involving Driver and Johansson, that left me completely speechless. That is not an exaggeration. During this sequence, my mouth was literally open and tears began to stream down my face. It was one of the most powerful scenes I have ever watched, and Driver and Johansson deliver two of the greatest performances I have ever seen.

It is also beautifully shot by its director of photography Robbie Ryan, who previously shot the aforementioned Baumbach picture The Meyerowitz Stories. Virtually every frame in Marriage Story looks so gorgeous that they could all be paintings. These scenes are also accompanied with a mesmerizing score by Randy Newman, who you probably know best for his music from the Toy Story series of films. The music here is beautiful, uplifting, and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Jennifer Lame edited this picture and it is one of her best efforts yet. She served as the editor on my all-time favorite film, Ari Aster’s Hereditary. No wonder why this film was so skillfully edited.

Finally, I have to say, I never once felt the running time here. This is a movie that is two hours and sixteen minutes long, which to me is not that long, but even still, I felt like I could have watched two hours and sixteen minutes more. It was that captivating and investing.

Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is a heartbreaking and painfully real picture that boasts two powerhouse performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson.